Doctors Tell the Truth About ObamaCare

The Democratic Party has produced a TV ad purporting to show Rep. Paul Ryan throwing grandma off a cliff for opposing ObamaCare.  A couple of San Antonio doctors have responded with the following ad:

Rush Limbaugh Talks About Another Way Obama Copied Romneycare

Obama's Model: Romney Denied Conscience Rights and Persecuted Catholic Institutions First

Frick and Frack

As the liberal Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney not only provided the forerunner for Obamacare, like Obama, he opposed conscience rights and exemptions for faith-based institutions under Romneycare.

From WorldNetDaily

By Joe Kovacs

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney flipped in 2005 to take a stance similar to the Obama administration on hospital mandates for the morning-after pill for rape victims, according to news reports from seven years ago.

According to a Boston Globe article dated Dec. 9, 2005, Romney reversed course on the state’s emergency-contraception law, saying all hospitals in Massachusetts would be obligated to provide the morning-after pill to rape victims.

Will American Catholics Be Forced Into 'Recusancy' System?

From Catholic World News

Looking forward to the possible ramifications of the Obama administration’s HHS mandate, Matthew Cullinan Hoffman wonders whether American Catholics of the 21st century might be put in the same position as the Recusants in England under Queen Elizabeth I.

The HHS mandate stipulates that institutions which do not provide health-care coverage that includes subsidies for contraception and sterilization will face substantial fines. Similarly, Hoffman notes, in Elizabethan England, wealthy Catholics could pay a fine for their failure to embrace the newly established Church of England. Looking forward, he suggests:

As under the old recusancy system, some larger and wealthier institutions might be able to sustain the financial burdens, but smaller ones will simply go bankrupt and be forced to fold, or will publicly violate their religious beliefs to remain in existence. The outcome will be painfully similar to that of other policies that impose morally offensive requirements on Catholics, such as requiring adoption agencies to give children to homosexuals.

Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• Twenty-first Century Recusants (Catholic World Report)

The Bishops Are Wrong and Have No One But Themselves To Blame for Obama’s Persecution of Catholics

 One need not be a libertarian to recognize the truth in the following column.  Forcing any organization, company or individual to purchase or do anything in violation of their conscience is wrong, not only for religious organizations, and should be recognized as such by the righteous movement building against Obama and his mandates.  We also heartily agree that the American bishops have precipitated this crisis by "their full-throated endorsement of the modern welfare state."  The American bishops have the right and responsibility to speak out on the broad moral issues of the day.  They exceed their responsibility and competence when they address the details of public policy.  That is the arena for competent lay faithful.  It was the American bishops who were in full-throat support for Obamacare.  Did it not occur to them that shackles might follow the shekels? 

The bishops' responsibility is to teach, govern and sanctify within their dioceses.  The past decade revealed how miserably a majority of them have carried out their primary duties.  They should get their own houses in order and dispense with lobbyists.

From LewRockwell.com

By Eric Giunta

This past Sunday, bishops around the United States delivered to their congregations a short pastoral letter urging prayer, fasting, and legislative lobbying against the Obama administration’s announcement that all employers, most religious institutions included, will soon have to subsidize their employees’ contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs.

Given the terribly low expectations most Catholics have of their bishops, it is no surprise that many of my co-religionists, surveying the now-daily condemnations by clerics and laymen (on both the orthodox "right" and the dissenting "left") speak of a proverbial "waking" of "the sleeping giant." But I’m afraid a dose of ecclesiastical realism is in order. All indications are that the bishops’ approach to these events is woefully off the mark and cannot but backfire against them in the long run.

Romney Advisor Predicts No Repeal of ObamaCare

From The Hill

ByJulian Pacquet

Mitt Romney adviser Norm Coleman, a former senator from Minnesota, predicted the GOP won't repeal the Democrats' healthcare reform law even if a Republican candidate defeats President Obama this November.

Senator Calls for Federal Investigation of Governor Nikki Haley

U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, has called for a federal investigation into “whether Gov. Nikki Haley exploited taxpayer dollars for political purposes” by allegedly dictating the findings of a nonpartisan health care panel, according to a news release.

