Obamacare
Mandatory Socialized Medicine

Note:  You might want to start at the Obamacare Index Page, especially if you arrived here by using a search engine.

Obamacare is being developed by leftist politicians who do not value human life as much as they crave political power.  Socialized medicine comes at a very high price for some people.

Subsections:

Rationing and "End of Life" issues.

Taxpayer-funded abortions.




Rationing and "End of Life" issues

Will Obamacare result in the creation of "death panels" to decide who's too old and sick to keep alive?  Rationed health care will inevitably mean that corners must be cut.  Look out, grandma!

ObamaCare Board Ought to Walk the Plank.  One of the linchpins of ObamaCare looks more and more as if it's coming loose.  The ObamaCare monstrosity (officially misnamed the Affordable Care Act) is already heading for a "train wreck," and a large majority of senators are on record for repealing one of its most hideous taxes.  But that medical device tax, important as it is, is a minor sideshow in comparison to something called the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), which is a central element of ObamaCare's (supposed) cost-control scheme.

Republicans refuse appointments to Obamacare rationing board.  The IPAB is the signature health care cost-control device of Obamacare.  If Medicare spending grows faster than specific targets set by the law, IPAB is empowered to reduce payments to health care providers or eliminate coverage for specific treatments and procedures entirely.  Congress would need a three-fifths majority to overturn IPAB's cost-control measures.  The members of the IPAB are all appointed by the President and subject to Senate confirmation.

Scared of Obamacare's IPAB? Meet the USPSTF!  Another nasty ingredient in the alphabet soup of Obamacare is the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF).  This is "an independent group of national experts in prevention and evidence-based medicine."  Formerly a sleepy quasi-governmental body charged with making recommendations about public health screening, under Obamacare the USPSTF will determine whether your doctor will be able to diagnose you with diseases.

President Obama has set in motion forces that he can't handle.  [Scroll down]  Obamacare may help to reduce healthcare costs, but when evidence mounts that those "death panels" that we have heard so much about are real and that we are saving money by medicating patients and allowing them to pass away peacefully rather than treating their maladies, people will be hopping mad.  Many of them will take to the streets to vent their anger.  If you think that it can't happen here, you haven't been paying attention.

Adolf Hitler — Progressive Pioneer.  [Scroll down]  The Nazis were also quite open about the need to ration healthcare when it came to what they called 'useless mouths', This included the mentally ill, the disabled and handicapped, and in many cases people whom were simply terminally ill.  Almost 300,000 people — that we know about — were killed by lethal injection in this way, not in concentration camps but in German medical facilities.  Horrific as this may seem to some, this bears remembering when we look at the conversations about healthcare in our own time and examine the views of some of President Obama's healthcare appointees.

Krugman: 'Death Panels and Sales Taxes is How We Do This'.  Years of accumulating debt and expanding government programs only moves us down the "road to serfdom."  As Krugman surmised, the consequence is government confiscation of wealth and government control over health care.  Rarely are Leftists so candid in articulating their hopes.

The Logic of the Progressive Healthcare Death Cult.  Whether ObamaCare's Independent Payment Advisory Board should correctly be described as a "death panel" or a "cost-reduction system" is actually a stale semantics debate, given that when they are not acting outraged, leftists explain their real intentions quite clearly.  Cutting to the chase, the proper question to ask is, "Why are progressives willing to condemn the old and infirm to death?"

This can happen here:
 Half of those on Liverpool Care Pathway never told.  Almost half of dying patients placed on the controversial Liverpool Care Pathway are never told that life-saving treatment has been withdrawn, a national audit has found.  The study suggests that in total, around 57,000 patients a year are dying in NHS hospitals without being told that efforts to keep them alive have been stopped.

Or this:
 Top Japanese Official Urges Elderly to 'Hurry Up and Die'.  Taro Aso has never been one to hold his tongue.  But Japan's 72 year-old deputy prime minister may have outdone himself with his latest gaffe.  At a government panel to discuss social security reforms, the former prime minister called the elderly who are unable to feed themselves "tube people," then proceeded to say the elderly should be allowed to "hurry up and die" to reduce the burden on a country tasked to pay for their medical expenses.

From Healthcare to Holocaust.  [Scroll down]  Of course, such sacrifices are often couched in the language of compassion.  Hitler called his euthanasia program "mercy killing."  In 2012 Great Britain, it's called the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP).  Originally created to help cancer sufferers during their last days, the LCP, which withholds lifesaving care from heavily sedated patients, has been expanded well beyond its inventors' intentions.  According to British neurologist Dr. Patrick Pullicino, today 130,000 National Health Service (NHS) patients, many of whom are far from death, are shown to an early grave each year via the LCP; 29 percent of all deaths under NHS care can be attributed to euthanasia.  Likewise, the Netherlands, with its ObamaCare-style short-term care and Bismarck-style long-term care systems, has some of the most liberal abortion and euthanasia laws on the planet, including one allowing physicians to euthanize "suffering" infants with their parents' consent.

This Is Your Life under Obamacare.  [Scroll down]  Yes, supposedly to save costs, a panel of bureaucrats will decide, for example, that a 60-year-old cancer patient will not get chemotherapy.  It's too costly, and younger patients need it.  Elderly, go home and take a pill.  If you believe the Independent Payment Advisory Board's cost-cutting measures won't ration medical care, which will involve life and death decisions at the end of the bureaucratic process, you still believe in the tooth fairy.

Obamacare's IPAB: When Government Takes Over Health Care, You Become A Budget Item.  As a physician, I would like to make you aware of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB, a key element of the administration's federal takeover of medicine.  IPAB is a board consisting of 15 unelected, appointed bureaucrats whose task it is to cut the growth of Medicare spending, and the cuts they are mandated to make will be deep.  The decisions IPAB makes behind closed doors can only be overturned by a supermajority of Congress, something almost impossible to achieve.

In Britain's Liverpool Pathway We Get A Preview Of Obmacare [sic] And Hell.  It is well known that about 30% of medical expenditures occur in the last year of life.  I view this a tautological dodge because you usually don't need a lot of medical care until you are near death and as no one knows which is the last year of their life it is a pretty useless metric... unless you can designate with certainty the last year of a patient's life and then set out to minimize costs during that period.

More about the British version of socialized medicine.

Care? No, this is a pathway to killing people that doctors deem worthless.  It sounds like a well-worked-out schedule for providing the best possible approach to treating a patient.  Accordingly, when relatives have been asked to sign up to the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), that's precisely what they thought they were agreeing to.  And, in theory, that's what it is supposed to be. [...] In practice, however, the LCP has turned into something quite different.  For while in some cases it has been used properly as intended, with numerous others it has become, instead, a backdoor form of euthanasia.

Obamacare Could Cost 35,000 Elderly Patients Their Lives Every Year.  In recent remarks to the AIM conference, "ObamaNation: A Day of Truth," Betsy McCaughey said that the regulations and cuts in Barack Obama's healthcare law could lead to the deaths of 35,000 hospital patients who otherwise might have recovered, had they received the care available at a higher spending institution.  McCaughey, the former Lt. Governor of New York and an expert on the new healthcare law, cited the drastic cuts to Medicare in detailing how seniors will suffer under the provisions of the law.

Obstacles for Obama's health panel.  President Obama's plan to control Medicare spending — an expert board of cost-cutters — might have trouble even coming into existence.

Obama adviser admits: 'We need death panels'.  A top Democrat strategist and donor who served as President Obama's lead auto-industry adviser recently conceded that the rationing of heath services under Obamacare is "inevitable."  Steven Rattner advocated that such rationing should target elderly patients, while stating, "We need death panels."  Rattner serves on the board the New America Foundation, or NAF, a George Soros-funded think tank that was instrumental in supporting Obamacare in 2010.  Soros' son, financier Jonathan Soros, is also a member of the foundation's board.

Bailing Out Obamacare: Sarah Palin Was Right.  I missed this piece from Steven Rattner (who was a key figure in the Obama auto bailout) when it appeared in the NY Times a couple weeks ago.  Tacitly acknowledging that costs are going to soar out of sight, Rattner opens with this frank admission:  "We need death panels."

Steven Rattner: 'We Need Death Panels'.  For those who want the short answer to the question in this post's title, the answer is almost definitely "no."  But in a New York Times op-ed piece in mid-September, former Obama "car czar" Steven Rattner effectively said that the so-called "fact-check" site known as PolitiFact should make amends to former Alaska Governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

More Obamacare Fiction.  What good is a Medicare card if you can't find a doctor?  That is precisely the problem that patients on Medicaid — the program for lower-income Americans — face today, forcing them to go to hospital emergency rooms for even routine care.  Do seniors want that?  And they certainly don't want the Independent Payment Advisory Board, the unelected, unaccountable board of 15 bureaucrats charged with keeping Medicare spending down.  The main tool the IPAB will have is an ax to cut Medicare payments even further, which will reduce access to care even more.

The return of the death panels.  Obamacare defenders scoff at the idea that the IPAB's decisions would have fatal consequences for seniors, but the panel has been given an extraordinary and perhaps unconstitutional degree of power.  Its proposals automatically become law unless Congress counters it with another plan.  Overriding the IPAB requires a three-fifths supermajority in the Senate.  The Obamacare law dictates that Congress may not even propose doing away with the IPAB until 2017 and may not actually get rid of it until 2020.  This dubious provision undercuts the argument that the IPAB is a harmless advocate for government efficiency.

Rationing Begins: States Limiting Drug Prescriptions for Medicaid Patients.  Sixteen states have set a limit on the number of prescription drugs they will cover for Medicaid patients, according to Kaiser Health News.  Seven of those states, according to Kaiser Health News, have enacted or tightened those limits in just the last two years.

Inside IPAB: Obama's Bureaucratic Rationing Board.  Until the passage of President Obama's health care law, Congress was the only entity allowed to change what Medicare paid physicians and other health care providers for treating Medicare patients.  Now, unless the Supreme Court strikes down ObamaCare in its entirety in June, that power will be handed off to a group of unaccountable political appointees.  The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) created under Obama's law consists of a 15-member committee designed to ration health care to seniors by lowering Medicare reimbursement rates.  Unlike Congress, IPAB will be able to change the pay rates for Medicare services without having to worry about electoral ramifications.

The Valley of the Shadow of Death Panels.  [Scroll down]  But I suspect there is more to the story.  I think I may have been death-panelized, more or less.  I strongly suspect that the insurers are starting to restructure, ending coverage for "unnecessary" medical procedures, unnecessary meaning that said procedures do not justify the costs to save someone's life.  Most Lifevest wearers are, I am sure, elderly, so this is the perfect thing to cut.

IPAB Is an Acronym for 'Death Panel'.  Obamacare's "Independent Payment Advisory Board" was created to deny care to seniors.

IPAB's seven deadliest sins.  This week, the House voted to repeal ObamaCare's infamous "death panel," officially known as the more polite-sounding Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB.  But whatever you call it, it should be repealed.  Here's why.

Drinking the Pro-Death Kool-Aid.  With the entire world watching, my sister, Terri Schiavo died seven years ago on March 31, 2005 of a court-ordered dehydration — an agonizing death that lasted nearly two weeks.  It may have been the first time most people were witness or even considered that this type of inhumane act could happen to an innocent individual.  Sadly, Terri's case wasn't isolated — it continues and in every imaginable setting.

The Obamacare Hydra.  As soon as combatants lop off one of the law's unconstitutional agencies, another takes its place.  On Thursday [3/22/2012], as the behemoth federal health-care law marked its second anniversary, House Republicans passed a bill that would repeal the infamous Independent Payment Advisory Board.  The mother of all death panels, IPAB would have unprecedented authority over health-care spending through a rogue board of 15 Medicare spending czars.

