LANSING – A petition to allow Michigan residents to opt out of new federal health care requirements will not see the ballot in November because supporters did not have time or money to collect the needed signatures, supporters said.

Critics of the petition drive said the failure reflected the lack of support for the plan.

But those who did sign will be the basis for trying to pressure the Legislature into action.

Rep. Tom McMillin (R-Rochester Hills) and Sen. Wayne Kuipers (R-Holland) both said they would introduce legislation that would allow Michigan residents to opt out of the federal health care law, as the constitutional amendment on the petitions would have done.

Kuipers said he still has a constitutional amendment active in the Senate (SJR K ) but has not been able to get sufficient Democratic support to reach the two-thirds majority needed to pass it.

While Kuipers said he planned to introduce his bill himself when the Legislature returns July 21, McMillin said he is giving House Speaker Andy Dillon (D-Redford Twp.) the opportunity to be primary sponsor on the bill before submitting it.

Dillon did not return calls for comment Tuesday, but he has been on record supporting the federal health care law.

“The state has to do what it can to fight it,” Kuipers said. “People do not like what happened.”

“People feel like the federal government is just trampling them,” McMillin said.

But he said the proposed legislation would deal only with the new health care legislation and would not address other areas where some feel the federal government is overstepping. It also would not address existing programs like Medicare.

And the petitions collected would lend further support to the effort for that legislation, said Wendy Day, coordinator of Michigan Citizens for Healthcare Freedom. “We have 150 to 175,000 people to bring pressure forth,” she said.

Day said the group had not run an exact count on the signatures gathered, but had at least 145,000 and potentially as many as 185,000.

That still left the effort far short of the 380,126 valid signatures required to make the ballot.

Had Congress acted sooner, the group might have made the ballot, Day said. “We had 2 percent of the budget and half the time” of a traditional ballot proposal. Signatures can be counted over a six-month period, but Congress passed the legislation in mid-March, meaning those collecting signatures only had slightly more than three months. Still, even taking the group’s high estimate of 185,000, they would not have been on pace to get 380,126 signatures, let alone the usual 100,000 extra signatures to provide a cushion against invalid ones.

Critics of the effort weren’t buying the explanation.

“The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act was enacted into law because the vast majority of the American people and American business knew we had to make some fundamental reforms to reduce the high cost of health care while making it more available to more people,” said John Freeman of Michigan Health Care for America Now. “The fact that the Tea Party failed to collect the necessary signatures speaks to the fact that our health care system had to change and the majority of people support it.”

But those backing the petition will continue their work as well, Day said.

“As far as we’re concerned, this is just one step in the process,” Day said of collecting the signatures. “This is one battle in a war we have to win.”

Charlie Owens, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business-Michigan, one of the key backers of the petition drive, said the effort would translate to Election Day actions.

“Somebody’s going to have to pay in November for this,” he said.

If none of those efforts work, McMillin said the drive could come back in 2012. “If we mail each one of these people and say sign it and get one more person, we’re almost there,” he said.

Kuipers said he was also still confident that Attorney General Mike Cox would be successful in challenging the law in federal courts.

And he said if he was elected to Congress (he is a candidate for the 2nd U.S. House District to succeed U.S. Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Holland), he would push to not fund the programs involved with the law, which would essentially kill it without repealing it.

This story was provided by Gongwer News Service. To subscribe, click on Gongwer.Com

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