Read the rest of this entry >>

Donald Trump Explains ObamaCare

Let me get this straight . . . ... We're going to be "gifted" with a health care plan we are forced to purchase and fined if we don't, Which purportedly covers at least ten million more people, without adding a single new doctor, but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that didn't read it but exempted themselves from it, and signed by a President who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, for which we'll be taxed for four years before any benefits take effect, by a government which has already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that's broke!!!!! 'What the hell could possibly go wrong?'

 

How Many Canadians Seek Medical Care Outside of Canada?

From National Center for Policy Analysis

There are a growing number of companies providing Canadians with easier access to medically necessary treatments outside the country.  Of course, leaving Canada for medically necessary treatment is nothing new; Canadians have been doing so for many years, either in response to the unavailability of certain treatments, in response to concerns about quality, or in response to long wait times for medically necessary treatment, says Nadeem Esmail, the Fraser Institute's former Director of Health System Performance Studies and Manager of the Alberta Policy Research Center.

How many Canadians receive treatment outside Canada each year, though?  Esmail estimates based on the results of the Fraser Institute's Waiting Your Turn survey and the counts of procedures completed each year in Canada:

• An estimated 44,794 Canadian in total received treatment outside Canada in 2010.  

• This is a notable increase from the 41,006 Canadians estimated to have received treatment outside Canada in 2009.

• The national increase in the estimated number of patients treated outside Canada occurred at the same time as a national increase in the median wait time for medically necessary treatment -- specifically, the national median wait time for treatment after consultation with a specialist was 8.0 weeks in 2009 and 9.3 weeks in 2010.

This estimate likely underestimates the actual number of patients who received treatment outside the country in 2010, says Esmail.

Source: Nadeem Esmail, "Leaving Canada for Medical Care," Fraser Institute, March/April 2011.

For text:

http://www.fraserinstitute.org/uploadedFiles/fraser-ca/Content/research-news/research/articles/leaving-canada-for-medical-care.pdf

Defund Obamacare's Secret Stash

It would be funny were they not so evil.

Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann has characterized the following slush fund, buried deep within Obamacare, as "gangster government," and that is precisely what it is.  A Democrat Congress abdicated its responsibilities and a thoroughly corrupt Obama regime behaved  the way corrupt Chicago politicians do.  It is precisely for this kind of thuggish defiance of Constitutional law that we have called for the President's impeachment.

From The Heritage Foundation Morning Bell

While Obamacare is rightly notorious as a fiscal nightmare, less well known is just how massively it transferred power from Congress to the executive branch. In fact, the full scope of Congress’s abdication is still unknown. What is now known, however, is that deeply buried within Obamacare was a $105 billion slush fund that assures its implementation into the future, no matter what future voters think or want.

House Republicans Taking America Back, Keeping Pledge to America

The House is under new management and they are off to a great start -- keeping their "pledge to America" in votes today to defund Planned Parenthood and ObamaCare.  

May they press on and let those 23 Senate Democrats up for reelection in 2012 defend their votes for bloated, out-of-control, unconstitutional, and nearly bankrupt government.  

And let Obama veto himself back to Chicago too!

How the Stupid Party Gets Its Name

From RedState

By Erick Erickson

Today was another fine example of how the Republican Party gets labeled as the stupid party.

Senator Dick Durbin hinted two days ago that the Senate Democrats would be unified in their opposition to repeal Obamacare except for one or two. In other words, the GOP had the opportunity to get Democrats to jump ship.

But Democrats have signaled that they want to “fix” Obamacare, not repeal it. So the GOP gladly obliged. Without any obstruction, the GOP went along with the Democrats’ changes to the onerous 1099 provision.

You may say that is a good thing, and you would be right. Except that doing this, instead of keeping the pain in place until Obamacare is repealed, makes the pain less and less. And as the pain becomes less and less because Republicans work with Democrats to “fix” Obamacare, it becomes less and less likely that Obamacare will actually get repealed.

No Democrat had to vote for repeal because they knew they’d get a chance to say they were “fixing” Obamacare. And the headline will now be that the GOP and Democrats in the Senate are cooperating on a “fix” instead of repeal.