Pap smears? Mammograms? Prostate exams? Not under Obamacare.  Slowly but surely the truth is coming out about Obamacare:  Conservatives were right.  Conservatives said Obamacare would cost trillions.  Our intellectual and moral superiors on the left sneered.  The CBO reported this week that Obamacare will cost nearly $1.8 trillion in the first 10 years alone — nearly double what Democrats said it would cost.  And instead of reducing the deficit, Obamacare will increase the deficit.

Independent Payment Advisory Revolt.  Public opposition to the Affordable Care Act has grown in surprising and unpredictable ways since the entitlement passed two years ago, but few would have predicted then that so many Democrats would repudiate so many of President Obama's core promises.  Yet that is happening now, as Congress targets the 15-member central committee that is supposed to control health costs.

What We're Learning about Obamacare isn't Good — Especially for Seniors.  Our senior citizens are most at risk under Obamacare — especially those over 70.  Rationing of services and death panels (only they're called "ethics panels" under Obamacare instead of death panels for obvious reasons) are now the rule, not the exception.  I have a friend who is a loyal Democrat and a strong Obama supporter.  In 2008 when she voted for Obama, she couldn't imagine that in 2012 she would have a massive heart attack and need a pacemaker.  Prior to 2010 and the passage of Obamacare, that would have been a routine procedure, but not anymore.  She's over 70, and under Obamacare people who are over 70 routinely receive "comfort care."  That's a euphemism.  It means that a panel of experts has determined that your life isn't worth saving beyond 70, so they will try to make you feel good while you die.

Healthy men don't need PSA testing for prostate cancer, panel says.  Most men should not routinely get a widely used blood test to check for prostate cancer because the exam does not save lives and leads to too much unnecessary anxiety, surgery and complications, a federal task force has concluded. The Editor says...
 I hereby predict the conclusions of the next federal task force:  Healthy people don't need medical attention of any kind, so it won't matter that Obamacare makes it impossible to get treatment.

ObamaCare's IPAB Spells Medicare Rationing.  During my career as a heart surgeon, I often treated patients who had difficulty finding a primary care doctor because they were on Medicare.  The problem persists today, and the new health law will make it worse.

A Trojan horse named IPAB.  Perhaps the most underreported and, until recently, least discussed aspect of the Affordable Care Act is IPAB, the Independent Payment Advisory Board.  This 15-person unelected panel has yet to be selected; however, it will be a key to the success of Obamacare.  Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has been quoted as saying that the majority of IPAB members must not be medical practitioners.

Rolling Back the Obamacare Banana Republic.  A rising chorus of repeal-mongers, outraged at the Obama administration's federal health care power grab, took over Washington this week.  Nope, it's not the tea party.  It's Democrats Against the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).  Yes, Democrats.  What's IPAB?  A Beltway acronym for subverting the deliberative process.

GOP Decries 'Rationing' IPAB; Dems Downplay Its Role.  Republicans say it will impose "rationing."  Reform supporters claim it may "transform" the entire health care system.  But top Democrats, fearing a political backlash, argued Tuesday [7/12/2011] that ObamaCare's panel of unelected experts is no big deal.

Valuing Seniors' Lives.  The administration's regulatory czar tries to disavow his statement that a program that saves young people is better than one that saves their parents and grandparents.  It's called rationing, and its name is ObamaCare.

Is it time to push Cass Sunstein over the cliff?  They laughed when Sarah Palin (R) mentioned death panels.  You've seen the Democratic commercial of a man pushing a terrified wheelchair bound grandma off a cliff.  In real life the head driver and chief pusher is Professor Cass Sunstein.  So now Cass Sunstein isn't laughing.  Because he is one of the chief proponents of death panels.  Of course he didn't call them that but nevertheless Palin accurately picked up his intention.

We Call It 'Rationing,' Obama Calls It 'Medicare Independent Payment Advisory Board'.  Suppose Congress asked Americans: which government officials should decide what foods you would be allowed to eat and what prices you had to pay at the grocery store — Congress, or an unelected board of nutritional experts appointed by the president?  Most Americans would immediately reply, "Neither!"  But that's precisely the debate between Congress and the White House regarding President Obama's proposed Medicare Independent Payment Advisory Board.

IPAB Is an Acronym for 'Death Panel'.  Contemplating the 2012 election that can already be seen looming on the distant horizon, the President's advisors were no doubt hoping that the "death panel" debate was... well... dead.  But Obama himself inadvertently resurrected it when, in response to Republican budget proposals, he claimed that Medicare costs will be kept under control by the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).

The Administration's Answer To High Healthcare Costs is... Rationing.  After months of denial that healthcare reform would involve rationing of healthcare for those who are the most vulnerable, the senior citizens who depend on Medicare, the President has come up with a proposal to decrease healthcare costs and guess what... it's rationing.

Dr. Berwick and Mr. Hide.  The Dr. Berwick with whom we have become all too familiar was a vocal advocate of health care rationing.  In a 2009 interview for Biotechnology Healthcare, he gushed with enthusiasm for the heavy-handed rationing regime of Great Britain's National Institute for Health & Clinical Excellence (NICE) and advised his interlocutor that "The decision is not whether or not we will ration care; the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open."  When the good doctor's alter ego appeared before the Ways and Means Committee, however, he told a different story.

Outwitting Lethal Government Policies.  [Scroll down]  In recent years, the NHS has adopted a program known benignly as the Liverpool Care Pathway.  By means of this protocol, aged or extremely ill patients can be labeled terminal by a single doctor (the Nazis required three in their odious T4 program), whereupon all food and water is cut off, and the patient is given heavy sedation.  Death usually occurs within a week.  Hundreds of cases are on record where families have been forced to rescue elderly relations from this procedure.  There is no known case where hospital staff cooperated.  Often, attempts are made to have the family arrested or escorted out by police.  As for how many of the lonely or socially isolated have been sacrificed in this manner, we have no idea.

The reality of death panels.  G.K. Chesterton once wrote that vulgar notions (and jokes) invariably contain a "subtle and spiritual idea."  The subtle and spiritual idea behind "death panels" is that life-prolonging medical technology is an expensive, limited commodity and if the market doesn't determine who gets it, someone else will.

Death Panels Revisited.  At a stroke, Medicare chief Donald Berwick has revived the "death panel" debate from two summers ago.  Allow us to referee, because this topic has been badly distorted by the political process — and in a rational world, it wouldn't be a political question at all.

She Told Us So.  Sarah Palin deserves an apology.  When she said that the new health-care law would lead to "death panels" deciding who gets life-saving treatment and who does not, she was roundly denounced and ridiculed.  Now we learn, courtesy of one of the ridiculers — The New York Times — that she was right.

Political End Runs.  The Constitution of the United States begins with the words "We the people."  But neither the Constitution nor "we the people" will mean anything if politicians and judges can continue to do end runs around both.  Bills passed too fast for anyone to read them are blatant examples of these end runs.  But last week, another of these end runs appeared in a different institution when the medical "end of life consultations" rejected by Congress were quietly enacted through bureaucratic fiat by administrators of Medicare.

The 'Right to Health Care' Can Be the Right to No Care.  If you read British newspapers, you know their universal health care system is cutting more and more services.  There, everyone's right to health care is becoming the right to no care.  Do we want that in the USA?

Regulated To Death By ObamaCare?  Unable to attach it directly to ObamaCare, a new Medicare rule will offer incentive to doctors who advise patients on end-of-life care in a program that seeks to control costs.  Connect those dots, grandma.

White House attempts to quiet revived talk of 'death panels'.  The Obama administration is trying to quiet talk about so-called "death panels" after The New York Times reported Sunday that a new Medicare regulation includes incentives for end-of-life-care planning.  The Medicare policy will pay doctors for holding end-of-life-care discussions with patients, according to the Times.

Have you noticed how the Obama team manipulates the media?

Return of the Death Panels.  After anti-ObamaCare rebels raised a ruckus about the "death panels" they alleged to be part of the original healthcare reform legislation, that language was removed from the final version of the bill.  Nevertheless, the Obama administration, reluctant to part with its own instrument of death, has quietly reinstated more or less the same provision via regulation.

ObamaCare Rationing Begins.  The FDA has reversed its approval of a widely used cancer drug approved in Europe to treat breast cancer on the grounds it doesn't provide a "sufficient" benefit.  Let the terminally ill and their doctors decide.

Medicare regulation revives end-of-life planning.  A new health regulation issued this month offers Medicare recipients voluntary end-of-life planning, which Democrats dropped from the monumental health care overhaul last year.

Obama Returns to End-of-Life Plan That Caused a Stir.  When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over "death panels," Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system.  But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1.

Return of the Death Panel.  Government control of anything equals rationing, pure and simple:  the use of compulsive force to divide a limited resource, with no input from the recipients beyond the occasional opportunity to voice their displeasure during elections.  If health care will be rationed, the most critical care will be rationed most severely, since it has the most restricted supply.

NYT's Krugman Slips and Tells the Truth about 'Death Panels'.  Nat Hentoff certainly is no conservative but he is a principled civil libertarian who has stood up for life since his days writing in the Village Voice.  Unlike most liberals, Hentoff fears that the threat of rationing under the President's health care plan is not only real but imminent and he is willing to go after those who advocate rationing of care leaving no sacred cows behind.  That's why Paul Krugman is now in Hentoff's sights and he is firing at will.

Obama Will Decide if Your Medicine is Too Expensive to be Allowed.  It's very easy for Obamacare supporters to scoff at the whole idea that there are "death panels" ensconced in Obama's health care power grab.  But the fact of the matter is that they exist in a de facto form.  One of those de facto death panels is the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), an agency invented under Obamacare that has no congressional oversight and will be able to summarily cancel your drug prescriptions as paid for by Medicare.

Death Panels Begin As Reform Takes Shape.  After the recess appointment of a Medicare and Medicaid head, an FDA panel drops its endorsement of a widely used cancer drug.  Another FDA-approved cancer therapy may not be paid for.  It begins.

The Deadly Pact:  How ObamaCare will 'Save' Money.  Andy Griffith, the former TV Sheriff of Mayberry and guardian of small town America, is now the national spokesman for ObamaCare.  More specifically, this venerable gentleman is the spokesman for the new Medicare.  Apparently Griffith is under the naïve belief that ObamaCare is a genuinely good thing for seniors.  As much as it pains me to say this, Griffith is dead wrong.  ObamaCare is a fatal bargain for seniors, and all Americans.

Moron Time With Barry, Andy, and Gaga.  At a time in which our republic appears on the brink of financial dissolution, some of its most shallow citizens are driving the news cycle.  Their intervention is helpful and evidences the truth behind the cliché "stupid is what stupid does."  First there was Andy Griffith of television fame.  He recorded a commercial in honor of ObamaCare.  The sage of Mayberry graced the airwaves for the purposes of celebrating the 45th anniversary of Medicare.  Despite being a man of tremendous wealth, the government bankrolled his ad.  Indeed, $700,000 of our tax dollars were spent for the purposes of brainwashing drumming up support among seniors for a statist power grab.

Update:
 Andy Griffith's Obamacare Ads Cost Taxpayers $3.66 Million.  Politico reports that the Obama administration's pro-Obamacare Andy Griffith TV ad cost taxpayers $3.66 million, according to records obtained from the Department of Health and Human Services.  Actually, there were at least three such ads, so it's not clear whether this was the cost for one, or for the whole batch.  In [one] ad, Griffith says, "That new health care law sure sounds good for all of us on Medicare!"

