August 21, 2009 – We never thought of Barney Frank as a big health-care player. But the Congressman is all over the Internet today because he told a woman who compared Obama’s health plan to Hitler’s policies that “trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table.” And he asked her, “On what planet do you spend most of your time?”
Frank also mentioned that he — like some other Democratic congressmen, but unlike the Obama administration — would support a shift to a single-payer health-care system. (Watch the video: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWwyjwmYMEs&feature=player_embedded]

That got us wondering: What other health-care positions has Frank taken? We looked through the legislation he’s sponsored this year, and came upon the Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act, which the Congressman introduced in June. The basic gist is that federal law should not prohibit the prescription or use of medical marijuana in states that have acted to legalize medical marijuana.

The relationship between federal and state laws regarding medical marijuana has been something of a gray area for years now. Under the Bush administration, the DEA busted some medical marijuana dispensaries in California; the Obama administration has said it wouldn’t do this.

“There are some people who are in severe pain for whom nothing else seems to work,” Frank said in a statement when he introduced the bill. “For the federal government to come in and supersede state law is a real mistake.” By Jacob Goldstein. Source.