JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER
JEFF BINGAMAN
JOHN F. KERRY
OLYMPIA J. SNOWE
RON WYDEN
CHARLES E. SCHUMER
DEBBIE STABENOW
MARIA CANTWELL
BILL NELSON
ROBERT MENENDEZ
THOMAS CARPER
"This action leaves no doubt that the health care bill that will come to the Senate floor in a few weeks will contain provisions that would result in massive subsidies for abortion coverage," Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee said.
Johnson told LifeNews.com after the vote the battles to stop abortion funding are not over as "the full Senate will have to vote on the pro-abortion subsidies, and other pro-abortion components as well."
We must continue to oppose any version of this bill since innocent lives will be ended with our tax dollars.The debate over the future of health care reform in the United States has often focused on two issues surrounding life; the beginning and the end. Both issues, abortion and euthanasia, have implications for religious based hospitals, particularly Catholic ones, and therefore the entire future of health care in the United States. Read the rest here
...On June 22, Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Democrats defeated a Republican amendment to the health care bill that would have prevented the use of “comparative effectiveness” research methodologies in the denial of benefits to patients, against their will, based on their age, expected length of life, or of the patient’s present or predicted disability or quality of life.- Carol White of Hawaii Right to Life and used with permission.
Democrats claimed the amendment was unneeded. The existing language says that comparative effectiveness research “shall not be construed as mandates for payment, coverage, or treatment.” However, nothing in the current bill prevents it being used to deny treatment.
“Comparative effectiveness” refers to the practice of limiting choices in medicines or procedures to a few that government bureaucrats decide are cost-effective. This is the norm in Britain and Canada. Canada sends people to the United States for certain cancer treatments but decides which hospital, often to the detriment of the patient. If you are over 60 in Britain, your health care is limited.
Such rationing discriminates against people with disabilities, older people, and anyone considered having a poor ‘quality of life.’
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If our President had read H.R. 3200, he would never have told us that if we like our health insurance, we can keep it.
On page 16, Section 102(a)(1) “Limitation on New Enrollment” forbids new enrollment in private plans. In other words, if you lose your job, change your job, graduate from school and look for a job, you must go into the government plan. If the government insurance is so wonderful, it would not be necessary force people onto it.
On pg. 167, Title IV, Subtitle A, Part 1, any individual “without acceptable health care coverage, defined in subsection d (pg. 171-173) will have to pay a special tax. Pg. 194, Subtitle C allows the “Health Choices Commissioner” to get anyone’s tax returns in order to figure the tax.
The House and Senate bills are full of such mandates that make the word “choice” an empty one unless we are talking about abortion. Oh, yes, the government can define health care services to include abortion. It is revealing that amendments to exclude abortion in these bills have been beaten back by Democrats.
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If you would like to check the accuracy of my facts, I have the pdf version of HR 3200 that I can send you. (Note: Click here for pdf version of the entire bill.)
I also have facts that refute the contention that no federal funds will be used for abortions and that no illegal aliens will be eligible for the programs. (Illegals get health care now via hospital emergency rooms or by paying up front.). I've given up writing letters to the editor. It takes a lot of time to condense the facts to 170-200 words and they don't print them anyway. What the papers do like to print are name-calling letters. Anything giving "chapter-and-verse" facts are unwelcome as they go against their editorial stands.
An interesting question is what Canadians will do for their health care beyond the basics? Right now, the Canadian govt. sends cancer patients needing chemotherapy to either Buffalo or, I believe, Cleveland. They assign patients to one or the other, regardless of which regimen works better for that type of cancer. Detroit is the center for heart surgery of Canadian patients.
Where do I get these facts? Over 35 years as a reference librarian with a paralegal degree helps finding out these things...
Well, I have done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. I studied it with particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law. I was frankly concerned that parts of the proposed law that were being discussed might be unconstitutional. What I found was far worse than what I had heard or expected.Read the rest here
The health care debate, the greatest challenge of the Obama presidency, has abortion at its epicenter, and no one realizes this more than the White House. In recent weeks, President Obama, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have all insisted that the health care proposals under consideration would not cover abortion.
