ACT NOW TO STOP OBAMA HEALTH CARE REFORM LEGISLATION

The Catholic Church has long recognized the need for reform of America’s health care system. For decades, the Church has advocated the principle that all people should have access to quality health care, and has placed a special emphasis on the plight of the poor in this regard.

President Obama and his allies in Congress are promoting legislation that would dramatically overhaul America’s health care system. There are actually multiple versions of health care reform legislation under consideration, each of which is enormously long and complicated. What is clear, however, is that the primary bill in the House of Representatives contains unacceptable language giving the Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius the power to make unlimited abortion a mandated benefit in the “public option” – the public health insurance plan the government would manage nationwide.

The House bill fundamentally alters the status quo whereby no federal program mandates coverage for elective abortions, or subsidizes health plans that include such abortions. Under the House bill, anyone choosing the public option, which will likely include low-income Americans, will be forced to pay directly and specifically for abortion coverage in the government plan.

Thus becomes clear the danger of expanding federal government control over health care, when the federal government is so hostile to our values with respect to life.


It is imperative that all Catholics contact their U.S. Representatives and U.S. Senators to inform them that taxpayer funding of abortion is completely and utterly unacceptable. By including these or any other pro-abortion provisions in the final bill, Congress will demonstrate that it is not interested in genuine health care reform.

It is also important that members of Congress understand that health care reform legislation should not be paid for at the expense of those near the end of life. It is often those, whether elderly or terminally ill, with the highest costs of care who are also most vulnerable to false notions of being a burden to loved ones and society. Upon returning to work in September, Congress should act swiftly to ensure that all Americans can feel confident that health care reform is in the service of preserving life, not ending it.

Members of Congress are still home now for the August congressional recess, listening very carefully to the views of their constituents in order to gauge what the voters will be willing to support. Now is the time to be heard. Catholics should make their views known respectfully, but firmly.

Time is running out! If you haven't yet contacted your congressmen about healthcare reform, please do so immediately.

Tell your government servants to vote "No" on the health care reform bill and inform them that unless they vote no on this, you will not be voting for them in the next election.

http://www.congressmerge.com/onlinedb/index.htm

Health Care Reform: Rep. Michele Bachmann vs. Uninformed

Hot Air - Video

H/T Maritime Sentry

The Cure that Kills the Patient

...I agree that is should be us taking care of our brothers and we shouldn’t need the Government to do it for us. Unfortunately we live in a fallen world and we are not doing it, so the idea of socialized healthcare intrigues me.

My response: I don’t see how noting that we live in a fallen world is an argument for socialized healthcare. The government is part of that fallen world too, so if it’s the fallen world that is to blame for us not taking care of others, how will the government do any better? That’s like saying, “hey, you’re kinda sketchy behind the wheel, so I’m gonna let my 105 year old grandma with cataracts drive the bus...”

Read the rest here

Obama's Health Rationer-in-Chief

The following is an article by Betsey McCaughey for the Wall Street Journal.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health adviser to President Barack Obama, is under scrutiny. As a bioethicist, he has written extensively about who should get medical care, who should decide, and whose life is worth saving. Dr. Emanuel is part of a school of thought that redefines a physician’s duty, insisting that it includes working for the greater good of society instead of focusing only on a patient’s needs. Many physicians find that view dangerous, and most Americans are likely to agree...

Read the rest here

Socialized docs in UK give up on baby - mother love saves the day

What a wonderful/disturbing story!

Doctors in the United Kingdom took one look at this little baby and gave up on her! They didn't even offer her basic palliative care. But her mom started to hold her while she thought she was dying, and surprise!! the baby responded and started to thrive.

The doctor just took one look at her and said no," said Miss Isbister.

"They didn't even try to help her with her breathing as they said it would just prolong her dying. Everyone just gave up on her."

Ian Laing, a consultant neonatologist at the hospital, said: "All the signs were that the little one was not going to make it and we took the decision to let mum have a cuddle as it was all we could do.