Andy Griffith's Obamacare Ads Cost Taxpayers $3.66 Million.  Politico reports that the Obama administration's pro-Obamacare Andy Griffith TV ad cost taxpayers $3.66 million, according to records obtained from the Department of Health and Human Services.  Actually, there were at least three such ads, so it's not clear whether this was the cost for one, or for the whole batch.  In [one] ad, Griffith says, "That new health care law sure sounds good for all of us on Medicare!"

Berwick Blues.  As one who generally believes that administrations should receive deference in their personnel selections, I found the recess appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick to be the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) disturbing.

Obama names a health czar who favors rationing.  Donald Berwick is no household name, but President Obama just handed him immense power to shape what kind of health care will be available to every American man, woman and child.  Berwick is the president's newly appointed administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that is ground zero for Obamacare's politicization of American medicine.

The President's One-Man Death Panel.  The president recess-appoints a fan of rationing and Britain's National Health Service to direct one-third of American health care.  Why does the administration want his views hidden from scrutiny?

Obama, Say It Isn't So!  [Scroll down]  Obama used the 4th of July congressional recess to implant Donald Berwick as his healthcare czar.  Talk about wing nuts, this guy was knighted by the English Queen because he is such a big fan of their healthcare system which has people dying in hospital corridors awaiting someone to help them.  Berwick makes no bones about rationing only that he says rationing must be done with your eyes wide open.

Obama appointee's prescription for socialism.  Barack Obama promised the most open and transparent administration in history.  His vow didn't convince him to extend senators the courtesy of listening to their advice and consent on the nomination of Dr. Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Obama to Seniors:  'Drop Dead'.  According to surveys, no group of Americans is more skeptical of Obamacare than senior citizens — and with good reason.  While bits and pieces of the massive law are designed to appeal to seniors — more taxpayer subsidies for the Medicare drug benefit, for example — much of the financing over the initial ten years is siphoned off from an estimated $575 billion in projected savings to the Medicare program.  Unless Medicare savings are captured and plowed right back into the Medicare program, however, the solvency of the Medicare program will continue to weaken.  The law does not provide for that.

ObamaCare and the value of human life.  Just how much concern for the health care of all human beings does the Obama administration actually have?  How much do they really value human life? ... Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the White House's Health Policy Adviser, has repeatedly stated that certain people shouldn't be treated equally by a government health care system.  He advocates "allocating and rationing" of services, particularly by age and disability.  This kind of policy conflicts with government's constitutionally mandated obligation to enforce "equal treatment under the law."

'Death panels' were an overblown claim — until now.  During the debate over ObamaCare, the bill's opponents were excoriated for talk of rationing and "death panels.  And in fairness, with a few minor exceptions governing Medicare reimbursements, the law does not directly ration care or allow the government to dictate how doctors practice medicine.  But if President Obama wanted to keep a lid on that particular controversy, he just selected about the worst possible nominee for director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the office that oversees government health care programs.

Obama Names Rationing Czar to Run Medicare.  Dr. Donald Berwick of the Harvard Medical School does not like free enterprise, but he does like rationing.  Two years ago, in England, he delivered a talk celebrating the 60th birthday of Great Britain's National Health Service, the bureaucracy that runs that nation's socialized medical system.  He apparently entertained some fear that day that the Brits might turn back to free enterprise.  So ... he offered British socialists some words of advice.

Impatience with patients who won't die.  The last time I saw my father he was standing on his stoop, sweetly smiling and waving goodbye.  As we backed out of his driveway, I thought about how healthy he looked and how grateful I was that my children and I had seen him this way once again.  Had it been up to a hospital nurse 12 months earlier, Dad would have been dead.

A "Duty to Die"?  One of the many fashionable notions that have caught on among some of the intelligentsia is that old people have "a duty to die," rather than become a burden to others.  This is more than just an idea discussed around a seminar table.  Already the government-run medical system in Britain is restricting what medications or treatments it will authorize for the elderly.  Moreover, it seems almost certain that similar attempts to contain runaway costs will lead to similar policies when American medical care is taken over by the government.

Whistling past the death panel.  President Obama has selected Dr. Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  Berwick is a Harvard professor, a pediatrician, and the CEO of a nonprofit that, according to its website, has a staff of over 100 people.  These seem like dubious qualifications to head a massive organization with a budget greater than that of the Department of Defense.

Serfs They Want Us To Be And Serfs We Will Become!  That's right.  It's over.  Their guns are bigger.  They control all the money.  They control the energy.  They control the land.  They control the food and they control the water.  Soon they will control our health care, down to the last detail on our electronic health care records being stored in a giant computer in Washington DC, from which they can determine if we are worthy of receiving health care.  The older we get, the less worthy we become.

Is Obama Steering the Ship of State Toward the Rocks?  This is Obama's Audacity of Desperation.  Obama's Medi-Grab will break the Medicare system, because you can't cover 330 million people, including illegals, just with the tax money currently dedicated to the elderly.  Something's got to give, and it will be Medicare for the elderly.  But the elderly are the most medically endangered sector of the population.  Does anybody see Death Panels in the offing?

"Your Life, Your Choices".  Here are the links to several materials we discussed in this morning's [8/23/2009] segment about Veterans' health care and end-of-life counseling with Former Director of the White House Faith Based Initiatives Jim Towey and Assistant Secretary of Veterans? Affairs Tammy Duckworth.

Your Life Choices:  Recently, the VA re-implemented a pamphlet known as "Your Life — Your Choice" dealing with end of life decisions for Veterans.  I have briefly looked it over and here are a few pages to really pay attention to:  Page 24 — this is the page mentions things like you "cant shake the blues" as a possible reason to not continue your life.  You will also notice that it even mentions "I rely on a kidney dialysis machine to keep me alive."  My wife's Stepfather is on dialysis through the VA and that just floored us when we saw it.

Throwing Tammy Duckworth under the Bus.  I just watched Tammy Duckworth try her best to defend the V.A. "death book" on Fox News Sunday. ... While she admirably held her own, her talking points were often very, very lame ... The upshot was she defended this irretrievably gross book on the merits and attacked the messenger to boot.

The Death Book for Veterans:  Last year, bureaucrats at the VA's National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, "Your Life, Your Choices."  It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA's preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes.  After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated "Your Life, Your Choices."

Editor's note:
 The booklet, Your life, your choices is available with and without the cover page / disclaimer about the document being under review.

Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death Panels.  Right now, if I want a hip replacement, it's between me and my doctor; the government does not have a seat at the table.  The minute it does, my hip's needs are subordinate to national hip policy, which in turn is subordinate to macro budgetary considerations.

Palin v. ObamaCare:  Once again we're presented with evidence that the health-care debate is occurring without adequate attention being paid to the record of established nationalized health-care systems overseas.  This has arisen as a result of Sarah Palin's superb maneuver in forcing the administration to drop Section 1233 of the ObamaCare act, entitled "Advance Care Planning Consultation." ... Palin accused the administration of opening the door to euthanasia, with Section 1233 amounting to a first step toward "death panels" making life-and-death decisions amounting to such action.

Death Care and the Commodification of Life.  Federal "healthcare" must inevitably turn into "Death Care," because the bureaucracy will have the sole power to determine the rules under which you and I will live and die.  The bureaucrats will have a fixed pot of money, and money spent to save your life comes from the same kitty that is used to give prenatal care to some poor woman from Mexico or Bangladesh.  That is what they think is moral — and this is an argument about morality above all.  Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm's brother and big advisor to Obama, considers fee-for-service medicine immoral, because it allows richer people to pay more.

'Death panels' exist already.  Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who says President Obama's heath care reform would result in "death panels," needs to look no further than Texas to see a slippery slope like the one she envisions.  In Texas, a legislative provision that many thought was an innocuous proposal to help people has been twisted to snatch end-of-life decisions out of the hands of families.

The Catholic Church and Health Care Reform.  Rationing health care could result in the death of a patient.  It would clearly be an example of an omission that may cause death.  Although it may not be direct euthanasia, it is definitely passive euthanasia.

Hello ObamaCare, Goodbye Grandma.  Oh, look!  See Ezekiel.  See Ezekiel Emanuel.  Zeke is in charge of health care policy for the Obama administration. ... See Zeke think.  Zeke has not run a hospital.  He has not run an insurance company.  He has not run a medical practice.  He has not worked in the pharmaceutical industry.  Zeke has spent more than twenty years in education and government... thinking.

Unplugging Grandma isn't the problem.  Obamacare means treatment rationing, so getting Grandma plugged in in the first place is the greater peril.

'Death panel' is not in the bill... it already exists.  H.R. 1 (more commonly known as ... the Stimulus Bill and aptly dubbed the Porkulus Bill) contains a whopping $1.1 billion to fund the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. ... [The] stated purpose (and therefore President Obama's purpose) for creating the Council is to empower an unelected bureaucracy to make the hard decisions about health care rationing that elected politicians are politically unable to make.

That's Where the Money Is.  When famed bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he said:  "Because that's where the money is."  For the same reason, it is as predictable as the sunrise that medical care for the elderly will be cut back under a government-controlled medical system.  Because that's where the money is.

ObamaCare Is All About Rationing.  Although administration officials are eager to deny it, rationing health care is central to President Barack Obama's health plan.  The Obama strategy is to reduce health costs by rationing the services that we and future generations of patients will receive.

Included in the Health Care Bill:
 — Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process).
 — Page 42: The "Health Choices Commissioner" will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None.
 — Page 149:Any employer with a payroll of $400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays an 8% tax on payroll.
 — Page 150: Any employer with a payroll of $250K-400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays a 2 to 6% tax on payroll.
 — Page 167: Any individual who doesn't have acceptable healthcare (according to the government) will be taxed 2.5% of income.
 — Page 272: Cancer patients: welcome to the wonderful world of rationing!
 — Page 425: Government provides approved list of end-of-life resources, guiding you in death.
And these are just a few examples.

'End-of-Life' Counseling Intensifies Health Care Debate.  A provision in President Obama's health care reform bill encourages "end-of- life" counseling for seniors — sparking euthanasia fears among some of the legislation's critics and leading others to believe that the White House is looking to save money by pressuring insurers to provide less coverage to seniors.  The provision, tucked deep within the House bill, would provide Medicare coverage for an end-of-life consultation every five years, and more frequent sessions if a person is suffering a life-threatening disease.

Gingrich:  Palin concerns about euthanasia warranted.  Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich lent credence Sunday to Sarah Palin's claim that the healthcare reform legislation will create "death panels" to judge end-of-life issues.  "Communal standards, historically, is a very dangerous concept," Gingrich said on ABC's "This Week."  On Saturday morning [8/8/2009], Palin called President Obama's healthcare proposal "downright evil."

How House Bill Runs Over Grandma.  At a town hall meeting at AARP headquarters in Washington, D.C., President Obama was asked by a woman from North Carolina if it was true "that everyone that's Medicare age will be visited and told they have to decide how they wish to die."  At first, the president joked that not enough government workers existed to ask the elderly how they wanted to die.  The idea, he said, was to encourage the use of living wills and that critics were misrepresenting the intent of the "end of life" counseling provided for in the House bill.  He did not say, "No, they wouldn't be contacted."

Did Obama Say We Should Kill the Old Folks to Save Money Last Night?  I am wondering when the euthanasia folks are going to start touting this one?  I mean, it sure seemed to me as if the most caring, most civil, most intelligent president evah just said that healthcare could be cheaper if we don't give old folks and the infirm the full measure of care they now get.  It appeared that Obama said we should just let them die or suffer because they aren't worth the effort.  Imagine if Bush had said something like this?  The left wouldn't have hesitated to call him any manner of names.

