Gun Owners of America Applaud Demise of Ryan/Trump ’Obamacare 2.0’

Gun Owners of America Applaud Demise of Ryan/Trump ’Obamacare 2.0’

“The bill needs to be amended to prohibit the ATF from trolling the national health database, or Medicaid, or any new entitlement program for persons with PTSD, Alzheimer’s, ADHD, or merely ‘anxiety,’” said Michael Hammond, legislative counsel for Gun Owners of America…


Gun Owners of America Applaud Demise of Ryan/Trump ’Obamacare 2.0’

House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wisconsin) American Healthcare Act (H.R.1628) is a mishmash-of-a-morass that preserves the same provisions that made Obamacare a blatant affront to the Constitution in general and the Second Amendment in particular.

Among them: Doctors, insurance companies and federal agencies, specifically the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), can still ferret through medical records as a basis to violate privacy, influence medical treatments, raise insurance premiums and deny law-abiding citizens the right to own a firearm.

“The bill needs to be amended to prohibit the ATF from trolling the national health database, or Medicaid, or any new entitlement program for persons with PTSD, Alzheimer’s, ADHD, or merely ‘anxiety,’” said Michael Hammond, legislative counsel for Gun Owners of America in a March 20 alert. “The Obama Administration did that with Social Security, for the specific purpose of imposing a lifetime gun ban on millions of Americans. As it is, ‘Son of ObamaCare’ opens that possibility again — on a grand scale.”

The justly maligned American Healthcare Act (AHCA), which was endorsed by President Donald Trump but supported by only 17 percent of Americans, was pulled by Ryan from scheduled votes on March 23 and on March 24 because it did not have the support to pass even in the GOP-controlled House. In fact, according to some estimates, it would have failed by as many as 40 votes.

Which is fine with most gun owners and many Second Amendment advocacy groups, including the GOA, which recommended three changes to any attempt to resurrect the AHCA — also referred to as “Obamacare 2.0”:

—Amend the AHCA to prohibit the ATF from “trolling the national health database, or Medicaid, or any new entitlement program for persons with PTSD, Alzheimer’s, ADHD, or merely ‘anxiety’ to pre-empt a Constitutional right.

—Amend the AHCA to bar insurance companies from asking about gun ownership and basing coverage on the answer to increase insurance rates “as a result of gun ownership” or flat out deny insurance coverage.

“Already,” the GOA states, “New York and California are considering using gun insurance requirements to ‘insure’ guns out of existence.”

—Amend the AHCA to ensure doctors cannot legally ask patients about gun ownership and enter that information into a federal database to create a “de facto national gun registry.”

Read more at Outdoor Life