Health care lawsuits

GOP Hails Purely Symbolic Victory In Missouri's Anti-Health Care Reform Vote

Christina Bellantoni | August 4, 2010, 12:41PM

A Tea Party protester

While yesterday's vote in Missouri against national health care reform will have little substantive impact on the federal health care reform law, Republicans nonetheless are hailing it as a major victory for their side. Voters in the Show Me State overwhelmingly voted to change Missouri statutes so the mandate for insurance coverage wouldn't apply, a symbolic gesture that everyone acknowledges is highly unlikely to have any effect on the federal health care reform law (absent major and unexpected changes to established legal precedent).

But don't tell RNC Chairman Michael Steele, House Minority Leader John Boehner or former Alaska governor Sarah Palin that.

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Health care lawsuits

Missouri Voters Poised To Reject Health Care Reform, Start Legal Challenges

Christina Bellantoni | August 3, 2010, 1:07PM

Protesting the health care bill in March.

Missouri Republicans today are preparing to celebrate the success of their ballot initiative on health care reform, which asks Missourians whether they want to roll back a critical element of the new law despite significant questions about the constitutionality of doing so.

But opponents of Prop C, the Republican-engineered ballot measure dubbed the "Health Care Freedom Act" that has more political significance than legal precedent behind it, number just in the hundreds and have scant help from the state's Democrats or even Gov. Jay Nixon. The teenage leader of the opposition, in fact, is managing a Facebook campaign against the ballot measure in between his job making sandwiches at Subway.

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Missouri legislature

Missouri Lawmaker Asks Gov To Gamble $2 Of Monthly Pay To Powerball: The Lottery Can Save Us!

Christina Bellantoni | February 23, 2010, 12:08PM

Lottery scratcher

One Missouri lawmaker has an idea of how to help the state's bottom line - gamble a portion of Gov. Jay Nixon's salary each month on lottery tickets.

The Missourian details a bill by state Rep. Mark Parkinson (R) that proposes deducting $2 from Nixon's monthly paycheck to buy Powerball tickets.

Any potential winnings would be put in an account called "Governor Nixon's Scratch-off, Match-off Fund," according to the bill, which gets a hearing tomorrow.

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