Death as a cost-cutter.  Hurry up and die!  That, in a nutshell, is how President Obama hopes to save large sums of money through health care "reform."  But that isn't how the president advertises it.

Rationing health care.  It doesn't matter what your doctor says; the Obama administration plans to decide if you will have cancer treatment or heart surgery. ... The hypocrisy is enough to make a heart stop.  A White House that doesn't think government should intervene between a doctor and a woman deciding whether to have an abortion has no problem telling doctors whether they can perform tonsillectomies or hysterectomies.

Nationalizing Life and Death.  Hidden deep in the stimulus bill is a Trojan horse like no other.  I am not speaking of pork.  A scheme more dastardly would have been hard to concoct.  With the passage of this bill, the US government is now empowered to "ration" healthcare.  That means, to treat or not to treat is now a government question.  Within the bill is a line that would sentence millions of people to death.

Will Old Folks Get in the Way of our Brave New World?  Washington bureaucrats hoped something wouldn't see the light of day until it was too late.  Buried in the stimulus bill is the framework for rationing medical care to the elderly.  The part Obama and his cohorts are talking about publicly — electronic medical records — sounds great:  no more having to fill out annoying paperwork at the doctor's office or hospital when you are ailing.  But according to the provision's author, former Health and Human Services director nominee (and tax cheat) Tom Daschle, there's much more, including the newly-created bureaucracy of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology.  What will the NCHIT be doing?  Making sure your doctor gives you the treatment it deems to be efficient and cost-effective.  And if your doctor doesn't comply?  Well, that part is still a bit fuzzy.

Why Obamacare may beget euthanasia.  The idea comes straight from former Health and Human Services nominee Tom Daschle's 2008 book "Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis" in which he says that doctors are going to have to give up their autonomy and "learn to operate less like solo practitioners."  Inevitably, this means the government will decide who gets lifesaving treatment and who doesn't.  It is survival of the fittest in practice.

Obamacare Could Kill You.  This "Federal Health Board," as Daschle refers to his proposed behemoth, would be modeled on Great Britain's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).  In the UK's socialized medical system, NICE is the bureaucracy responsible for determining the value and effectiveness of medical treatments and procedures.  And it regularly hands down death sentences to gravely ill patients.

Obama Gives What Doctor Did Not Order.  Barack Obama forced a bitter pill down the throats of Americans that the doctor did not order and patients do not want.  Obama snuck into the stimulus bill a new system for rationing medical care, and he got Congress to ram it through the House and Senate without reading it.

Stimulus Bill Raises Concerns Over Government Rationing of Health Care.  Two provisions in President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan could give the federal government the authority to oversee the medical decisions made between doctors and patients, critics warn, which could result in the rationing of health care.

Death Panels by Proxy.  [Scroll down slowly]  Then a president who won't save infants born alive but who does want the government to be involved (a "democratic conversation") in deciding end-of-life treatment — and whose medical policy adviser would "prioritise" young people — hires as his chief science adviser a man, John P. Holdren, who first gained notoriety pushing eugenics ideas such as coerced abortions, forced sterilizations through the water supply, and other notions so outrageous that the man should never be accepted in polite company again, much less have the ear of the President of the United States.

The Nightmare of Rationing in Oregon.  Two cases of "public option" administrators rejecting patient requests for lifesaving or life-extending drugs (and instead offering to fund those patients' assisted suicides) reached the mainstream media in the last two weeks.  This has caused critics of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul proposal to look to Oregon for clues about what a national health system would bring.  The picture is not pretty.

The fault, dear Barack, is not in our stars, But in ourselves.  The opposition to Obamacare would have gone nowhere had the president offered a concise plan, had his team kept repeating four or five logical and easily understandable talking points, and had he prepared a few pat answers to the more controversial elements of the plan, from the public option to so-called "end of life" panels to treatment of illegal aliens and the real cost.

Will You Still Need Me, When I'm Sixty-four?  We know that Social Security is unsustainable because fewer and fewer workers are paying into the system to support more and more retirees.  It is, as it was from Day One, a pure, a classic Ponzi scheme masquerading as a pension plan.  For decades, government commissions have repeatedly recommended increasing the retirement age.  Everyone agrees that the system will soon run out of money. ... [Obama's] brilliant solution:  encouraging Americans to continue to pay into Social Security while discouraging Americans from asking for Social Security checks.

Obama to veterans:  Drop dead!  When I wrote my Power Line post "Obama to Elderly: Drop Dead," I had no idea that the Obama administration had already in one sphere implemented the macabre policy embedded within the various drafts of the health care bill, but now I know better.  In an important column published in the Wall Street Journal last week, St. Vincent College President and former director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives Jim Towey spills the beans.  The Department of Veterans Affairs is circulating among those in VA hospitals a 52-page end-of-life planning document entitled Your Life, Your Choices.

Remember the Golden Oldies, Dr. Emanuel.  Someone like Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health advisor to Obama, and Zeke's brother Rahm, who loves to hurl thunderbolts from Mount Olympus and bully freshman congressmen.  They and their ilk will give us "guidance" about who is worthwhile, who is ready to die, who shall live a week or two longer.  Zeke is a Harvard academic who is arrogant enough to believe that he can change human nature and decide the most intimate and complex of human issues — those of life and death.

Obama's Friends 'Out' the Death Panels.  The president and his media enablers are outraged, just outraged, that anyone would suggest the prospect of, let alone come up with a name for, government panels designed to ration care for the elderly — and as the president said, "pull the plug on grandma."  Nothing lower, the left punditocracy fumed, than coming up with the "death panel" slur.  Except that is precisely what Obama and his ilk want.

Talking Seniors to Death.  This benevolent plan is in Section 1233 (p. 424) of the health care reform bill known as "America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009" (HR 3200).  It didn't just show up on the doorstep of health care reform, but was packaged and delivered by Compassion & Choices, the assisted-suicide advocacy group previously known as the Hemlock Society.

In Revolt Against Euthanasia.  Earlier this summer, former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin was criticized for deploying hyperbole in her opposition of health-care-reform proposals on the table in Washington, D.C.  She warned of end-of-life "death panels."  By doing so, she got some pols to back down from proposed "end-of-life counseling" boards that would parcel out advice in a government-controlled health-care system.

The Convenient Death.  Wait for patients to die before taking their organs, and the organs won't be as fresh.  Let doctors take the organs from living patients — even if it means causing them to die a little faster than they otherwise would — and the supply of usable organs will go up.  Some other patient will get a second chance at life, and the dead guy won't miss anything: What could possibly go wrong with this idea?

Cannibalizing America.  Americans have gone collectively insane.  Like sheep being led to the slaughter, no one could imagine the terror that is about to be visited on millions of unsuspecting innocents.  The health care bill is an instrument of selective death.  Seniors will be prematurely sacrificed so that millions of poor Americans (many of them illegal immigrants) can get mediocre government care.

The cold heart of Obamacare.  Much of the press coverage of the Democrats' health care legislation, now fiercely embattled in Congress, focuses on the public option, the actual long-term costs and tax increases, and the amendment barring funding for abortions.  But the cold heart of Obamacare is its overpowering of the doctor-patient relationship — eventually resulting in the premature ending of many Americans' lives for being too costly.

Political Science and Mammograms.  Last month the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) released their study and recommendations for breast cancer screening.  There was an immediate universal rejection of the Task Force's work, from Senator Barbara Mikulski on the left to Representative Michele Bachmann on the right.  The outcry from Washington was deafening, and on December 2nd, researchers from the USPSTF actually apologized before a congressional committee for their study.  Like most conservatives, I have a healthy skepticism of what I read in the mainstream media, especially concerning scientific research.  So I read the USPSTF's study.

Doubt Is Cast on Many Reports of Food Allergies.  Many who think they have food allergies actually do not.  A new report, commissioned by the federal government, finds the field is rife with poorly done studies, misdiagnoses and tests that can give misleading results.

The Editor says...
 This is another "study" softening up the American people for the idea of rationed medical care.  You don't really need a mammogram; you don't really have a food allergy; you don't really need to go to the doctor.  Naturally the New York Times is happy to publicize the "study" on behalf of the White House.

ObamaCare Would End Pre-Existing Conditions, Right?  When it comes to "pre-existing conditions," the left conveniently fails to mention the nastiest and most brutal screen of all as set forth in ObamaCare:  The Old Age exclusion.  From death panels to age-based discrimination practices for costly surgical procedures and medications, ObamaCare would sanction the practice of cutting off medical help to the old, solely because of that group's reckless behavior in growing old.

Rationing's First Step.  A government task force has decided that women need fewer mammograms and later in life.  Shouldn't that be between patient and physician?  We have seen the future of health care, and it doesn't work.  We have warned repeatedly that the net results of health care bills before Congress will be higher demand, fewer doctors, more cost control, all leading to rationing.

Liberals and Mammography.  The flap over breast cancer screening has provided a fascinating insight into the political future of ObamaCare.  Specifically, the political left supports such medical rationing even as it disavows that any such thing is happening.

Mammograms and Rationing:  The Future of American Healthcare.  As Hippocratic physicians dedicated to saving lives, we fear the new breast cancer screening recommendations foreshadow what is yet to come.  Enamored with European universal healthcare, Washington is hell-bent to push through some form of government-run health plan.  But at what price?  If America adopts European style medicine, Americans must expect European style results.

Pelosi's Reform Bill Establishes Waiting List.  H.R. 3962, the Democrats' health insurance reform bill, to be voted on this week by Congress, contains a provision to establish waiting lists as a mechanism to control costs.  Such waiting lists have long been a characteristic — and a bane — of socialized medicine.

ObamaCare Vs. The Hippocratic Oath.  It is obvious.  The "New" Obama-Pelosi-Reid Health Care Bill's heart and soul is based on (1) rationing and denying care to cut costs, and (2) taxing every American in its path.  The end result strips Freedom from every citizen.  Then again, what would you expect from a document that uses the words "require" 118 times, "tax" 87 times, and "penalty" 113 times.  The Oath my classmates and I took 29 years ago was based on the premise "Do No Harm."  I cannot condone this legislation, which promises to HARM every person, family and business in our country.  We need to reject rationing, and fight the loss of control of our health care lives.

Harry Reid's Train Wreck.  Democrats were heartened Oct. 7 when the Congressional Budget Office said the version of Obamacare drafted by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, would cost "only" $829 billion over 10 years. ... There was a problem with this gimmick, though.  Mr. Baucus proposed to save money in Medicare by gutting the Medicare Advantage program, in which 23 percent of seniors are enrolled, and by slashing the payments doctors and hospitals receive for treating Medicare patients.

Or We Could Make It Simple and Cheap.  The monstrously complicated Democratic health-care bills costing upward of a trillion dollars are churning through Congress.  They are too complicated for the average voter to fully comprehend and too voluminous for the average lawmaker to read.  They spend money we don't have and create enormous new bureaucracies to regulate, limit, control, and, yes, ration care.

Obama Health Plan:  Rationing, Higher Taxes, and Lower Quality Care.  President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats are rushing to enact legislation that would overhaul the way health care is financed and delivered in the United States.  It would dramatically increase the role of government in virtually all aspects of health care.  Such an initiative should be carefully studied to determine whether it actually solves problems in the health care arena or makes them worse.

'Killing Granny'.  Newsweek seeks to make us more comfortable with the idea of killing our parents and grandparents.  The ObamaCare deal they want us buy is that only if more old people die, will there be better medical treatment for everyone else.  That is, you and me.  It's a sucker's deal.  Because not only will more "old" people die with ObamaCare, but more of everyone else will die too.

