Michigan Healthcare Freedom presents, for public vote, four nominations for the MHF Defender Award. Let’s celebrate state legislators who defend healthcare freedom in the trenches of Lansing!
MHF announced the award and opened it for public nominations in March 2024.
These legislators stood conspicuously for healthcare freedom.
All spoke on the record during a public bill hearing, to impact life, liberty, or property rights in healthcare.
All four, in our view, exhibited unusual courage.
Ultimately, the MHF Defender Award is the people’s choice.
Watch and cast your vote for whoever best defends healthcare freedoms.
1. Senator Thomas Albert: Right to Work
Senator Thomas Albert – Lowell
Sen. Albert defended the right to work against bills allowing unions to:
- garnish fees from healthcare employee wages
- access hiring information
- run non-private ballots
- resume closed shop exclusive bargaining, and
- require prevailing union wages in all state contracts for healthcare construction and maintenance.
Healthcare freedoms:
Clinician freedom of speech, association, property of labor, and conscience;
patient rights to clinicians’ undivided loyalty;
taxpayer right to efficient, cost-effective government.
This short video contains several clips. The first clip begins around 80 minutes into the full hearing.
2. Senator Jim Runestad: Woke Healthcare
Senator Jim Runestad – White Lake
Sen. Runestad exposes bias and bad math within a major new state program, plus the logical fallacies of Implicit Bias Training.
Healthcare freedoms:
Clinician worldview, autonomy, and conscience rights;
patients’ personal agency to make care decisions;
taxpayer rights to sound, non-political state health policy.
This clip begins 16 minutes into the hearing. The original video contained a repeating audio loop (deleted here).
3. Representative Donni Steele: Taxing Healthcare
Representative Donni Steele – Lake Orion
Rep. Steele opposes state fee increases on healthcare equipment like X-ray machines.
Healthcare freedoms:
Patients, clinicians, and taxpayers all lose when healthcare cost inflation drains their resources.
Growing state bureaucracy limits individual choices and potential, impacting life, liberty, property, and conscience rights.
This clip begins 62 minutes into the hearing.
4. Representative Jamie Thompson: Uncivil Servants
Representative Jamie Thompson – Brownstown
Rep. Thompson restores civility and decorum after committee members gang up on a constitutional lawyer testifying against sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) bills.
Healthcare freedoms:
Clinician freedom of speech and conscience;
patient freedom of association and choices for care;
every citizen’s right to equal rule of law.
This clip begins just before the 70-minute point in the hearing.
