BOISE (AP) - A bill to nullify the federal health insurance overhaul died Friday in a Senate committee, angering passionate supporters who chastised lawmakers with taunts of "coward" as they were leaving the completed hearing.

The State Affairs Committee dumped the measure that sought to declare last year's federal law void and make Idaho return federal money it has received to implement the reforms.

The voice vote by the panel's majority - five Republicans, two Democrats - butted up against the wishes of most of those who testified Friday that the bill was an appropriate means of halting federal encroachment into their daily lives.

While Senate President Pro Tempore Brent Hill, R-Rexburg, agreed the health care overhaul passed by Congress last year was unconstitutional, he said he couldn't support a bill he thought also violated the U.S. Constitution.

"We're angry and we're frustrated, and I have a sacred Constitution that I believe provides for remedies," Hill said. "I find no constitutional justification for the things that we are talking about here today."

Both favor relying on the courts to oppose the law. A U.S. District Court judge in Florida has ruled the federal law is illegal in a lawsuit brought by 27 states, including Idaho. Other federal courts have ruled more favorably for health care reform.

It's likely the law will be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Immediately after the vote, however, supporters outraged by the outcome surrounded Sen. Patti Anne Lodge, R-Huston, and demanded to know why she hadn't stood behind them. Lodge had said she was concerned passing the bill could put federal health care grants received by Idaho in jeopardy.

Lori Shewmaker, an activist with the group Idahoans for Liberty, stood outside the Senate Auditorium in the Capitol basement and berated the exiting lawmakers.

"Coward," she repeated. "Coward."

The problem, she told The Associated Press, is that Davis and Hill were telling supporters one thing - they're against the federal health reform law - while voting the opposite way.

"Double-speak is scary," she said. "It's sinister. They showed their yellow underbelly."

Nullification was the 18th century doctrine espoused by Thomas Jefferson in his arguments for state sovereignty. It's become popular again this year as conservative lawmakers - and many tea party adherents - in multiple states express their outrage over the health care reforms.

During three hours of testimony Friday in Boise, proponents invoked the names of Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, but also Karl Marx and Lenin, in urging lawmakers to get behind the bill. Health care reform was a giant step into socialism, they argued, and this would help stop it.

"We stand on the threshold of history, when it's time to stand up to the federal government," said Jim Chmelik, a commissioner in north-central Idaho's Idaho County.

Scholars, however, contend Jefferson's views have been proven unconstitutional time and again in the U.S. Supreme Court, including in the 1950s when Arkansas tried to resist efforts to desegregate public schools. And earlier this month, Assistant Chief Deputy Attorney General Brian Kane wrote there's nothing in the U.S. Constitution that gives states the liberty to pick and choose which federal laws to follow.

Donna Yule, executive director of the Idaho Public Employees Association, a state workers group, was one of just two people who on Friday urged the committee to kill the bill. The courts, not state lawmakers, should decide the question, she said.

"There is an appropriate process to address the constitutionality of a law," Yule said. "This is not it."

The measure had passed the House last Wednesday, 49-20.