On top of that, however, is the stupidity — sheer stupidity — of certain Republicans now trying to undermine the litigation against Obamacare. I’m looking at you Senators Lindsey Graham and John Barasso.

Barasso and Graham have proposed to let states opt-out of having the citizens of the several states be placed in the individual mandate.

If states can opt out of the individual mandate, they no longer have grounds to keep up their lawsuit in federal court. Why? Because if they can choose to opt out of the individual mandate, it is no longer a constitutional obstruction to them.

Further, proposing this and other changes to Obamacare gives Justice Anthony Kennedy plausible grounds to say, “Look! Obamacare is severable and it can survive without the individual mandate.”

Tinkering with Obamacare undermines both the lawsuit against Obamacare and the effort for full repeal. It doesn’t take a genius to know that, but it does take the stupid party to ignore it.

Federal Judge in Florida Strikes Down Parts of Obamacare as Unconstitutional

A federal judge in Florida says the Obama administration's health overhaul is unconstitutional, siding with 26 states that had sued to block it.

U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson on Monday accepted without trial the states' argument that the new law violates people's rights by forcing them to buy health insurance by 2014 or face penalties.

Attorneys for the administration had argued that the states did not have standing to challenge the law and that the case should be dismissed.

The case is likely to go to the U.S. Supreme Court. Two other federal judges have upheld the insurance requirement, but a federal judge in Virginia also ruled the insurance requirement unconstitutional.

DeMint Introduces Obamacare Repeal in Senate

Senator Jim DeMint

Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) introduced legislation today to fully repeal the Democrats’ government health care takeover that President Obama signed into law March 23, 2010. 

Thirty-four Republicans have already cosponsored this bill.

The Senator's news release follows:

“Republicans are standing with the American people who are demanding we repeal this government takeover of health care,” said Senator DeMint. “Repealing ObamaCare is vital to the future of our nation and the health of our people. ObamaCare will raise health costs, reduce choices, ration care, hike taxes, cut jobs, increase the national debt, and put bureaucrats between patients and their doctors. It’s time to start over and implement commonsense solutions that allow Americans to choose affordable plans across state lines, end frivolous lawsuits that drive up costs, and gives equitable tax treatment to those who don’t get insurance from their employer.”

Cosponsors of the repeal bill include Senators Kelly Ayotte (R-New Hampshire), John Barrasso (R-Wyoming), Roy Blunt (R-Missouri), John Boozman (R-Arkansas), Richard Burr (R-North Carolina), Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia), Dan Coats (R-Indiana), Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), Bob Corker (R-Tennessee), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), John Ensign (R-Nevada), Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), Johnny Isakson (R-Georgia), Mike Johanns (R-Nebraska), Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), Jon Kyl (R-Arizona), Mike Lee (R-Utah), John McCain (R-Arizona), Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), Jerry Moran (R-Kansas), Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), James Risch (R-Idaho), Pat Roberts (R-Kansas), Marco Rubio (R-Florida), Richard Shelby (R-Alabama), John Thune (R-South Dakota), Pat Toomey (R-Pennsylvania), David Vitter (R-Louisiana), and Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi).

“Economists have described ObamaCare as ‘fiscally dangerous,’ warning it will create barriers to job growth and increase costs at a time of great economic uncertainty,” said Senator DeMint. “American families and businesses are struggling and it’s our duty to respond quickly to their calls to repeal this bill and push for solutions that will make health care more affordable.”

• Leading Economists project that ObamaCare will add roughly $500 billion in new health care taxes, passing those costs to patients and will raise the federal budget deficit by more than $500 billion over the next 10 years and by nearly $1.5 trillion in the following decade.
• According to the Congressional Budget Office, ObamaCare will increase health care costs to families by $2,100 per year.
• The Heritage Foundation estimates that the economy will lose 670,000 jobs under the new law, many of them in the health care industry.
• An American Action Forum study finds that employers will be forced to drop employer-sponsored health care coverage for as many as 35 million Americans.
• An analysis from HSA Consulting Services concludes the new law restricts the use of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and reduces the amount of money that can be contributed to Flexible Savings Accounts (FSAs).
• As of Dec. 3, 2010, 222 waivers from ObamaCare’s annual limit requirements had been granted to businesses, labor unions, and insurers, affecting 1.5 million enrollees.
• On Dec. 13, 2010, a U.S. district court ruled that it is unconstitutional for the government to impose an individual mandate to buy health insurance.

