Stupak Caves; Get Ready for a Loss

Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak just caved on the "executive order option" so it is now quite likely that the Senate version of the health care reform bill will be passed before we sleep tonight.

With all due respect to the congressman, do you trust this president to keep his promise on the executive order when he has violated so many other promises?

Do you trust the federal courts to respect an executive order even if it is issued, especially since the language of a good executive order on forbidding the public financing of abortions will conflict with the language of the health care reform legislation?

Are you willing to answer to God when a future president issues an executive order canceling this one, if indeed, it comes to pass?

Between "Catholic" lawmakers Stupak and Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, who caved even without an empty promise from President Obama, I am just about ready to vomit. They may represent their districts -- then again, come election time, the voters may have other ideas -- but they do not represent traditional Catholic teaching on the sanctity of life.

For that matter, I have problems with many of the bishops who seem to have forgotten the difference between church and state on this and a few other "social justice" issues. There is no way you can justify support of this takeover of the health care system of the United States, this threat to force people to help their neighbor through the kindly ministrations of the Internal Revenue Service, the actual taking of property from people without their consent, through traditional Catholic teaching.

I realize that most readers aren't all that interested in this particular argument, and that's okay. What's important now will be the next great cause, at election time this year, to empty Congress of each and every House and Senate member who stood for this abomination. We can clean the House, every member of whom is up for election. We can go a long way toward purging the Senate, a third of whom are up for re-election.

Our elected leaders in Congress are violating the compact to heed our will. They are creating huge new taxes and entitlements by misrepresenting us. They deserve to be replaced.

We are losing today. We cannot afford to lose in the primaries and in November. May God strengthen us for the task.

House Committee in Chaos; Emperor is Naked

The House Rules Committee "descended into chaos" today -- as described by Washington Examiner chief political correspondent Byron York -- after committee member Henry Waxman, D-California, said:

"We're not going to 'deem' the bill passed. We're going to pass the Senate bill…I would be against the idea of 'deeming' something -- we either pass it or we don't."

It seems the emperor indeed is stark naked. Whether or not it uses the "Demon Pass" procedure, which is awkward and unconstitutional (a bad combination), the House is approving the Senate version of the health care bill "as is" and it will likely go to President Obama in that fashion.

Maybe, or maybe not, to be amended later. A leap of faith, in other words, for anyone who votes "yes" thinking that the bill will be improved on the Senate side.

The attempt to provide themselves some sort of electoral "deniability" is presenting all sorts of parliamentary problems, and the American people are not fooled.

Not this time.

The Progressives may succeed in passing health care "reform" against the will of the American people, but they will pay a heavy price in November. And undoubtedly there will be so many constitutional challenges that even the socialist minions of the Obama administration may find it difficult to put the new regime into place.

The emperor has not yet swept away the last vestiges of the Republic, despite his "naked" power grab.

ObamaCare Would Kick Middle Class Where it Hurts

Who will suffer the most under ObamaCare?

Once rationing begins to kick in, everyone. But in the short run it looks like those who will be hit the hardest will be those in the middle class. In other words, the people President Obama promised to protect from his tax increases.

Scott Gottlieb, writing at the American Enterprise Institute today, explains:

Health reform will leave many of them newly priced out of a transformed market for health insurance.

The hardest hit won't be those earning more than $250,000 a year--the group that he says needs to "pay their fair share." Rather, it's families whose combined annual income is around $100,000 who could be crushed under this plan.

These folks will be too "rich" to qualify for ObamaCare's subsidies, but probably too poor to easily afford the pricey insurance that the president's plan forces them to buy.

Many of these $100K families will be obliged to buy a policy costing an average of $14,700 for the mid-level, "silver" health plan, according to the Congressional Budget Office's estimates. After income taxes, they'll be spending almost a quarter of their net income for health insurance.

That's what we used to say people would spend for their home. Of course, with the federal government planning its assault on home ownership by encouraging defaults and then "renting" from Uncle Sam, maybe this is where they expect your dollars to go.

Again, let me remind you that the U.S. Constitution does not give the federal government the power to force individual citizens to purchase a product, not even health care!

Why will this health insurance be so expensive? Gottlieb is happy to explain:

First, it limits most consumers to choosing only one of three basic health plans. (These will offer the same basic package of health benefits--the main difference is that the higher-premium plan has lower co-pays, while the lower-premium one has higher co-payments.) And even the cheapest option--the "bronze" plan--will start at about $12,500 for a family, says the CBO.

People buying insurance outside the workplace won't be able to shop around to find cheaper options: ObamaCare effectively outlaws that, because the president wants everyone to have the same package of generous benefits. It's a noble ideal--but it forces people to buy coverage that may be pricier than what they need, want or can afford.