Kennedy's legacy:  Chappaquiddick end-of-life care.  Edward Kennedy's death can teach us one thing about ObamaCare.  It's not the spin the Big Media wing of the Democrat Party is trying to sell:  that Congress should force government-run health care on us, no matter how much we oppose it, as a tribute to Kennedy.  You can bet your grandma's iron lung, though, that under ObamaCare neither she nor you nor I will receive the end-of-life care provided to Kennedy.

Meet Rahm Emanuel's Brother:  Dr. Zeke the Bleak.  Despite his recent attempted reputation rehab, Zeke always ends up at the same place:  not treating the somehow unworthy or letting them die.

Obama's Health Rationer-in-Chief.  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.

Death Panels and Decision Makers:  When the town halls adjourn and the cameras stop rolling, the health care debate is about one thing:  decisions.  Issues like end-of-life counseling, comparative effectiveness boards, uninsured Americans, and rising health care costs all, when examined, reduce to a question of who will make medical decisions.

Terrorists Get Appeals, Obamacare Patients Don't.  [Scroll down]  For example, let's say you're hospitalized for some condition or procedure and are discharged, but you relapse and need to go back to the hospital.  Not so fast.  Under Democratic health-care reform, the government will be rationing hospital treatment.

Obama's Twisted Faith:  Eventually you will end up with one insurance company — its name is Uncle Sam.  And when your good Uncle Sam wants to save some money, he will start making bureaucratic decisions, rather than medical decisions, about your health.  Mom won't get that treatment to save her life because it is expensive and she has already lived 90 good years. ... How am I so sure?  Because there has never been a government-run health plan, anywhere in the world, that did not ration care.

Obamacare Or Logan's Run?  (Part 2):  According to Betsy McCaughey — the former lieutenant governor of New York State and the prime debunker of Hillarycare — the president is lying when he says that those who like their present health care plan can keep it.  Ms. McCaughey says that you only have to get to Page 15 of the 1,018 page bill to understand that you will be forced to give up that plan that allows you to go to whatever doctor you select, whenever you like, or to see a specialist or get a diagnostic test.

What Lies Beneath:  The debate — OK, the shouting match — we are having over "health-care reform" is about many things, including cost, who gets help and who does not and who, or what, gets to make that determination.  Underlying it all is a larger question:  Is human life something special?  Is it to be valued more highly than, say, plants and pets?  When someone is in a "persistent vegetative state" do we mean to say that person is equal in value to a carrot?

Obama's Authoritarian Style.  One question about ObamaCare that has caused enormous anxiety has to do with the category of "end-of-life care."  Would people feel pressured, or be forced, to pull the plug on those who, on economic grounds, are deemed not worth saving?  Would ObamaCare allow or encourage assisted suicide, even euthanasia?  These are serious questions.  Last July we noted that Oregon's socialized health plan had denied a $4,000-a-month cancer drug to 64-year-old Barbara Wagner.  But the bureaucracy cheerfully informed her "that it would cover palliative, or comfort, care, including, if she chose, doctor-assisted suicide."

Obamacare Or Logan's Run.  Even though H.R. 3200 is cloaked in language disguised to hide the fact that many provisions address end-of-life options and hospice accommodations, it is quite clear that the authors of the bill think these options outweigh medical care. ... Power-driven wheelchairs will be regulated by the government (P. 268); physician services for seniors will be reduced (P. 239); the government provides a list of end-of-life resources, guiding you to death (P. 425); government mandates programs that will order end-of-life treatment (P. 427).  Don't take my word for it.  The bill is available [here].

Take Two Aspirin And Call Me When Your Cancer is Stage 4.  All the problems with the American health care system come from government intervention, so naturally the Democrats' idea for fixing it is more government intervention.  This is like trying to sober up by having another drink.  The reason seeing a doctor is already more like going to the DMV, and less like going to the Apple "Genius Bar," is that the government decided health care was too important to be left to the free market.

Deadly Doctors.  The health bills coming out of Congress would put the decisions about your care in the hands of presidential appointees.  They'd decide what plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will have and what seniors get under Medicare.  Yet at least two of President Obama's top health advisers should never be trusted with that power.

Saving Liberty.  With Obamacare, government will decide when and if you can get that knee replacement.  From the clear utterances of the president's healthcare advisers, namely, Drs. Ezekiel Emanuel and David Blumenthal, that knee replacement will depend on such factors as your age and your overall health.  If you are too old or decrepit, government will have a more economical place to spend its money.  In other words, your health will not be decided by what you want to pay for it but by government policy.  That test you wanted for colon cancer might be denied.  You might just be too old.  Such decisions are made by the nationalized British system all the time.

Obama's Health Future:  If or when the Administration's speculative cost-cutting measures under universal health care fail to produce savings, government will start explicitly limiting patient access to treatments and services regarded as too expensive.  Democrats deny this eventuality, but health planners will have no choice, given that the current entitlement system is already barreling toward insolvency without adding millions of new people to the federal balance sheet.

Obama Wants to Let Those Pesky Geezers Die.  In a rare moment of candor, President Obama explained to an audience how government-run healthcare would work in America. ... Medical decisions should be made by patients, their families, and their doctors, not by government bureaucrats, but that's ObamaCare for you.

Obama's Senior Moment.  At the heart of President Obama's plan is his stated goal to cut medical costs.  That might sound good to you, but it means cutting services, nurses, technicians, medical tests, and most prominently the use of expensive technology.  The President's top medical advisers are quite frank about this.  Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Rahm Emanuel and a health policy adviser in the Office of Management and Budget, has chided Americans for the expense of their "being enamored with technology."

"Efficiency" Means Death.  Apparently the agreed-upon approach is to give health care to 47 million new beneficiaries without massive new costs by being "more efficient" in allocating the currently available health care assets. ... Here is what this "efficiency" would mean in stark terms:  severely restricting health care services to our elderly, and the severely and terminally ill.  "Efficiency" here means providing services to millions of young and healthy, who do not need much of it, and cutting health care to seniors and the severely ill who "statistically do not have as much to lose by not getting good health care."

Obama's Health Cost Illusion.  The main White House argument for health-care reform goes something like this:  If we spend now on a hugely expensive new insurance program for the middle class, we can save later by reducing overall U.S. health spending. ... What if this particular theory turns out to be a political illusion?  What if the speculative cost savings never report for duty, while the federal balance sheet is still swamped with new social obligations that will be impossible to repeal?  The only possible outcome will be the nationalization of U.S. health markets, which will mean that almost all care will be rationed by politics.

Court Says Bureaucrats, Not Doctors, Decide What Is 'Medically Necessary'.  Earlier this month, a panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of three states that filed suit to have final medical decision-making authority transferred from doctors to state bureaucrats.

Extinguishing Physician Conscience.  The largest generational cohort in American history, the Baby Boomers, will be the first Americans to be denied available effective life-saving treatments for reasons of cost.  The seeds for this mass liquidation have already been planted.

Repeal Health Care Fascism.  Buried in Barack Obama's so-called stimulus bill is funding for a bureaucratic structure for the government to begin rationing the health care of the American people.  A centralized government bureaucracy would be established that would ultimately have the power to decide what health care you can have, and when, especially when it involves highly expensive, advanced medical care for the seriously ill.  Unless this is stopped, many of you reading this article right now will one day suffer death-by-liberalism, when the government bureaucracy decides that the health care you need is not worth the cost, or puts you in a waiting line where death will arrive before treatment.

'Too Old' for Hip Surgery.  President Obama and Congressional Democrats are inching the U.S. toward government-run health insurance.  Last week's expansion of Schip —the State Children's Health Insurance Program —is a first step.  Before proceeding further, here's a suggestion:  Look at Canada's experience.

How the Stimulus Bill Could Kill You.  When you read through the nearly seven hundred pages of the House stimulus bill it is easy to begin dozing off after a few hundred billion dollars worth of run-of-the-mill wasteful government spending.  One has to keep a keen eye out for the components of the bill that don't just steal your money, but that may actually do you great physical harm, if not kill you outright.

Change to Think Twice About:  Around the world, single-payer systems keep costs down by rationing care.  A Cato Institute study found that in Norway, health care is funded through general tax revenues (taxes consume 45 percent of GDP).  But Norwegians commonly travel abroad to avoid long waits.  "Approximately 280,000 Norwegians are estimated to be waiting for care on any given day (out of a population of just 4.6 million)."  In Britain, "delays in receiving treatment are often so long that nearly 20 percent of colon cancer patients considered treatable when first diagnosed are incurable by the time treatment is finally offered."

National Health Care Can Kill.  John Edwards and his rival for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton, may disagree on some things but they both support a universal health care system, their way of describing what is really socialized medicine.

There's No Caring in ObamaCare.  How many of society's frail would take their own lives in a socialist health system?  After they were subjected to the "death talk," how many would forgo treatment or even accept medical euthanasia?  Countless numbers would give up.  The message from society would be clear:  Your life doesn't matter.

Futilitarians.  Established by the Labour Party, NICE decides which treatments and medications are to be utilized by the NHS based on the principle of "the greatest good for the greatest number."  Of course, this is not determined in a solely arbitrary fashion.  Specific formulas are employed to monetize the value of life.  Subjective judgments regarding "quality of life" and "suffering" are simmered down to a neat mathematical theorem by which life-sustaining treatments are awarded.

Top doctor's chilling claim: The NHS kills off 130,000 elderly patients every year.  NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds, a senior consultant claimed yesterday [6/18/2012].  Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors had turned the use of a controversial 'death pathway' into the equivalent of euthanasia of the elderly.

Death Panels After All?.  There's an explosive story out today in the Daily Mail over in the UK claiming that Britain's National Health Service euthanizes 130,000 elderly patients a year.  This claim doesn't issue from some loopy former governor of an arctic province; it comes from professor Patrick Pullicino, a consultant neurologist for East Kent Hospitals and Professor of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Kent.

Killing the Elderly Is Old News for Britain's NHS.  Last week's story here that Britain's National Health Service euthanizes 130,000 elderly folks a year is no surprise.  Last year, a major report cited the socialist health-care agency for neglecting the elderly under its care.  The neglect was so severe that doctors began prescribing drinking water to patients because they would otherwise die of thirst.  In other words, nothing changes in Britain, no matter how bad the abuses are.  That is the lesson to be be learned about nationalized health care.  Euthanasia, as well, killed the patients more quickly than simple neglect.

Death panels on steroids.  On its pages, the [New England Journal of Medicine] has long featured articles favoring euthanasia and assisted suicide as well as health care rationing.  Indeed, two of its former editors, Dr. Arnold Relman and Dr. Marcia Angell, are vocal advocates of eliminating the private health system and replacing it with a single-payer, government-controlled health system.  And both are among the 14 subscribing petitioners on a doctor-prescribed suicide initiative that will appear on the November 2012 ballot in Massachusetts.  Angell is so enamored with the concept of assisted suicide that, in a 2004 article, she decried the fact that too few people were availing themselves of Oregon's doctor-prescribed suicide law.  She expressed concern that the law was too restrictive.

This is an original compilation, Copyright © 2013 by Andrew K. Dart



Taxpayer-funded abortions

The Greatest Threat to Peace.  [S]ince 1966, billions of dollars in U.S.-taxpayer money has been laundered through USAID to such groups as the Population Council and the International Planned Parenthood Federation to advise or run horrific campaigns of forced sterilizations or abortions, wrecking the lives of tens of millions of poor people in Asia, Africa, and South America.

