Columbus Dispatch...
Issue 3’s reach is too wide, foes say
Backers say vote on insurance is about more than health-care law
David Eggert 

Ohio’s ballot measure targeting the federal health-care law is written so poorly that it could thwart efforts to update existing laws covering programs such as child support and workers’ compensation, opponents said yesterday. 

Liberal advocacy group Innovation Ohio enlisted the help of two Case Western Reserve University law professors to analyze Issue 3, which aims to cancel out the 2010 federal law in Ohio by preventing residents from being forced to buy health insurance. 

It is questionable whether the constitutional amendment could even do that. But the professors said that Issue 3 would threaten a host of health-care-related laws that might need to be changed down the line. 

“It would freeze many laws affecting health care in time,” said professor Jessie Hill, director of the Center for Social Justice at Case Western Reserve. That’s a problem considering “the changing state of medicine and the health-care industry.” 

Issue 3 — supported by tea party and constitutional-rights groups — wouldn’t affect state laws or rules in place as of March 19, 2010. 

Workers’ compensation, which requires employers to buy insurance to cover employee injuries, was in place by then. But future changes to workers’ compensation laws would be impermissible under Issue 3, the professors and Innovation Ohio say. 

They cited other laws and rules that could be affected: COBRA, which lets employees temporarily buy health insurance through their employers after leaving a job; child-support enforcement orders requiring parents to buy health coverage for their children; immunizations that schools must buy for needy students; and university rules mandating that students buy health insurance as a condition of attendance. 

Maurice Thompson of the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, the author of Issue 3, said he always has maintained that it is about more than what opponents deride as “Obamacare” or individual insurance mandates. 

He acknowledged that critics are “not far off” on some scenarios. He said Issue 3 would prohibit requiring schoolgirls to get a cervical-cancer vaccine, for example. 

But Thompson disputed other claims by critics. Workers’ compensation is protected under the state constitution, he said. 

He also said he has no problem with college students being required to have health insurance because they choose to attend... 

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