I wonder: if I go to prison for not buying their health care, will I get free medical care there?

Have You Had Your Say Yet?

Will the Republic survive long enough to get us to the 2010 vote?

You have to worry when so many House Democrats are throwing their political lives away in a suicidal pact to give President Obama a victory on his signature issue, despite the fact

... that the American people overwhelmingly oppose the bill;

... that the American people loathe the corruption of bribery and shakedown threats used to coerce "yes" votes;

... that the American people are awake to the parliamentary chicanery of "Demonpass" ("deem and pass") that apparently will be used to give a quick okay to the abominable Senate health care bill.

This weekend could be the difference. If you haven't contacted your local member of congress yet, you can do so by going through the House switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

Cardinal George Fears the Health Care Pig

It's probably too little, too late, but at least Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has publicly scolded the so-called Catholic Health Association for its support of the health care reform bill that is on the verge of becoming the law of the land.

The CHA head, Sister Carol Keehan, issued a letter to lawmakers this week urging them to "quickly" pass the Senate health care reform bill that includes no prohibitions on the direct public funding of abortions.

So much for expecting a nun to uphold Catholic teaching.

Cardinal George says the bishops are puzzled that lawmakers have settled on the onerous Senate bill as the focus of their efforts.

We tried to warn you! You thought you could trust the Congress and the president when you can't even trust the people to whom you entrusted the operation of the nation's Catholic hospitals?

Here's what Cardinal George said on Monday, according to LifeSiteNews:

George pointed out the slew of flaws that the U.S. bishops find "deeply disturbing" in the Senate health bill, including its lack of conscience protections, Hyde-amendment protections against federal abortion funding, and the millions in new funds for Community Health Centers which will be available to fund abortions.

"It expands federal funding and the role of the federal government in the provision of abortion procedures," he explained. "In so doing, it forces all of us to become involved in an act that profoundly violates the conscience of many, the deliberate destruction of unwanted members of the human family still waiting to be born."

The cardinal directly disagreed with the Catholic Health Association's favorable assessment of the bill.

"This analysis of the flaws in the legislation is not completely shared by the leaders of the Catholic Health Association," stated George. "They believe, moreover, that the defects that they do recognize can be corrected after the passage of the final bill. The bishops, however, judge that the flaws are so fundamental that they vitiate the good that the bill intends to promote.

"Assurances that the moral objections to the legislation can be met only after the bill is passed seem a little like asking us, in Midwestern parlance, to buy a pig in a poke."

I know that we are, for the moment at least, one the same side, but I would like for Cardinal George and the other Catholic bishops to consider some other questionable moral aspects of this or any other federal health care legislation.

1. We cannot abrogate our responsibility as individuals or as the Church to provide for the needs of the sick by passing it off to the government. This goes against the clear teaching of Christ.

2. It is immoral to force one's neighbor to pay for one's charitable impulses. The mandates in this legislation, and in the abomination of a government program that will follow, does just that. We use the power of the government, through threats of fines and jail sentences, to force others to do what we think is a good thing. The end does not justify the means, and you'd think the bishops would know this.

3. Socialized medicine has never been successful in any country where it has been attempted. Indeed, government health care's history is that of unmitigated disaster. Knowing this, is it moral to force Americans to follow the same path?

4. The U.S. Constitution does not permit the federal government the authority to force individuals to buy a product, even if it is in their best interest. Health care is a product. Is it moral to support legislation that violates the fundamental legal framework of a country, without amending that framework?

5. Is it moral to give away the authority of the Church to supervise and regulate its own health care ministries to bureaucrats who will not and never will be answerable to religious authority; indeed, will be duty bound to ignore and repudiate any attempts by religious authority to influence the delivery of medical care from those once-noble Catholic medical institutions?

By focusing on the narrow issues of conscience and abortion, the Catholic bishops indicated that they believed health care reform to be a "done deal" and so they merely tried to steer it into a less objectionable path.

If, instead, they had relied on First Principles and opposed federalizing health care as a matter of the greater morality of maintaining the Christian ownership of performing spiritual and corporate works of mercy, then we might not have come to this point.

The Progressives (and closet Marxists) are using "good intentions" to pave the road to a socialist Hell in which our nation will be, as Barack Hussein Obama predicted shortly before his election, "fundamentally transformed."

It has happened in other countries and it has without exception been a very bad thing for Christianity.

The IRS Raids a Car Wash

The Sacramento Bee reports on an IRS raid on a local car wash in an attempt to recover the massive sum of ... four cents.

Actually, that's four cents, plus interest and penalties since 2006 totaling $202.35.