Lawmakers ask if taxes fund abortion; Planned Parenthood targeted in inquiry.  A group of 72 lawmakers have revived an effort to ask the government's watchdog agency to scrutinize taxpayer dollars going to Planned Parenthood and five other organizations who provide family-planning services.

Congresswoman Reintroduces Bill To Ban Federal Funds From Abortion Providers, Including Planned Parenthood.  Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) marked the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion nationwide, by announcing at a press conference her reintroduction of legislation to ban all abortion providers from receiving any federal funds, including Planned Parenthood.  "Over the last 40 years, more than 55 million babies have been aborted," Black said on Tuesday [1/22/2013] on Capitol Hill at the conference focused on Roe v. Wade.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn offers bill to defund Planned Parenthood.  "As a woman, I believe America deserves better than abortion," Blackburn said in a statement on her bill.  "America shouldn't celebrate abortion and our taxpayers shouldn't subsidize abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood, who profit from the destruction of human life with taxpayer money.  It's fiscally irresponsible and morally indefensible."

Appeals Court Oral Arguments Signal Trouble for Obamacare HHS Mandate.  After repeated assurances that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would not mandate abortion or people of faith violating their religious beliefs, the Obama administration issued a mandate requiring both, when Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued a rule from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) saying that a vague provision in the ACA requiring employers provide "preventive care" means that employer healthcare policies must cover birth control, abortion-related, and sterilization services.

Obama on Giving Tax $$ to Planned Parenthood: 'Sometimes You've Got to Stand on Principle'.  Concerning budget negotiations with Republicans, President Barack Obama made clear in a campaign speech on Monday [11/5/2012] in Madison, Wisc., that he would not compromise on federal funding for Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider.  Obama identified preserving taxpayer subsidies for the nation's largest abortion provider among other top priorities in a speech given one day before the presidential election.

The Obama Administration's Loyalty to Planned Parenthood.  Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider, has called President Barack Obama its "champion."  The political alliance between the President and Planned Parenthood has been particularly evident over the past 18 months through the Obama Administration's determination to channel taxpayer dollars to the abortion giant despite the known misuse of taxpayer funds by some Planned Parenthood affiliates and in the face of a $16 trillion national debt.

Obamacare Subsidizes Abortions for Women Making $90,000.  How rich do you have to be in Barack Obama's America to pay the whole tab for your own abortion?  What about a divorced 38-year-old public school principal who has three children and earns $90,000 per year?  Would she need to personally pay the full fare to have a doctor kill her fourth child while that child was still in her womb?  Under Obamacare, the federal government will force taxpayers to help her buy insurance that pays for abortions.

Obama: 'I Stand Up for Foreign Aid' to Answer 'Biblical Call'.  As president, Obama renewed U.S. aid to the United Nations Population Fund, which helps China with it coercive population control program, and continued to provide funding to the Egyptian military, which according to the State Department killed 25 Egyptian Christians last October. [...] According to CRS, the Obama administration gave the UNFPA $50 million in 2009, $55 million in 2010, $40 million in 2011, and $35 million this year.  The latest State Department report on human rights in China described that nation's coercive population control program.  "Female infanticide, sex-selective abortions, and the abandonment and neglect of baby girls remained problems due to the traditional preference for sons and the coercive birth limitation policy," the State Department said.

Court: Texas can cut off Planned Parenthood funds.  Texas officials are vowing to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood after a federal court sided with the state in a challenge over a new law that bans clinics affiliated with abortion providers from getting money through a health program for low-income women.

Obamacare abortion mandate withers.  The Department of Health and Human Services has set in motion the Obamacare abortion premium mandate, a provision that permits insurance plans that cover abortions to participate in state exchanges and requires all enrollees in those plans — even those with religious and moral objections to abortion — to pay a separate monthly premium to cover abortions.  But many states are diligently passing laws to stop it.

Confronting abortion premium mandate.  When the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week on the constitutionality of various provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, one of the most blatantly unconstitutional provisions didn't get any attention in oral arguments or the press.  At least it hasn't so far.  The issue in question is the abortion premium mandate.  Beginning in 2014, this mandate will force millions of Americans, including those who are pro-life, to pay directly into an abortion fund.

The next big scandal: taxpayer-funding for abortion.  If you thought the tea party was over, think again.  Kathleen Sebelius just shot a flare into a dynamite factory.  On Monday night [3/12/2012], Ms. Sebelius's Department of Health and Human Services released a final decree concerning a troubling codicil in the individual mandate section of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  Boil it down, and it comes to this:  Next year, every American adult will be required by law to pay for abortions.

Mandated coverage of abortion begins.  The ink is barely dry on President Obama's Commandment that the Catholic church and everyone else provide free birth control to all employees, and already Washington state is headed for the real goal of liberals — free abortions for everyone!  Nearly 40 years after the Supreme Court ruled that abortion on demand is a constitutionally protected right (voiding the right to life declared in the Declaration of Independence) the government is working on making abortion free in the name of women's health.

Washington State may become first to require abortion coverage.  At a time when many states are making it harder for women to get abortions, Washington state appears headed in the opposite direction.

Obama's War on Religious Liberty.  Welcome to the real ObamaCare, whereby a handful of leftists in Washington, D.C., impose the views of their big-money donors on more than 300 million Americans.  If the Obama mandate for contraception remains intact, then liberals will next demand that Americans pay for other objectionable items that are not really medical care.  We can expect future mandates, under the guise of "health care," to include sex-change operations, late-term abortions, embryonic stem-cell use and a variety of other procedures that many Americans do not support and certainly do not want to be compelled to foot the bill for.

Komen has its awareness raised.  In America today, few activities are as profitable as a "nonprofit."  Planned Parenthood receives almost half a billion dollars — or about 50 percent of its revenues — in taxpayer funding.

More about Planned Parenthood.

NH House Votes to Strip Abortion Providers of Taxpayer Funds.  This morning [1/18/2012], the New Hampshire House of Representatives passed HB 228 by an overwhelming margin of 207 to 147, prioritizing state-controlled family planning dollars away from abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood.  The funding is prioritized to public and private entities that provide comprehensive health care to women and do not perform abortions.

Planned Parenthood - Abortions make up 91% of services; receives over $487 million in federal funding.  The Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List), a pro-life Washington D.C. based organization, posted financial information on Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA). ... "In 2010, abortion procedures made up 91% (329,445) of Planned Parenthood's services for pregnant women, while prenatal services and adoption referrals account for only 8.6% (31,098) and 0.2% (841), respectively."  "Planned Parenthood reports to have served 'three million people' and performed 329,445 abortions, meaning that 11% of PPFA clients received an abortion.'

House GOP revives abortion issue, irks Obama.  After a six-month respite from fights over federal funding of abortion, House Republicans are revisiting the battle with a bill aimed at severing all ties between President Obama's health care law and insuring, performing or obtaining abortions.

15 House Democrats Join in Passing Amendment to Stop Obamacare Abortion Funding.  Fifteen House Democrats joined 236 House Republicans to pass the Protect Life Act, 251-172, on Thursday [10/13/2011].  The legislation would amend the Democrats' Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to prohibit federal funds from being spent on any health plan that includes coverage of abortion services.  The bill also provides conscience protections for health care workers who oppose abortion.

Obama: Our Henry VIII.  The administration is seeking to coerce Catholics to act against their consciences on two fronts:  on sterilization, contraceptives and abortion, and on the definition of marriage.  Obamacare regulations proposed by the Department of Health and Services on Aug. 1 would require every private health plan in America to cover sterilizations as well as all Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives, including "emergency contraceptives."  These include drugs such as ulipristal, which can cause abortions both before and after an embryo implants in a mother's womb.

A fed takeover: Funding an abortion provider in NH.  The state [of New Hampshire] used to contract with Planned Parenthood of Northern New England to provide family medical services.  But citing the organization's practice of performing abortions, the elected council voted this summer not to renew the contract.  [Sen. Jeanne] Shaheen thought this was unacceptable, so she urged the federal Department of Health and Human Services to bypass the state's elected officials and award Planned Parenthood the contract anyway.  The contract was and is funded with federal money.  The will of the state's elected council has been overridden.

Obama's culture of death.  President Obama is on the verge of achieving his liberal revolution.  His goal is to destroy our Judeo-Christian culture and replace it with European-style radical secularism.  The administration is now contemplating forcing health insurance companies to provide free birth control — including the "morning-after" pill — as part of Obamacare.  The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is seriously considering adding contraception to the list of services that must be fully covered by insurers without charging co-payments.

U.S. vs. Indiana.  Last month, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels signed legislation that denies public funding to any health care provider that performs abortions.  Hospitals are exempt from the law, so the most significant impact is on Planned Parenthood, which is the largest provider of health care to women in the state. ... Several other states are debating similar legislation.

Judge allows Indiana to cut Planned Parenthood funds.  Indiana won a key victory in its fight to cut off public funding for Planned Parenthood on Wednesday [5/11/2011] when a federal judge refused to block a tough new abortion law, a move that could boost Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels' image among social conservatives as he considers running for president.

House Bans Federal Dollars for Abortions.  The House of Representatives moved by a vote of 251-175 to further limit federal funds from being used to provide abortions Wednesday [5/4/2011].  The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act codifies into law the so-called "Hyde Amendment," which prohibits federal funds in appropriations bills from being spent on abortions.

Pelosi Sends Out Pro-Abortion Fundraising Email for Mother's Day.  Nancy Pelosi and democrats are absolutely outraged that Republicans would dare pass legislation that will ban taxpayer funded abortions.  According to democrats, it's the American taxpayer's obligation to pay for abortion.

Democrats Invoke 'Women's Rights' In Opposing Ban on Federal Funding of Abortions.  The debate at the mark-up session for the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act ended in a 23-14 vote on Thursday [3/3/2011], sending the bill from committee to House leadership and its eventual debate on the floor of the House of Representatives.  But the four-hour session leading up to the vote was a contentious discussion with the Republicans focusing on the need to not force Americans to pay for abortions through taxation and the Democrats insisting any restriction on abortion reflects the GOP's efforts to deny women's rights.

House Dems Say They Support Taxpayer Funding of Abortion.  A group of House Democrats — asked directly if they support the use of federal (taxpayer) funds to pay for abortion — said yes, they do.  At press conference on Wednesday [2/9/2011], the Democrats also voiced their opposition to two Republican-sponsored bills that would prohibit federal funding of abortion.

Abortion as a Tea Party Issue.  What do you do after a repeal — a repeal that is stalled in the obstinate Harry Reid-run Senate?  Move on to HR-3, to do something that the old leadership claimed it had done: keep taxpayer money out of the business of funding abortion.  As Boehner said while introducing HR-3:  "A ban on taxpayer funding of abortion is the will of the people and ought to be the law of the land.  But current law — particularly as enforced by this administration — does not reflect the will of the people."

Obamacare's Baby Death Panels.  [Scroll down]  Remember, during the president's first year in office, when the Senate tabled the amendment introduced by Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, which would have banned federal funds from providing for abortion in the universal health care reform bill?  Then the House and Senate, on secret Sunday sessions, passed an omnibus bill and its provision that also overturned the 1988 Dornan amendment, which prevented taxpayer dollars from funding abortions in Washington, D.C.  (Tragically, that omnibus bill also appropriated $648.5 million for international family planning funding — an increase of $103 million over 2009 — and contained funding for Planned Parenthood and for the United Nations Population Fund, both of which have pro-abortion agendas.)  Next will likely be the Hyde amendment, which prohibits the same when it comes to federal spending.

