Horowitz: Chairman of the Idaho House Health Committee refuses to hold hearings on dangerous COVID policies

The state motto of Idaho is Esto Perpetua – "it is perpetuated," as if to say that God's blessing and bounty for the Gem State should last forever. But in the mind of Fred Wood, the state House Health and Welfare Committee chairman, it means that the imperial administrative state and federal executive control over our bodies, property, and health care should be perpetuated and last forever without any legislative check or balance reflecting the will of the people. Who needs California when you have Idaho Republicans who behave like this?

To begin with, it took months to even get the GOP supermajority legislature back in session to place a check on this dangerous executive power. Now that leadership is back in session and rank-and-file members have introduced nine bills to reorient the immoral response on COVID to reflect more compassion, science, parental choice, and informed consent and to restore the doctor-patient relationship, the committee chair flat-out refused to hold hearings on them.

"I profoundly disagree with all nine of them," Wood (R), told the Idaho Reports.

"If you don't like that company and you don't like its policy, go work somewhere else," Wood said. Wood also added, "I have the right not to be infected by somebody that has a communicable disease."

Well, gee, if you have your shot and your mask, and they work so effectively, why does someone else who has not chosen to get these shots affect your health? Moreover, how are you to get another job when it is the federal government forcing all businesses across many industries to require the shots?

Hey, Mr. Wood, if you don't want to be a committee chairman or a legislator, then just resign. How dare you decline to hold a single hearing for 19 months probing both sides of a debate that affects every aspect of our health and wellness? For example, two of the bills being blocked would prevent the state medical licensing board from attacking doctors who actually seek to treat patients with FDA-approved drugs that are infinitely safer than the shots or remdesivir. We have people dying, including those who got both shots, because of a war on treatment. How could Mr. Wood not even conduct a hearing on the state of play with therapeutics and treatment of COVID? How many patients has Mr. Wood treated? I can personally attest to the fact that Dr. Ryan Cole of Boise has saved hundreds of lives, yet he is being attacked by Idaho's licensing board.

Here are some of the commonsense bills rejected by Rep. Wood:

• HB 424: Prohibits any person, individual, business, or school from releasing one's vaccination information.
• HB 426: Bars any state or local governing entity from discriminating based on injection status or any employer from discriminating against one not showing proof of injection.
• HB 428: Affirms a parent's right to consent to any vaccination of his or her child.
• HB 432: Bars any requirement of a vaccine that has not been fully approved by the FDA.
• HB 433: Bars any licensing board from punishing doctors for prescribing FDA-approved drugs to treat COVID and prohibits pharmacists from blocking such prescriptions.
• HB 435: Prohibits any local government from enforcing Biden's injection mandate.

The ball is now in the court of Speaker Scott Bedke. If he really wants to stand up to Biden and support health care freedom, he will make sure these bills get a vote. Six other bills that were routed through other committees did pass the House yesterday. One of them was HB 429, which allows parents to opt out of school mask mandates. Shockingly, 16 Republicans still voted against it, including Wood, House Education Committee Chairman Lance Clow, and House Speaker Scott Bedke, who is also running for lieutenant governor. Wood and Clow also voted against HB 414, which prevents employers from questioning sincerely held religious beliefs in the context of injection mandates. Now these bills head to the even more liberal Senate.

Also, where exactly is Gov. Brad Little when it comes to standing up to Biden and the war on treatment for COVID? The reality is that the shots are not working, people have the right to access safe and effective therapeutics, doctors have the right to prescribe them, and state and federal bureaucrats have no right to block them while coercing people to take unsafe and ineffective therapeutics. I can't think of a more important topic on which to hold a hearing.

What is so disappointing about people like Wood, especially as committee chairmen in critical red states, is not just that they are California liberals ruining red states. It's that they have zero interest in representing the people in what was supposed to be the strongest branch of government and the one closest to the people.

We live in a time when the federal and state bureaucrats are essentially running all of the policies that matter to our lives – and now our bodies – through executive fiat without any legislative oversight. They are directing spending for a sum of COVID funds that is larger than the entire state's general fund. How can it be that committee chairs throughout the country like Wood have zero interest in holding hearings on the shots, remdesivir, hospital treatment, early treatment, masks, lockdowns, conflicts of interests, and spending priorities even from a facially neutral standpoint? Wouldn't he want to call in experts from both sides and get to the bottom of some of these disputes?

For those wondering why there is no check and balance on Biden in a state with 4-1 majorities in the legislature, people like Fred Wood are the culprit. They literally agree with Biden – up to and including his sentiment that somehow the unvaccinated could affect the protection of those who are already supposedly protected ... but the "protection" failed to protect them.