The owner claims he didn't even know he owed the four cents.

Just wait 'til the IRS gets to police the new health insurance mandate. Then we'll see some real fun!

Or had you forgotten about that little detail of ObamaCare?

Bart Stupak Holding Firm Against ObamaCare

What you won't see in your daily newspaper: Quotes from Congressman Bart Stupak, pro-life Democrat from Michigan, detailing how low the Left is aiming in order to pass a health care bill that most Americans do not want.

Stupak says the other eleven are coming under “enormous” political pressure from both the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). “I am a definite ‘no’ vote,” he says. “I didn’t cave. The others are having both of their arms twisted, and we’re all getting pounded by our traditional Democratic supporters, like unions.”

(snip)

“This has really reached an unhealthy stage,” Stupak says. “People are threatening ethics complaints on me. On the left, they’re really stepping it up. Every day, from Rachel Maddow to the Daily Kos, it keeps coming. Does it bother me? Sure. Does it change my position? No.”

Interviewed by National Review Online, Stupak says he can't see switching parties, but it's becoming very difficult to remain a Democrat. He says something very telling:

If Obamacare passes, Stupak says, it could signal the end of any meaningful role for pro-life Democrats within their own party. “It would be very, very hard for someone who is a right-to-life Democrat to run for office,” he says. “I won’t leave the party. I’m more comfortable here and still believe in a role within it for the right-to-life cause, but this bill will make being a pro-life Democrat much more difficult. They don’t even want to debate this issue. We’ll probably have to wait until the Republicans take back the majority to fix this.”

That will happen pretty quickly ObamaCare is rammed through, but it might be 2013 before it could be repealed, once President Obama is ousted.

Congressman Stupak said one of the arguments used to justify the abortion money in the Senate bill is that abortion will help control population. Seriously!

“If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That’s one of the arguments I’ve been hearing,” Stupak says. “Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America? If money is the issue — come on, we can find room in the budget. This is life we’re talking about.”

May God have mercy on the United States of America!

An Open Letter to the Catholic Bishops of the U.S.

I've spent most of a week agonizing over this.

I've prayed about it. I've pondered the variables. I've played "devil's advocate" with myself.

But I believe, finally, God has inspired me to raise my voice, on behalf of my family and all other Americans, whether they are Catholic, Protestant, or of any other persuasion, or none at all.

My message is this:

With or without an amendment protecting the unborn, the health care reform packages that are working through Congress are evil.

They should not be supported by anyone or any organization that values our unalienable, God-bestowed rights of life, liberty or conscience. I would add that I believe this list should include pursuit of happiness and property, but I know that some of you bishops have a hard time going there.

In the U.S.C.C.B. bulletin that went out to Catholics nationwide this month, you said that all the bills before Congress thus far are "seriously deficient on the issues of abortion and conscience, and do not provide adequate access to health care for immigrants and the poor. The bills will have to change or the bishops have pledged to oppose them."

You have asked for us to pressure our representatives and senators to "fix" these bills with pro-life amendments.

You do not go far enough. You are not looking at the Big Picture. You are painting yourselves into a corner, politically, and us with you.

With all due respect to your position as bishops of the Church, I must raise these questions:

Since when is it moral for a government to mandate (force) its citizens to purchase a product (health insurance) or face massive fines and prison sentences?

Show me where, in Catholic social teaching, this is an acceptable means of achieving a desirable end? Where is your precious "freedom of conscience" in this?

Where in Scripture does Jesus tell us that it is our individual responsibility to surrender our free will to the State in order for good deeds to be performed?

And not only our free will to decide for ourselves how charitable we wish to be, but our free will to decide how we will take care of the health needs of our own families, and of ourselves.

Where does Jesus admonish us to accomplish the work of the Church through the coercive dictates of government action, and surrender our future choices forever to a system that will crash our economy?

With all due respect to your teaching offices as bishops, when you are teaching on matters of faith and morals -- salvation and righteous living -- I am bound by faith to accept these teachings. And I do.

But corporately, as you "guide us" through the U.S.C.C.B. you have strayed from the parameters of your teaching office. You are pledging to throw your strong support behind the creation of an unprecedented federal bureaucracy in which the individual choice (free will) of individuals and health professions will be subordinated to the collective "wisdom" of government bureaucrats. You are playing politics.

"The poor you will always have with you ..." Jesus reminds us. But you have potentially traded our God-given freedom away in exchange for a socialist answer to a perennial problem based on a big "if": "If" the government promises not to force taxpayers to pay for abortions.

"If" you trust the Mao-loving denizens of Congress and the executive branch to keep their promise more than a year or so, you are naive.