Nevertheless, that's not the reality we face on the Hill. Recently, we had a meeting with senior White House officials to focus on our serious opposition to the abortion mandate in health care reform. They reiterated the president's statement from his address before Congress and were noncommittal about specific language that would address the current concerns of pro-life advocates.
The truth is that the health care packages under consideration do include abortion funding. Without a specific statutory amendment that includes an explicit ban on federal funding and coverage, we face health care reform that includes abortion.
Lost in the debate over whether or not abortion is "in there" - whether or not you can flip to a certain page and point to a particular clause related to abortion funding - is an understanding among political elites that this is a watershed battle over definition. It's existential, if you will, and comes down to a very straightforward question: Is abortion health care, or is it not?[reference]
Part of the dishonesty in the debate is to maintain that since the current health care bill does not fund abortion in writing that effectively abortion won't be funded. Well abortion isn't funded in the Medicare law, but it takes the Hyde amendment each year to keep Medicade from in fact paying for abortion. Every amendment to the health care bill to pacifically forbid abortion funding has been struck down. The defenders of the bill just keep going on lying that the bill does not fund abortion. The Presidents reassurances mean nothing considering his track record and that the bill has yet been changed by his party. The trick has always been to leave the bills vague enough so that the courts could step in and define what it means. They let the courts do the dirty work for them.
Charmaine Yoest very good article goes on to how the attempt to define abortion as health care, as just another procedure, is going. If we let the culture of death to define the terms than the world health care will mean nothing. Just as the health of the women was broadened to include mental health so as to allow abortion this new definition will be disastrous.
As doctors fear 'euthanasia by the back door' Felicity Smart describes her chilling experience when a elderly neighbour entered hospital
You just got to love a post that includes the sentence "nameless Mouth of the Dark Lord of Newsweek" as used by John C. Wright responding to the article by Evan Thomas on the "The Case for Killing Granny".
John C. Wright shows exactly why Mr. Thomas is wrong and is really being dishonest.
Americans are afraid not just of dying, but of talking and thinking about death. Until Americans learn to contemplate death as more than a scientific challenge to be overcome, our health-care system will remain unfixable.
We have often heard to explain things that Americans are afraid of death and in a culture that just about worships the body, or at least young bodies, so there is some truth to this. Though it would not explain why it is that many who are religious and who know we are more than just a body would object to euthanasia and doctor assisted suicide.
It is also rather interesting that he would talk about the need to "contemplate death as more than a scientific challenge." This of course exactly what the Church has done throughout the ages. St. Thomas Aquinas kept a skull on his desk to do just that and it is a good to think about our own mortality. But the contemplation of death unlike what Mr. Thomas asserts does not necessarily lead you to be more accepting of removing healthcare, but of understanding the proper respect for the human person whether they are at the end of life or not.
There are of course the distinctions in Catholic thought between ordinary and extraordinary care. Though often what was once considered extraordinary care can become ordinary care. Mr. Thomas is making no such distinction as the title of his article suggests. The problem with government healthcare is that it also does not make such distinction and will assign the divide between ordinary and extraordinary as to the costs involved.
John C. Wright's critique is much better than mine, just had to add my two cents.
Another Catholic bishop has stated that too many aspects of President Barack Obama's health care reforms violate basic and necessary Catholic social principles, such as respect for human dignity, safeguarding human life, conscience protection, and the principle of "subsidiarity."Read the rest here
"Health care reform is a very complex issue, with many important peripheral issues, such as cost and how to pay for it, economic impact, the role of the federal government, abortion, euthanasia, tort reform, etc.," writes Bishop James Vann Johnston of Cape-Girardeau and Springfield, Missouri. "But as such, health care reform is particularly important in that, as Catholics, we understand the principles that should be at the very heart of this delicate work."