"Two hours later the wee thing was crying. This is indeed a miracle baby and I have seen nothing like it in my 27 years of practice. I have not the slightest doubt that mother's love saved her daughter."

Rachael was moved on to a ventilator where she continued to make steady progress.

Miss Isbister said: "The doctors said that she had proved she was a fighter and that she now deserved some intensive care as there was some hope.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-500430/Doctors-gave-20oz-baby-dead---I-saved-life-cuddle.html#ixzz0PaaS2fGv

Well so much for the oath to do no harm. We'll all have to prove we'll be "fighters" to deserve care? Welcome to socialized medicine!

A Priest's Response to the Religious Left's "40 Days for Health Reform"

Father Robert Sirico, President of the Acton Institute, has an excellent article on his blog, in which he responds to the Religious Left's “40 Days for Health Reform,” a massive effort to muster support during the congressional summer recess for the Obama administration’s nationalization of America’s healthcare system.

Here is an excerpt:

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has argued that healthcare is a human right that should be available to all. “The Bishops’ Conference believes healthcare reform should be truly universal and it should be genuinely affordable,” wrote Bishop William F. Murphy, the chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, in a July 17 letter to Congress. Now, Catholics can agree or disagree with the bishops’ advocacy for universal healthcare—that’s a question of prudence not dogma. Tellingly, Bishop Murphy’s letter did not cite Scripture, the catechism, or any papal encyclical. It was argued from a basis in policy and motivated by the bishop’s honest desire for improvement in a system where one in six patients in the United States is cared for in Catholic hospitals.

But note also what the Catholic bishops did. They issued a clear and forceful call for a reformed health policy that “protects and respects the life and dignity of all people from conception until natural death.” That non-negotiable insistence on the respect for life is, by and large, missing from the Religious Left’s campaign. What we get instead are bland assurances, parroted from White House and congressional talking point memos, that “life and dignity” would be forever safe under ObamaCare. I am not persuaded.

What else is missing from the Religious Left’s campaign? Plenty.

There is no acknowledgement that expanding federal spending by $1 trillion or more to reengineer the American healthcare system, and further burdening future generations with groaning debt loads, might be a bad thing. Or would the Religious Left simply have the government declare a Jubilee and disavow these debts when they become totally unmanageable? Is this too somewhere in Leviticus or perhaps Deuteronomy?

There is little or no recognition that other key institutions—the family, the Church, local civic associations—might also have a role to play in shaping reform. Certainly, no recognition for those civic and social groups that have a healthy distrust of an invasive state. Instead, we get the constant demand from the Religious Left that Washington must act. It is a sort of idolatry—the worship of Big Government as the solution to all of our problems.

There is a near total blindness to the fact that nationalized health systems in other countries are deeply troubled, even deadly. Horror stories about these systems are plentiful in the mainstream media. What about the common good? A 2002 report by the Adam Smith Institute noted the following about Britain’s state-run healthcare monopoly:

The NHS has a severe shortage of capacity, directly costing the lives of tens of thousands of patients a year. We have fewer doctors per head of population than any European country apart from Albania. We import nurses and doctors from the world’s poorest countries, and export sick people to some of the richest. More than one million people—one in sixty of the population—are waiting for treatment.

I strongly recommend that you read the entire article.

ObamaCare out of touch with U.S. physicians

A new poll finds that despite the American Medical Association's support for President Obama's healthcare plan, most specialty doctors strongly oppose the plan.

The American Society of Medical Doctors has released a poll of physicians that finds 86 percent of specialty doctors believe that the American Medical Association has become too political and has lost touch with the doctors it represents.

The American Medical Association, or AMA, which gave Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy its highest award for public service earlier this year, has endorsed President Obama's government-run healthcare plan. Seventy percent of the specialty doctors surveyed in the poll said they oppose current congressional and White House proposals for healthcare reform.

Jean Card, a spokeswoman for the American Society of Medical Doctors, says the polling shows that many doctors fear President Obama's healthcare plan threatens their ability to honor the Hippocratic Oath.

Click here to read more.