If the United States has enjoyed one of the highest levels of health care in history, instead of supporting a centralized system that will lead to rationing and income leveling, you should be asking why the system worked in the first place, and then ask how that success could be translated to more people. Instead, you accept the Marxist premise that unequal distribution of income and health care resources is an indictment of the system that can only be remedied by a Marxist solution.

How about instead a Christian solution? Or have you given up on that?

America developed the greatest economy and health care system known to humanity because of its guarantees of individual liberties. People were free to take risks and find new, innovative ways of doing things. America is not perfect, but then no nation can meet that standard.

Under government control, risk-taking is frustrated and regulated. Innovation will go elsewhere. Regulations will bloom like a million flowers in a People's Cultural Revolution, and Christian healers will be shunted to the dark alleys where abortions (allegedly) once were performed.

If you think supporting this kind of system will gain you favor with God, you might want to rethink that. Jesus had little use for government in His ministry, and government hasn't changed much in 2,000 years.

If you think supporting this kind of system will gain you favor with the elites in Washington, D.C., you are seeking the approbation of "the world," and are thus deluding yourselves. The world will never love you if you stand with Christ, and the only way to curry its favor is to stand apart from Him.

That is the path that leads to destruction. You should know this.

There is no compromise with evil, and no compromise with those who have evil motives behind their gleaming smiles.

One of the architects of the current health care reform push is SEIU president Andy Stern, who wants to "equalize" the disparity of wages globally, and he sees health care reform as the tool to begin this process.

Do you really want to throw the weight of the Catholic Church behind this effort?

Please reconsider your position and quickly. Do not consign this and future generations of Americans to state control of their lives out of a well-meant but flawed belief that government can provide to the have nots more efficiently than the Church.

The Prophet Obama Says We Have Sinned

Those of you who have studied the health care reform bills and have spoken out against them have sinned.

So says the Right Rev. Barack Hussein Obama.

"There are some folks out there who are actually bearing false witness," he said Wednesday. He peppered his remarks with the "sins" of his political opponents: "lots of misinformation," "extraordinary lies," "all fabrications."

I'm not sure what President Obama was hoping for when he held a "telephone town hall" with members of mostly the squishy religious left, but he is increasingly sounding like a desperate man.

If "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel," then it is quite possible that "religion is the last refuge of the incompetent politician."

In agreement is Victor Davis Hanson, who reports that there is "something creepy about the sudden invocation of Christian morality by the president to galvanize support for his state-run health care plan, as if his opponents are suddenly to be seen as somehow selfish or even un-Christian. This is an unfortunate, counter-productive tactic ..."

Hanson cites four very level-headed reasons for saying this. I guess my reaction is a bit more visceral, or perhaps less level-headed. As a Christian I am deeply offended when a man who is heavily in the tank for abortion rights and the abortion industry tries to pass himself off as Mr. Morality, and at my expense!

I am deeply offended when the president continues to claim that he has never spoken out in favor of a single-payer (government) health care system when there is video of him, on at least two occasions, saying exactly that! This is called "telling a lie" and it is covered by the commandment against false witness, in case Mr. Obama doesn't know this.

I am deeply offended when the president continues to tell the American people that "if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan," when according to FactCheck.org (and others) this simply cannot be true.

In fact, there is so much the president said in his 40-minute program that there is no possible way I can express the depth of my revulsion at a president who is obviously co-opting Christian terminology and symbolism to cynically push his political agenda. It is an agenda that has little to do with compassion or health care but much to do with expanding government power into the private lives of every American.

Jesus did not once say, "Render unto Caesar so that he can provide health care for the unfortunate."

He did speak of an individual Christian's responsibilities: "For as often as you did this for one of the least of my brothers, you did it for me."

I will be judged by the Almighty for what I have done or failed to do in my individual choices, with my time, talent and treasure. I will get no brownie points for coercing my fellow citizens to do good works by raising their taxes or supporting new laws that would force them to bow down before an almighty government.

The Church may well insist on a preferential option for the poor as a policy for church activism. Our Republic has no such constitutional provision, and should it be given one it will no longer be a Republic.

That, in my view, is the essential creepiness of this latest Obama tactic.

Your Bank Account Info & Uncle Sam

If letting one of Uncle Sam's bureaucrats sit between you and your doctor doesn't bother you, there are other provisions of health care reform legislation that might not settle on your tummy.

Turning Uncle Sam Into Peeping Tom

Buried in the 1,017 pages of the House Democrats’ health-care bill is a little-noticed provision that for the first time could give the government access to the checking or credit-card information of every American. Under section 163, which is entitled “Administrative Simplification,” the bill sets new “standards” for electronic transactions between individuals and their health-care providers.