Has RomneyCare Put ObamaCare on a Path to Repeal?

Investor's Business Daily has an excellent article by Sally Pipes on what RomneyCare has done to Massachusetts and why that experience underscores the urgency of repealing ObamaCare.

The Heritage Foundation provides the following snapshot of how Mitt Romney's plan is destroying Massachusetts:

Of the 410,000 newly insured in Massachusetts, three in four are either paying nothing or very little for their insurance and spending has exploded. 

• The health overhaul was really Medicaid expansion, and with the rolls up nearly 25 percent since 2006, Massachusetts is struggling to pay the bills.
• Despite the near-universal insurance, the state still spends $414 million on uncompensated care, an expense that was promised would disappear.
• Emergency room use has not dropped as predicted --from 2006 to 2008, emergency room use under Mass Care increased by 9 percent.

In addition, private employer insurance costs, far from dropping, have continued to increase.  A 2010 study published in the Forum for Health Economics and Policy found that health insurance premiums in Massachusetts, prior to its overhaul, increased at a rate 3.7 percent slower than the national average.  Post-overhaul, they are increasing 5.8 percent faster.  The individual mandate, as onerous as it is, is set at a level to encourage gaming the system, says Pipes.

• A family with an income of $55,000 in 2014 will face the choice of paying $4,428 a year for health insurance or a $550 fine.

• Given that insurance will be available on demand, it is rational to pay the fine until a serious illness strikes.

Obamacare Ruled Unconstitutional

Federal Judge Henry Hudson ruled this morning that Obamacare is unconstitutional.

The Virginia based federal judge determined that the federal government has no authority to require citizens to buy health insurance or pay penalties. It is expected that the ruling will give Congressional Republicans and pro-life forces added impetus to repeal the government takeover of health care opposed by an overwhelming majority of the American people. According to a recent Rasmussen poll, 60 percent favor repeal, with only 34 percent opposed.

Repealing Obamacare, State by State

From The San Diego Union-Tribune
By Tim Pawlenty

After a historic election reflecting six in ten voters wanting to repeal Obamacare, the question now facing conservatives is how.

As long as President Barack Obama holds his veto pen, undoing this misguided piece of legislation will not be easy. But we can make progress. While Congress takes important steps toward eventual repeal, governors can use their authority to stop or delay implementation of Obamacare. It must be fought not only in Washington but in state capitols.

In Minnesota, I issued an executive order directing state agencies to reject participation in Obamacare unless required by law or consistent with existing state policy. I also joined the federal lawsuit that challenges Obamacare’s individual mandate and invokes the 10th Amendment in defense of states’ rights and a proper view of federalism. Newly elected Republican governors should consider taking similar actions.

Fighting Obamacare, however, is not enough. Merely restoring the status quo of skyrocketing costs, narrowing access, and structural dysfunction would be a mistake. Our health care system needs to be more effective and affordable. Reforms should feature timeless conservative principles applied to the challenges and opportunities of our time.

The great tragedy of Obamacare is not only that we know it will fail, but that we have not implemented health care reforms that we know will succeed.

In recent years, Minnesotans have embraced innovative, conservative health care reform. We focused on improving quality and containing cost, not just expanded access. We made it easier for consumers to use HSA plans (Minnesota is second in the nation on HSAs). We provided online cost and quality information for the 100 most common health services. We passed tort reform to curb frivolous lawsuits. And we engaged the private sector as a partner, not as an opponent.

Today, Minnesotans enjoy one of the finest health care systems in the country. We continue to have some of the healthiest people in the nation and one of the lowest rates of uninsured. We have learned through trial and error what works, and we know what doesn’t.

We know that we need to give people more power over the use of their health care dollars and decisions. Today, six of every seven health care dollars is spent by someone other than the person receiving the care. Health care today is like an open bar. When someone else is paying the bill, people behave differently. For decades, this open bar approach has encouraged wasteful spending by individuals and providers rather than a sober assessment of costs and benefits. But our struggling economy and deficit-ridden budgets are flashing warning lights that closing time is near.