Obamacare, Genocide, and the War on the Unborn.  What lies ahead, if Obamacare goes forward, can be seen in New Zealand.  The new government policy in New Zealand was preceded by the completion of a report on the "cost effectiveness" of aborting Down syndrome babies.  It was determined that it was just too expensive to allow these babies to live.  One can easily envision such a policy developing under Obamacare, considering that we have a President and an administration that do not regard innocent unborn human beings as life worthy of life.

New But Unimproved:  Abortion Funding in the White House Health Plan.  The new health care outline posted by the White House this morning appears to aggravate concerns about a new abortion funding scheme that is not covered by any limitation, including the traditional Hyde amendment governing annual appropriations to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Stupak-Pitts amendment adopted by the House of Representative last November in its version of health reform.  Instead, the White House plan would invest $11 billion in an expansion of Community Health Centers, others known as Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), with no limitation at all.

Endangered Species:  Do pro-life Democrats have a future?  Three months after his career-defining health care vote, Michigan Democratic representative Bart Stupak still bristles at questions surrounding the deal he cut with President Obama on abortion.  "The executive order says public funds cannot be used for abortion," says Stupak, and those who say otherwise are "dishonest."  Stupak may not be dishonest, but he's certainly mistaken about the executive order that secured his vote, and the votes of other self-proclaimed pro-life Democrats, for Obamacare.

Three Different Provisions to Fund Abortions in Obama's Health Care Plan.  President Obama's health care plan would use federal dollars to pay for abortions in at least three ways. ... All three of these measures were slipped into the Senate bill at the last minute in the manager's amendment.

Sebelius:  Yes, you will pay for abortions under Nelson's deal, like it or not.  At Hot Air, Captain Ed has a tape of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius discussing how the so-called "abortion premium" in the Senate health care reform bill will work.  Is she suggesting that everyone will have to pay an abortion premium, and that accounting tricks will be used just to make it look like you're not forced to pay for abortions?

Does the right of conscience not count to Obama?  President Barack Obama promised during the 2008 campaign to end the "politics of division," but his decision to eliminate the "conscience clause" in federal regulation for medical professionals and his nomination of a woman who calls mothers "fetal containers" to head the White House Office of Legal Counsel are as explosively divisive as it gets.

Coburn:  Nelson agreement with leaders 'threw unborn babies under the bus'.  A number of Republican senators attacked an agreement reached between Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Senate Democratic leaders Saturday [12/19/2009], saying it would lead to the eventual reversal of more than 30 years of federal law banning abortion funding.  Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oka.) said it is "absolutely fictitious" that there is an anti-abortion provision in the Senate Democrats' reworked healthcare reform bill.

Nelson Agrees to Abortion Funding in at Least 13 States?  Harry Reid has released the manager's amendment that Ben Nelson has reportedly agreed to vote for, meaning that the Senate bill has 60 votes.  The abortion language includes the phony segregation of funding language that was rejected in the House.  It would allow individual states to opt out of the abortion-funding program — in other words, the default position is to pay for abortions; states would have to pass legislation to not fund abortions.

A 'Dear Congresswoman' Letter Protesting ObamaCare.  [Scroll down]  Of particular concern to those of us who are opponents of using public funds to pay for abortions and for many family-planning programs is the continued insistence that the legislation permit such expenditures.  In spite of protestations to the contrary, the efforts that have been made to offer amendments that would forthrightly limit such expenditures have been rejected by the relevant House committees.  The existing language will, undoubtedly, be interpreted as to require these services when the plan is active.  When our legislature is faced with an issue that so many citizens view as abhorrent and, for many, immoral, it is not asking too much that public funds not be used for them.

Obama's Conscience Claws:  Will You be Forced to Perform Abortions?  Modern liberals have a habit of denying the inevitable consequences of their policies.  They refuse to concede that a healthcare bureaucracy created and run by persons who embrace utilitarian views of human life might unsettle Americans concerned that government would, as Senator Chuck Grassley put it this week, "pull the plug on Grandma."  And they seem baffled by those who find President Obama's professed desire to "reduce the number of abortions" difficult to reconcile with his efforts to subsidize and expand access to them.

Ten Questions Politicians Won't Answer.  [#2] What programs will you cut and whose taxes will you raise to pay for health-care reform? ... [#3] What earmarks or pet projects that you have sponsored will you sacrifice to help finance the cost of health-care reform? ... [#4] Will you vote for a public option that requires taxpayer-funded abortion?

ObamaCare Likely to Mandate Free "Sex-Change" Surgeries.  When asked by Senator Orin Hatch (R-UT) whether President Obama's proposed socialized healthcare plan will mandate taxpayer funded abortion, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) admitted that it will require "any service deemed medically necessary or medically appropriate."  It now appears that the plan's "medically appropriate" umbrella is far more expansive than most Americans could have imagined.

Dirty Secret No. 2 in Obamacare:  I find it striking that Obama's ethics similarly have allowed him already to pass more laws increasing the terminations of life in the womb than any administration since Roe v. Wade.  To add insult to injury, Congress repeatedly has rejected amendments to this universal health care bill that would prevent federal funds from being used for abortions.

Truth and Advocates for Life Triumph!  An independent polling company is out with a new survey with stunning news: Family Research Council's ad warning of President Obama's government takeover of health care is being highly effective.  HCD Research used its MediaCurves.com website to poll Americans' ideas about ObamaCare.  FRC's ads criticize the President's plan for two fatal flaws:  it will force Americans to pay for abortion-on-demand and it will lead to rationed health care for all Americans. ... What this poll shows is that federally-funded abortion is not a wedge issue, as Leftists contend, not a "distraction," as President Obama maintains.  It is vitally important.

Serfs Up!  The more Americans learn about ObamaCare, the more concerns they have.  Opposition to mandatory abortion funding is strong — up in the high 70-percent figures according to some reliable polls.  This is not just pro-life sentiment speaking. Yes, the majority of Americans have told the Gallup organization they are pro-life.  But this strong reaction goes even further.  Millions of Americans who count themselves pro-choice are opposed to being forced themselves to pay for abortion-on-demand and are conscientiously opposed to forcing their pro-life neighbors to pay for it.

Abortion Haunting Obama.  A coalition of Catholic Bishops, concerned about that possibility, sent a letter to Congress and the White House in mid-July demanding that health care reform "excludes abortion coverage or any other provisions that threaten the sanctity of life."  Religious conservatives aren't the only political demographic uneasy with the abortion implications of Obama's health care revamp, either.  In late June, about two dozen House Democrats sent a letter to Nancy Pelosi pledging opposition to any reform bill that includes abortion coverage.

Pelosi Again Dodges Question of Tax-Funded Abortions in Health Care Bill.  Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for a second time dodged a question from CNSNews.com Friday [7/31/2009] about whether she supported prohibiting abortion funding in the health-care reform bill.  At a press conference on Friday, CNSNews.com asked:  "Could you please give me a yes-or-no answer on whether or not you personally, Speaker Pelosi, support expressly prohibiting the funding of abortion through the federally subsidized health plan created by the health-care reform bill."  Pelosi did not give a yes-or-no answer.

Hidden Within ObamaCare, an Abortion Mandate.  Government-owned health care will place bureaucrats in Washington in charge of your health care options.  This is wrong.  Health care decisions must be made by you and your doctor.  However, there is another very serious concern with health care reform plans in Congress, especially the plan being offered in the House.  It will lead to mandated coverage of abortion, forcing employers and insurance providers to cover abortion as a health care procedure and subsidizing abortions with the tax dollars of pro-life Americans who have grave moral objections.

Here's a clue:  Are his lips moving?
 Is Obama lying about government funding of abortion?  In a Wednesday [8/19/2009] conference call with health care reform supporters, President Barack Obama called "untrue" and "a fabrication" charges that the White House-backed legislation would result in "government funding of abortions."  But Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, says it was Obama who "brazenly misrepresented the abortion-related component of the health care legislation that his congressional allies and staff have crafted."

Obama caught in Pinocchio moment.  Last week, I wondered whether President Obama was telling a whopper during a conference call on August 19 when he dismissed as "fabrications" charges by the National Right to Life Committee and others that a White House-backed health reform bill contained government subsidies for abortion.  According to the Annenberg Public Policy Center's FactCheck.org, it was President Obama who was not telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Sen. Mark Warner:  'No Place In Constitution That Says Health Care'.  During a town hall meeting at the Fredericksburg Expo Center, Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.) said there is "no place in the Constitution" that mentions health care or education, or even gives individuals the right to own a telephone.

Obama May Need Sense of Crisis to Revive Health-Care Overhaul.  President Barack Obama returns to Washington next week in search of one thing that can revive his health-care overhaul:  a sense of crisis.

ObamaCare's brave new world.  Sarah Palin ignited a political firestorm when she worried that "death panels" would deny end-of-life treatment to her son with Down syndrome.  In fact, ObamaCare would more likely see to it that people like Trig never even make it out of the womb.  The outlook for children found to have disabilities in utero is bleak now — because the medical-ethics establishment has spent decades pushing for their abortion.

The convenient fantasies of President Obama.  There is an element of convenient fantasy as well in Obama's health care statements to date.  We are going to save money by spending money.  We are going to solve our fiscal problems with a program that will increase the national debt by $1,000,000,000,000 over a decade.  We are going to guarantee you can keep your current insurance with a bill that encourages your employer to stop offering it.  The list goes on.  We are going to improve health care for seniors by cutting $500,000,000,000 from Medicare.  We aren't going to insure illegal aliens, except that we won't have any verification provisions to see that they can't apply and get benefits.

Americans Firmly Against Government Abortion Plans.  A new poll shows that 58% of Americans don't want abortions to be paid for as part of any new public insurance plan.  Yet four of the five health care plans floating around Congress include language that would allow abortions to be paid for with public money.  The only one that doesn't — the Republican plan in the Senate — probably won't go anywhere.

'Abortion President' Makes False, Misleading Statements on Health Bill, Congressman Says.  President Barack Obama's assertion that the Democrat-backed health care overhaul would not publicly fund abortions is "demonstrably false and extraordinarily misleading," Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) told the conservative Values Voters summit on Friday [9/28/2009].  Smith predicted that abortions would increase by as much a one third if the Democrats' health care legislation is enacted.

48% Want Abortion Coverage Banned in Health Care Plan.  The health care reform legislation working its way through Congress faces many obstacles primarily because it touches so many aspects of life.  The abortion issue is one more with the potential to create a lose-lose situation for advocates of the plan.

Senate panel blocks GOP's abortion, illegals measures.  Senate Republicans on Wednesday [9/30/2009] failed in their bids to strengthen provisions to prevent both taxpayer funding of abortions and illegal immigrants from obtaining access to government tax credits in the health care reform bill.

Fostering Abortion With Soviet Gusto.  Europe, of course, is a decadent place where spoiled, cheese-eating hedonists tolerate socialist taxation and sexual perversion of almost any kind.  European national health systems even pay for abortions.  President Obama has tried to be very clear that any American system won't — "Under our plan," he told Congress on Sept. 9, "no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions" — but that hasn't kept the issue from flaring up.

Congressman Says He Now Has 'About 40 Likeminded Democrats'.  Rep. Bart Stupak (D.-Mich.) told CNSNews.com yesterday [10/22/2009] that he has organized a group of "about 40 likeminded Democrats" who will vote to kill the health-care bill if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) does not allow a floor vote on his amendment to prohibit federal funds from going to insurance plans that cover abortion.

Absolutism in Disguise:  Yes, Obamacare does mean federally funded abortion.  During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama adopted the two-step strategy on abortion that has become standard among liberal politicians:  oppose abortion as a matter of personal conviction but deny that that conviction is relevant to public policy.  This rhetorical sleight of hand is meant to accomplish two things...