According to section 163, the standards will “enable the real-time (or near real-time) determination of an individual’s financial responsibility at the point of service . . . ” In addition, they will “enable electronic funds transfers, in order to allow automated reconciliation with related health care payment and remittance advice.”

What is envisioned is a “machine-readable health plan beneficiary card” that, in addition to information about a person’s medical history, will contain checking-account or credit-card information, so as to allow electronic payments and, if a person is lucky, occasional remittances. Since under the proposed legislation everyone would be required to have health insurance, all Americans would have to provide this information.

The required collection of such data is unprecedented. At no other time has the government sought to collect this type of financial information from everyone in America.

[SNIP]

The idea of wholesale collection of checking-account information by Uncle Sam raises many questions. Who would see it? How would people be protected from theft of their account numbers? Fundamentally, who would control this sensitive information?

The writer mentions how several federal employees have already pleaded guilty to spying on passport information, among other things.

My question, simply put, is where in the U.S. Constitution does it empower the federal government to require (mandate) and keep this kind of information on citizens?

You already know the answer. It doesn't.

Another damn good reason to stop the health care reform process.

Nat Hentoff Declares Against Obamacare

Nat Hentoff, often described as a libertarian liberal, has a column in the Jewish World Review entitled

I Am Finally Scared of a White House Administration

I was not intimidated during J. Edgar Hoover's FBI hunt for reporters like me who criticized him. I railed against the Bush-Cheney war on the Bill of Rights without blinking. But now I am finally scared of a White House administration. President Obama's desired health care reform intends that a federal board (similar to the British model) — as in the Center for Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation in a current Democratic bill — decides whether your quality of life, regardless of your political party, merits government-controlled funds to keep you alive. Watch for that life-decider in the final bill. It's already in the stimulus bill signed into law.

Hentoff goes into detail on how Obamacare will call for "end of life" consultations under rules written by board members who will not actually be faced with looking at patients face-to-face.

No matter what Congress does when it returns from its recess, rationing is a basic part of Obama's eventual master health care plan. Here is what Obama said in an April 28 New York Times interview (quoted in Washington Times July 9 editorial) in which he describes a government end-of-life services guide for the citizenry as we get to a certain age, or are in a certain grave condition. Our government will undertake, he says, a "very difficult democratic conversation" about how "the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care" costs.

While the Senate version has dropped the "end of life consultation" from its provisions, the three House bills all contain it. There is no guarantee that the final version, or later revisions, will not put it back in.

Hentoff quotes researcher Wesley Smith on the dangers of Obamacare:

As more Americans became increasingly troubled by this and other fearful elements of Dr. Obama's cost-efficient health care regimen, Smith adds this vital advice, no matter what legislation Obama finally signs into law:

"Remember that legislation itself is only half the problem with Obamacare. Whatever bill passes, hundreds of bureaucrats in the federal agencies will have years to promulgate scores of regulations to govern the details of the law.

"This is where the real mischief could be done because most regulatory actions are effectuated beneath the public radar. ..."

Hentoff concludes with this:

Condemning the furor at town-hall meetings around the country as "un-American," Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are blind to truly participatory democracy — as many individual Americans believe they are fighting, quite literally, for their lives.

Well said.

The President's Great Post Office Prescription

Caroline Baum has a great column today at Bloomberg.com, discussing President Obama's apparent inability to talk off teleprompter and still connect with logic.

There are a couple of sections that are priceless. We'll quote one:

The proliferation of Obama’s gaffes and non sequiturs on health care has exceeded the allowable limit. He has failed repeatedly to explain how the government will provide more (health care) for less (money). He has failed to explain why increased demand for medical services without a concomitant increase in supply won’t lead to rationing by government bureaucrats as opposed to the market. And he has failed to explain why a Medicare-like model is desirable when Medicare itself is going broke.

The public is left with one of two unsettling conclusions: Either the president doesn’t understand the health-insurance reform plans working their way through Congress, or he understands both the plans and the implications and is being untruthful about the impact.

Neither option is good; ignorance is clearly preferable to the alternative.

She also has a good take on Obama's citing of the U.S. Postal Service as an example of a "public option" co-existing with private enterprise. Strange tactic, she says:

The only way the post office can stay in business is its government subsidy. The USPS lost $2.4 billion in the quarter ended in June and projects a net loss of $7 billion in fiscal 2009, outstanding debt of more than $10 billion and a cash shortfall of $1 billion. It was moved to intensive care -- the Government Accountability Office’s list of “high risk” cases - - last month and told to shape up. (It must be the only entity that hasn’t cashed in on TARP!)