Johnston says that of all the ways "to skin the health-care cat," President Obama's proposed reform raises serious and troubling questions for Catholics, such that the bishop says he cannot in good conscience support it...
The Consequences of Reconciliation: Stopping the Debate
“While witnesses say pro-Obama protesters were allowed to roam free, the arrested individuals were singled out for displaying any pro-life message -- including slogans on the sanctity of life, photographs of aborted children, a large wooden cross, and images of Mary.”The double standard is rather shocking, isn’t it?
Does the bishops' conference know something about health care and abortion that the rest of us don't? Otherwise it's difficult to say what to make of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' response to President Obama's speech to Congress last week. Even as the rest of the prolife community was continuing its criticism of abortion coverage in the plan, USCCB issued a news release welcoming Obama's claim that publicly funded abortion won't be part of it.
Particularly interesting from this point of view were remarks by Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the bishops' prolife office. Doerflinger, an old hand on these things, said: "We especially welcome the president's commitment to exclude federal funding of abortion, and to maintain existing federal laws protecting conscience rights in health care. ... We will work with Congress and the administration to ensure that these protections are clearly reflected in the new legislation, so no one is required to pay for or take part in abortion as a result of health care reform."
It's hard to say exactly what that means, but it could mean the bishops won't fight very hard to keep abortion out of the health care plan provided it includes some sort of conscience clause they can live with. It may also mean that the bishops have received private assurances from the White House that if they play ball on health care, that's what they'll get. If this is what's going on, however, it's a risky game at best.
Significantly, USCCB didn't roll out any bishops to react to Obama's remarks. Instead that job was given to staff — Doerflinger and Kathy Saile, director of the conference's domestic social development office. This suggests the organization is hopeful of getting what it considers a satisfactory deal on abortion from the White House but isn’t really sure. With good reason perhaps.
Source
Yesterday, I said the president would not mention abortion in his speech. I was wrong about that. But I was right to say, “The rational thing to do would be to drop abortion from the health care bills and support conscience rights for health care workers.” Obama did nothing of the sort. Indeed, his one sentence denial that his health care proposals would result in federal funding of abortion is simply not true.
Even the New York Times, which issued a strong editorial endorsing his speech, said in a news analysis that his claim that there is no federal funding for abortion “is not so clear-cut.” In practice, the Times said, “the public and private money would all go into the same pot, and the source of money for any single procedure is largely a technicality.”
More pointedly, if there is no federal funding for abortion in these plans, then why have there been several attempts to bar such funding? Tell that to Rep. Bart Stupak, Rep. Joe Pitts, Rep. Eric Cantor, Rep. Sam Johnson, Sen. Orrin Hatch and Sen. Mike Enzi. Why would they seek to ban something that doesn’t exist? Just as revealing, why did Obama’s friends defeat every one of these amendments?
President Obama is playing a shell game. He defended the public option plan last night, and under that plan, the person in charge of deciding whether abortion coverage will be mandated is his Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius. This is the same woman who befriended George Tiller, the infamous abortionist who specialized in killing babies 80-percent born. Is there anyone who doubts what her decision will be? If President Bush appointed a secretary of education who was pro-school vouchers, and an education plan allowed the secretary to decide whether to fund them, would anyone conclude that federal dollars for vouchers were not in the plan?
Being wrong is one thing. Being deceitful is quite another.
The president and CEO of one of the nation’s largest Catholic hospital chains welcomed President Barack Obama’s speech on health care reform.Read the rest here
“At CHW, we live everyday with the challenges President Obama outlined in his speech tonight-- we see the real life effects of our broken health care system,” said Lloyd Dean, president and CEO of Catholic Healthcare West. Dean, who is also one of four officers of the Catholic Health Association of the United States, added, “The President has redefined the debate in a way that we can now bring a conclusion to this process. America needs a reform plan that controls costs and provides basic health care for the people in the country who don’t have it. Most importantly, we fervently agree that doing nothing is not an option.”
The remarks came in a press release made public at 9:00-- three minutes before the conclusion of the president’s address.