N.C. Senate Republican Leader Phil Berger has written a letter to Gov. Beverly Perdue urging her to support legislation called the Health Care Protection Act.

Berger also issued the following statement:

?The Health Care Protection Act is a common sense initiative designed to protect North Carolinians from an unprecedented and unconstitutional expansion of federal power being handed down in the form of health care mandates. North Carolina citizens should have the right to make their own health care decisions protected at the state level. By making clear to her Democratic colleagues in the General Assembly that she supports this legislation, Governor Perdue will make it much more likely that we will receive a fair hearing and an up-or-down vote on the bill.?

Berger, House Republican Leader Paul Stam, and N.C. Republican Party chairman Tom Fetzer discussed the Health Care Protection Act during a Jan. 19 news briefing. Watch the 23:14 event by clicking play below.