That didn’t stop President Barack Obama from holding up the post office as an example at a town hall meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, last week.

When Obama compared the post office to UPS and FedEx, he was clearly hoping to assuage voter concerns about a public health-care option undercutting and eliminating private insurance.

What he did instead was conjure up visions of long lines and interminable waits. Why do we need or want a health-care system that works like the post office?

No.

Maybe Not the Best Example, Mr. President

You have to see the Youtube clip to have the appropriate appreciation for this major gaffe on the part of President Obama. Speaking at his very "managed" town hall in Portsmouth, N.H., the president answered a question thusly:

"I recognize," the president said, "that you have a legitimate concern. How can a private company compete against the government?"

"If you think about it," he continued, "UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. Right?"

"It's the Post Office that's always having problems."

That doesn't exactly inspires one's confidence in government-run health care.

Health Choice Freedoms You Will Lose

John Hood reports today from NRO's "Critical Condition" blog that Shawn Tully, editor at large of Fortune magazine, has identified five basic freedoms related to health care that Americans will lose if the prevailing versions of ObamaCare eventually become law.

1. Freedom to choose what's in your plan

2. Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs

3. Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage

4. Freedom to keep your existing plan

5. Freedom to choose your doctors

The blunt conclusion, Tully reports, is that employer-provided health insurance will probably disappear much more rapidly than the five-year "grace period" being discussed because paying an 8 percent payroll tax and enroling your employees on the "public option" will be cheaper than continuing to subsidize premiums for private insurance. Especially when the government begins increasing the cost of private insurance through regulatory requirements!

... it will happen, since it's likely that the tax will rise a lot more slowly than corporate health-care costs, especially since they'll be lobbying Washington to keep the tax under control in the righteous name of job creation.

So when the president tells you that "if you like your plan, you can keep it" or "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor," he knows full well that this will be true only in the very short run.

In the long run, if your employer likes your plan, you may get to keep it, but maybe not, and there won't be a damn thing you can do about it.

The Inconvenient Details of Obamacare

Defenders of ObamaCare are quick to point out that the bill doesn't specifically call for taxpayer funding of abortions or euthanasia of the elderly and inform.

And that is true. Only an idiot would spell it out in legislation he wants to get passed.

They conveniently ignore the fact that there have been five or six, I lost count, attempts in committee to ban the use of taxpayer dollars for abortions in the health care reform package, and all were voted down.

They also want to avoid discussion of the concept of rationing which IS mentioned in the bill and is the inevitable consequence of government-run anything.

If you are the least bit interested in what is in the bill, I highly recommend this list of interesting and heart-warming provisions of the health care proposals being floated in Congress. Here's a small sample of several dozen fascinating bullet points:

* Sec. 113, Pg. 21-22 of the Health Care (HC) Bill MANDATES a government audit of the books of ALL EMPLOYERS that self-insure in order to “ensure that the law does not provide incentives for small and mid-size employers to self-insure”!

* Sec. 122, Pg. 29, Lines 4-16 - YOUR HEALTH CARE WILL BE RATIONED!

* Sec. 152, Pg. 50-51 - HC will be provided to ALL NON-US citizens.

(That last one a fabulous reward for dodging immigration authorities and not going through the proper channels!)

* Sec. 163, Pg. 58-59 beginning at line 5 - Government will have real-time access to individual’s finances & a National ID health care card will be issued!

* Sec. 163, Pg. 59, Lines 21-24 - Government will have direct access to your bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.

* Sec. 431, Pg. 195, Lines 1-3 - Officers and employees of HC Administration (government) will have access to ALL Americans’ financial and personal records.

* Sec. 441, Pg. 203, Lines 14-15 - “The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax.” Yes, it says that.

* Sec. 3121, Pg. 935, Lines 1-2 - The government will develop “Healthy People & National Public Health Performance Standards.” They will tell us what to eat?

There is so much more wonderful stuff in this, including an entire section dealing with "end of life" issues. Plus, people in SEIU and ACORN will have subsidized medical plans for their work promoting the new health care plan and signing people up. After all, they will "inform and educate" the rest of us as to our rights and responsibilities.

I can hardly wait.

When Government Becomes God

North Carolina state law requires certain medical insurances to cover such things as contraception, sterilization and abortions. But it has an exemption for religious institutions.

However, the federal government wants to eliminate that exemption.

A Catholic college in Belmont, N.C., once more is afoul of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) which has rules that Belmont Abbey College's decision to remove contraception from its faculty health care policy, in accordance with Catholic teaching, discriminated against women.

So do you obey your religious beliefs, or the federal government?

The capriciousness of putting politics into health care is at work in this case. The EEOC had already given the "all clear" to Belmont in March. Apparently someone at EEOC remembered that the new messiah lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., and the decision was reversed.

