Ohio amendment would pull state out of national health care

Now it's even clearer that sore loser fail guides the GOP.

The Republicans were big on federal "preemption" of state powers during the Bush era. But now they think they can pull their states out of federal programs that help the public, and call themselves champions of local autonomy.

Ohio State Reps. Ron Maag (R-Lebanon) and Barbara Sears (R-Sylvania) want to amend the Ohio Constitution to bar national health care reform from taking effect in the Buckeye State.

In other words, Ohio's citizens wouldn't be allowed to get public health care, all because these 2 lawmakers decided not to let them have it.

Maag complained that the Democrats' national health reforms would create death panels - a criticism that was long ago debunked.

If anyone created death panels, it's the insurance companies, who have opted to withhold life-saving treatments from patients. Also, people seem to forget that it was Bush who enacted the Texas "futile care" law that allows hospitals to deny treatment to patients they deem inconvenient.

But Ron Maag keeps spouting his bullshit.

How does he expect the state of Ohio to override a federal program anyway? You'd think he can't, but then again, there is a dangerous precedent for his idiocy. In the '90s, right-wing Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson pulled his state out of federal welfare programs for needy families - telling his state's citizenry they could no longer collect federal benefits.

I guess Tommy Thompson, Barbara Sears, and Ron Maag think they can just form a separate country every time things don't go their way.