Obama Uses Semantics To Avoid Abortion Issue.  A pro-life Congressman is claiming that President Barack Obama told him in a phone conversation that when he addressed Congress on Sept. 9 and said "under our plan no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions" he was not talking about any of the bills currently pending on the Hill, but his own plan — which only exists theoretically.

Abortion Care.  Anyone who believes that abortion won't eventually become a part of government run health care needs to start paying attention; you're kidding yourself.

The Ellsworth Abortion Amendment Is a Fraud.  President Barack Obama is about to move one step closer to delivering on a big campaign promise:  abortion coverage in his health plan. ... Under the Ellsworth amendment, Americans will still be forced to pay for other people's elective abortions.  It's like a shell game — all it does is require the public option to contract with private businesses to shuffle the money.  The government will still take your money through a mandatory premium and, under the Ellsworth plan, will give it to a private contractor to pay the abortionist's bill.

Reid Introduces Senate Health Bill That Mandates Federally Subsidized Abortion.  Senate Majority Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) late Wednesday [11/18/2009] published the final text of a Senate health care bill that would mandate federally subsidized abortion.  The mandate appears on page 120 of the 2,074-page bill under the seemingly innocuous heading:  'Assured Availability of Varied Coverage Through Exchanges."

Feinstein Says It's 'Morally Correct' to Force Taxpayers to Fund Abortion.  Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D.-Calif.) told CNSNews.com that using tax dollars from pro-life Americans to pay for insurance plans that cover abortion is morally correct.

Abortion is Not Healthcare says Liberty Counsel's Mat Staver.  Without an explicit exclusion for abortion, the proposed Senate healthcare bill will fund abortion.  The majority of Americans do not support abortion on demand and do not want to fund the destruction of innocent human life.

Lieberman weighs in.  When asked whether he thinks it is "morally right" to take tax dollars from pro-life Americans and use it to pay for health insurance plans that cover abortion, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said that the government makes people pay for things they think are immoral "all the time."

When the Chips Are Down, All Democrats Are Liberals.  The Senate is moving slowly toward the first cloture vote around 1:00 a.m. on Monday [12/21/2009], heading to a final vote on the health-care bill Thursday evening.  At this juncture the most realistic avenue for upsetting the freight train is Rep. Bart Stupak, who unlike Sen. Ben Nelson, was not snookered (willingly or otherwise) into abandoning his pro-life constituents.  As others have pointed out, Nebraska pro-life voters like voters in every state will, under the Harry Reid "compromise," have their tax dollars go toward subsidizing abortions in states that choose not to "opt out" of abortion coverage.

Sens. Kerry, Casey, Murkowski, Murray, Udall, and Shaheen
Won't Answer Directly If It is 'Morally Right' to Force Taxpayers to Fund Abortion.  Six senators, including former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), when asked if it is morally right to take tax dollars from pro-life Americans to pay for health insurance plans that cover abortion, did not answer the question directly, but instead expressed their thoughts about the Senate health-care legislation.

Sen. Crapo:  'We Should Not Use Federal Dollars to Fund Abortions'.  Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) said "we should not use federal dollars to fund abortion' and that it is not morally right to take taxpayer money from pro-life Americans to pay for health insurance plans that cover abortion.

Rep. Stupak:  White House Pressuring Me to Keep Quiet.  Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) said the White House and the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives have been pressuring him not to speak out on the "compromise" abortion language in the Senate version of the health care bill.

End It, Don't Amend It.  Harry Reid offers the nation a mephitic Senate health-care bill that retains the worst features of Nancy Pelosi's creation and adds fresh horrors of its own:  It will force Americans to finance abortions and jack up some Americans' Medicare taxes by 34 percent.

The End of Insurance.  Barack Obama's health care plan ensures spiraling costs and will convert health insurance companies into cost-plus health reimbursement utilities, or else bankrupt them completely.  Health insurance as we know it (think home/auto/life) will no longer exist.  The president's plan also provides for taxpayer-funded abortion, making abortion even cheaper and increasing its frequency.

Abortion and the Health Bill.  It's now becoming clear that Barack Obama is willing to put everything on the table in order to be the president who passes health-care reform.  Everything, that is, except a ban on federal funding for abortion.

Dangerous Negotiations Over Abortion.  America's Catholic bishops are being used in a negotiating ploy that could lead to enactment of Obamacare and to federal funding of abortion.

If Republicans keep ignoring abortion, they'll lose in the midterm elections.  The health-care debate has come down to a fight over abortion.  And the face of that fight is Bart Stupak, a nine-term congressman from Michigan who supports the reform effort but has said he won't vote for a bill without a strong prohibition on federal funding for abortions — even if it means no reform at all.

GOP House Whip:  Executive Order Can't Override Abortion Law.  House Republican Whip Rep. Eric Cantor released a collection of statements this afternoon showing any executive order President Obama makes on abortion cannot override a law duly passed by Congress.  Several House Democrats are refusing to vote for the bill unless there is a safeguard against federal funding of abortions.

Federally funded abortions are in our future.  Defenders argue that:  (1) nowhere does the bill say funds will go toward abortion;  (2) the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for abortion, applies.  Both assertions are true — up to a point.  The issue isn't what the bill says; it's what it doesn't say.

Good Riddance, Congressman Stupak.  [Bart] Stupak accepted a bogus Executive Order on abortion in exchange for leading — actually misleading — a small but critical group of pro-life Democrats into voting for the pro-abortion health care bill.  Obama's Executive Order — and on this point pro-choice and pro-life legal experts agree — changes nothing in the new Obamacare law's abortion funding provisions.  Stupak became a household word last fall only because he held out against Obama administration pressure and Pelosi pressure.  He held on and held on and then, when it counted most, he gave in.

White House Backs Kenyan Constitution Allowing Abortion.  The Obama administration is offering incentives to Kenya to approve a controversial new constitution that would legalize abortion for the first time, promising that passage will "allow money to flow" into the nation's coffers, including U.S. aid.  But there's a hitch to that pledge.  A federal law known as the Siljander Amendment passed in 2006 makes it illegal for the U.S. government to lobby on abortion in other countries — and three U.S. lawmakers say they want a federal investigation into the promises made by the administration.

Yes, We Kenya!  President Obama made much of the Executive Order he signed last March.  It was supposed to stop federal funding of abortion.  It was given as a fig leaf to formerly pro-life Democrats who had voted for ObamaCare and enabled it to pass, narrowly, in the House of Representatives.  Most pro-life Americans knew the Obama order was a charade.  We have had this administration pushing vigorously for abortion-on-demand from the first day they took office.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had hardly taken her oath of office before she told a House Foreign Affairs committee hearing early in 2009 that "sexual and reproductive rights and health" were a major goal of the Obama administration.

Obamacare abortions on tap.  Where have you gone, Bart Stupak?  Even more importantly, where is your voice, Kathy Dahlkemper?  These Democrats — from Michigan and Pennsylvania respectively — were two of the final six supposedly pro-life House members who voted to pass Obamacare.  They sold their anti-abortion principles for the fool's gold of an executive order purportedly banning the use of federal funds for destroying unborn children.  Now comes the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), in a finding released yesterday [7/12/2010], to show proof positive just how tarnished that fool's gold actually is.

Direct Taxpayer Funding of Abortion Through High-Risk Insurance Pools:  If you want proof that President Obama's Executive Order on taxpayer-funded abortion was a sham, look no further than Pennsylvania, says House Republican Leader John Boehner (Ohio).  Boehner and other Republicans point to reports that the Health and Human Services Department is giving Pennsylvania $160 million to set up a new high-risk insurance pool that will cover any abortion that is legal in the state.

U.S. Taxpayers to Subsidize New U.N. Agency Promoting Abortion.  The U.S. will subsidize a new $500-million United Nations agency that conservatives say will likely promote an abortion agenda.  In what the United Nations deemed as a historic move, the U.N. General Assembly unanimously voted on July 2 to approve "U.N. Women," an agency intended to accelerate progress in achieving gender equality and women's empowerment.

Obama Administration Approves First Direct Taxpayer Funding of Abortion.  If you want proof that President Obama's Executive Order on taxpayer-funded abortion was a sham, look no further than Pennsylvania, says House Republican Leader John Boehner (Ohio).  Boehner and other Republicans point to reports that the Health and Human Services Department is giving Pennsylvania $160 million to set up a new high-risk insurance pool that will cover any abortion that is legal in the state.

Maryland Offers Federally Funded Abortions under Obamacare.  Maryland will join Pennsylvania as the second state to use federal tax dollars to pay for abortions under the new health care law signed by President Barack Obama in March, according to information released by Maryland's State Health Insurance Plan.

The Kenya connection.  The Kenyan president wants a new constitution, one that opens the door to abortion on demand.  President Obama is willing to use U.S. taxpayer dollars to persuade voters to approve the updated governing document, which would loosen regulations designed to protect the unborn, establish Muslim family courts and create a right to homosexual marriage.  It's not unusual that Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki would see enactment of the provisions as a "government project," but Mr. Obama is on shaky legal ground when he commits U.S. government resources to it.

The Editor says...
 Obama seems to care a lot more about Kenya than he does about the U.S.  I think I know why.

Taxpayer-funded abortions are here.  It now appears that two more states, Maryland and New Mexico, will join Pennsylvania in using tax dollars to kill unborn children.  As the National Right to Life Committee discovered, federally funded high-risk insurance pools in these states include "pre-existing condition" insurance plans that cover abortion.  The pools have received $5 billion from Congress to provide benefits until 2014, when Obamacare kicks in.  This is more evidence of the emptiness of President Obama's executive order that promised the federal takeover of health care wouldn't bankroll abortion.

Abortion Funding in Defense Authorization Bill.  It's worth mentioning that in addition to an amendment to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell and a provision inserted by Harry Reid to implement the Dream Act that would give illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children a path to citizenship, the defense authorization bill also contains an amendment from Roland Burris of Illinois that would allow abortions at military hospitals.

Planned Parenthood, NARAL Welcome SCOTUS Ruling on ObamaCare.  In response to Thursday's Supreme Court ruling that the president's signature healthcare law is constitutional as a tax, the nation's abortion industry expressed pleasure at the outcome. [...] Planned Parenthood notes that as a result of ObamaCare's newly declared constitutional status, beginning August 1st, "birth control will be treated like any other preventive prescription under the Affordable Care Act, and will be available without co-pays or deductibles."

Rep. Steve King Says Obama Is Governing Like a 'King'.  Pointing to the Health and Human Services regulation that will require virtually all health care plans to cover sterilization, artificial contraception and abortifacients for free, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said that President Barack Obama is governing like a "king."

Preserving Our Pledge of Allegiance.  [Scroll down]  The Obama HHS mandate requires that individuals and organizations provide or pay for services that are contrary to their religious beliefs.  These services include abortions, the provision of abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception.  To the contrary, Catholic teaching requires that Catholics and Catholic organizations avoid both directly paying for and facilitating these practices.  We are at the point now where an individual who is morally opposed to abortion or contraception must pay an insurance premium so that others can abort and must purchase contraception for his or her employees.  By [Joseph] Pieper's standard, the HHS actions are indefensible and, "to the simplest kind of thinking," an unfit exercise of power.

Obamacare and Abortion.  The Supreme Court's controversial decision last week to uphold the constitutionality of Obamacare is re-igniting the debate over the president's health care overhaul and public funding of abortions.  Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, told the Free Beacon recently that "there are a number of different components in Obamacare that would expand abortion" as well as several provisions to fund abortion.  Johnson explained that abortion funding "is always included unless it's explicitly excluded."


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Updated May 13, 2013.

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