College president Dr. William Thierfelder writes:

“The teaching of the Catholic Church on this moral issue is clear. The responsibility of the College as a Catholic College sponsored by the monks of Belmont Abbey to follow Church teaching is equally clear. There was no other course of action possible if we were to operate in fidelity to our mission and to our identity as a Catholic College.”

Who knows how this one will shake out. But you can bet that if the government annexes health care into its bosom, there will be many more such stories and tough decisions to be made.

Who Teaches Us How to Parent?

Who teaches young adults how to be parents?

The traditional answer: Their parents.

The modern answer: The government.

Chuck Norris -- yeah, that Chuck Norris, but don't dismiss him too quickly (you wouldn't be so quick to dismiss George Clooney, wouldja?) -- has a column at Townhall.com which details one of the many "dirty little secrets" of the health care reform package considered by Congress.

Norris said he did so after seeing how much anger is bubbling up over Congress' failure to discuss the details with the American people. "... I decided to research the reasons so many are opposed to Obamacare to separate the facts from the fantasy. What I discovered is that there are indeed dirty little secrets buried deep within the 1,000-plus page health care bill."

Dirty secret No. 1 in Obamacare is about the government's coming into homes and usurping parental rights over child care and development.

It's outlined in sections 440 and 1904 of the House bill (Page 838), under the heading "home visitation programs for families with young children and families expecting children." The programs (provided via grants to states) would educate parents on child behavior and parenting skills.

The bill says that the government agents, "well-trained and competent staff," would "provide parents with knowledge of age-appropriate child development in cognitive, language, social, emotional, and motor domains ... modeling, consulting, and coaching on parenting practices," and "skills to interact with their child to enhance age-appropriate development."

As Norris says, "Are you kidding me?"

I don't know about you, fellow citizens, but I don't remember ever voting on anything that says "government controls your life from here on out." Apparently Mr. Norris agrees with me because he goes into some detail:

... whose parental principles and values? Their own? Certain experts'? From what field and theory of childhood development? As if there are one-size-fits-all parenting techniques! Do we really believe they would contextualize and personalize every form of parenting in their education, or would they merely universally indoctrinate with their own?

Are we to assume the state's mediators would understand every parent's social or religious core values on parenting? Or would they teach some secular-progressive and religiously neutered version of parental values and wisdom? And if they were to consult and coach those who expect babies, would they ever decide circumstances to be not beneficial for the children and encourage abortions?

One government rebuttal is that this program would be "voluntary." Is that right? Does that imply that this agency would just sit back passively until some parent needing parenting skills said, "I don't think I'll call my parents, priest or friends or read a plethora of books, but I'll go down to the local government offices"? To the contrary, the bill points to specific targeted groups and problems, on Page 840: The state "shall identify and prioritize serving communities that are in high need of such services, especially communities with a high proportion of low-income families."

Are we further to conclude by those words that low-income families know less about parenting?

Good questions, all.

Children belong to their parents, not the government. And the parents ought to have the right -- and government support -- to parent them without the fed's mandates, education or intervention in our homes.

I'll go Chuck one better. I don't even want the federal government's "support" of parenting. According to the U.S. Constitution, the federal government has no role -- zero, zilch, nada -- when it comes to telling or advising anyone how to raise their brood.

We've gone so far down the road of interventionism that we have forgotten where the original boundary lines were drawn. It's time to peel back the pavement and the paint and find those boundaries again.

Some will say, "Tom, it's a small piece of a big picture, a voluntary program that isn't going to go anywhere." And I will reply, "Since when has the government ever backed away from exercising authority it has usurped? It will take a small hole and enlarge it. It is like an octopus, a spineless entity that can squeeze itself through very tiny openings to gorge itself on forbidden fish."

The tentacles are everywhere.

Health Care Bill Promises Us a Nightmare

For the last several days I've been reviewing HR 3200, the House version of the health care bill that will likely become the framework for whatever emerges from Congress next month.

I know when you say the words "health care reform" people's eyes glaze over. With good reason. The details are eye-glazing stuff.

I was sent a lengthy list of some of its provisions by people who have actually read the whole thing. No small task. It requires you to thumb back and forth through the various sections and, if you are not a health care professional AND an attorney, it's difficult reading. I've had to do quite a bit of research just to understand some of the terms employed. It's an ugly read, but an important one.

After extensive reading, I have come to several conclusions, some of which I will share here. Others I will post shortly.

For anyone who believes that personal liberty trumps the needs of the collective, HR 3200 is a nightmare knocking at the door. It's Edgar Allen Poe answering the call of the "raven."

Or maybe that's not the right analogy. Maybe it's like Frankenstein's Monster, breaking his chains and rampaging out of the laboratory, ready to terrify the surrounding populace.

That's not quite right either. It has elements of Bram Stoker's Dracula, in that an ancient evil -- Marxism -- has invited itself over to a new country, the formerly freedom-loving United States, to suck the life-blood out of our economy and our people.

Health care reform as it is coming, unless we rise up and demand that our elected officials stop it, has elements of all of these things, and more.

It literally is a matter of life and death. HR 3200 hands over that power to the State.

When health care is run by the state, you have no other recourse than to rely on the state to determine who gets health care and who does not. In other words, who lives, and who dies. Who suffers and who is treated.

And there is no higher authority to whom you can appeal. The federal government cannot be sued for decisions made in the normal exercise of its authority.

You will still be able to sue your physician, or dentist, or the guy who administers your anesthesia. The trial lawyers, at least in the short term, have no need to fear HR 3200.

But, you will not be able to sue the "administrator" who determines that your prescribed medical treatment cannot be allowed because you are no longer a net benefit to society, and therefore not worth the cost to society of giving it to you. He is, after all, only helping you understand the regulations.

Whether you are allowed to stay on your private insurance plan or not, health care will be tightly regulated by the government. Unless you are remarkably healthy, there will be moments in your life in which your well being will be determined by "administrators" and "bureaucrats" who will be interpreting mounds of rules and regulations, which will change constantly as is the norm with all bureaucracies.

It is not clear to me whether you will have the right to spend your own money on health care not covered by "the system." I suspect that if a loophole does exist, it will be closed.

Whether or not you like horror movies, I guarantee you that you will not like Government Health Care and Government Health Insurance, which are one and the same thing.

You will mourn your loss of freedom. You will struggle under the increase in taxes and fees.

You will be angry as our economy collapses into a permanent state of depression, with the government emerging as the main player in regulating jobs and professions.

And there will be almost nothing, at that point, that you can do about it.

I challenge you to do your own research. Read the bill. Listen to what the defenders of health care reform are saying, but verify if they are telling the truth. Listen to the opponents of health care reform, but verify.

I think your eyes will be opened.

It is not yet too late.

The State Alternative to Life Saving Medical Care ,,,

Barbara Wagner is covered under the state-run health care plan in Oregon, established 1994.

Last year her lung cancer returned. A treatment was available.

So was an alternative.

Looking at the difference between spending $300,000 on saving her life, or their alternative plan, the officials of Oregon's medical system told Barbara that only the alternative was available to her.

It would cost the state $100.

It is called "Assisted Suicide."

Physicians for Reform -- but who advocate patient-centered health care -- document her story on their web site.

Oregon state officials controlled the process of healthcare decision-making—not Barbara and her physician. Chemotherapy would cost the state $4,000 every month she remained alive; the drugs for physician-assisted suicide held a one-time expense of less than $100. Barbara’s treatment plan boiled down to accounting. To cover chemotherapy state policy demanded a five percent patient survival rate at five years. As a new drug, Tarceva did not meet this dispassionate criterion. To Oregon, Barbara was no longer a patient; she had become a "negative economic unit."

A negative economic unit. Worth too little to save.

That's the same kind of happy talk you hear around the edges of those who are pushing federal health care reform. People like Ezekial Emmanuel, Rahm's doctor brother, have talked and written openly of the need to quit saving people who are too damaged, too old, suffering from dementia, because they are a drain on society's resources.

This is not the America I grew up loving, and I hope it is not the America in which I die.

You may be young and healthy now, but what happens if you have that tragic car accident that leaves you in "negative economic" status?

Read, learn and contemplate your fate.

Those Pesky ObamaCare Details

From HHS Director Kathleen Sebelius in today's Washington Post:

President Obama and I are working closely with Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate and health-care experts to make sure we get the details of health reform right. But we can't let the details distract us from the huge benefits that reform will bring.

No, those pesky details merely distract people from all the marvelous benefits. Like taxpayer funded abortions for all!

... the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the pro-abortion side narrowly won adoption of a "phony compromise" amendment offered by Rep. Lois Capps (D-Ca.) (who has a zero percent career pro-life voting record) that would result in elective abortions being covered under the government-operated "public plan" the bill would create, and would allow federal subsidies to flow to private insurance plans that cover elective abortions. The pro-abortion members of the committee voted down an NRLC-backed amendment offered by Reps. Bart Stupak (D-Mi.) and Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) to prohibit federal subsidies from going to plans that cover elective abortions.

The Senate version isn't any better, we are told.

How dare we question whether they've read the bill!