Obamacare was a missed opportunity to fix this systemic problem and the new law only made matters worse by taking control away from people. In fact, the new law allows the government to eventually control over half of all health care spending. True reform must turn our government-run system right side up, giving patients control over their health care dollars and decisions, while subjecting providers and insurers to the competitive forces of a real market.

Giving Americans more choice, ownership and responsibility will bring about greater efficiency and lower costs. Making this shift from the government to purchasers will not happen overnight, but here are some ideas for Congress to get us moving in the right direction.

Congress should change the tax code to end the bias against people who purchase their own health insurance. People who buy insurance through their employer get a tax break on the value of the benefits. Individual and group purchasers should be treated the same.

Congress should allow individuals to shop across state lines for health insurance. Doing so would dramatically increase insurance choices and cut costs through better competition.

Most importantly, Congress should back off and give the states latitude. If states can demonstrate a better way to reach policy goals, Congress should permit states to do what works best. A one-size-fits-all approach has not and will never work in a country as diverse as ours. This is what federalism is all about.

Obamacare is one of the most misguided pieces of legislation in the modern history of our country. A 2,000-page, trillion-dollar, politically driven takeover of one-sixth of our economy, Obamacare is both too complicated to succeed and too broken to repair. Voters this year sent a strong message that they want it stopped. The newly elected Republican governors gathering in San Diego this week have an opportunity to do just that.

Tim Pawlenty is in his second term as governor of Minnesota. He is vice chair of the Republican Governors Association, which is meeting this week in San Diego.

Ohio Democrat Threatens Pro-Life Leader with Jail

SBA List president Marjorie Dannensfelser
and Rep. Steve Driehaus

From Human Events

By Connie Hair

Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-Ohio) got himself into deep water when he took a principled stand to defend life earlier this year -- then buckled to his pro-abortion leadership to vote in favor of passing Obamacare.

The legislation passed by Democrats allows the use of taxpayer dollars to fund abortion on demand through government-run insurance plans.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, President of the Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List), is being threatened with possible jail time for informing voters that Driehaus voted in favor of taxpayer-funded abortion with his vote for Obamacare.

Read the rest of this entry >>

Missouri Says a Resounding "No" to ObamaCare

Missouri voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a federal mandate to purchase health insurance, rebuking President Barack Obama's administration and giving Republicans their first political victory in a national campaign to overturn the controversial health care law passed by Congress in March.

Read the rest of this entry >>

Louisiana Passes Opt-Out Bill Voiding ObamaCare’s Abortion Mandate

From LifeSiteNews
By Peter J. Smith

The Louisiana State House successfully has passed a measure that will make “the Bayou State” the fourth in the nation to opt-out of the abortion mandates of the recently enacted national health care reform.

Democrats and Republicans in the state Senate approved HB 1247, the Abortion Insurance Opt-Out Act, authored by Representative Frank Hoffman (R-West Monroe), by an overwhelming majority of 28 – 3 on Monday.

H.R. 1247 prohibits abortion coverage by health insurers in the state-run health insurance exchange that is scheduled to go into effect in 2014 as part of President Barack Obama’s health care reform law. A provision of the national law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, gives states the explicit right to ban health insurance companies receiving public subsidies under the state health exchange, from providing abortion coverage.

The Louisiana measure has just one exception for insurance companies, permitting abortion in cases where mother’s life is in danger from “a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury” including “a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself.” The law does not permit the killing of unborn children conceived in situations of rape and incest.

The Senate made some changes to the House bill, and therefore the state’s House of Representatives is expected to hold a vote within the next few days to approve the amended bill.

The bill’s original form as passed by the House would have banned all health insurance providers in Louisiana from offering policies and plans that would pay for abortions. However the Senate committee amended the bill to apply to only those health insurers participating in the state exchanges mandated by the federal health care reform.

In a telephone interview with LifeSiteNews.com, Benjamin Clapper, Executive Director of Louisiana Right to Life Federation, said that while the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, which amended the House bill, did not allow them to ban private health insurers from providing coverage for abortions, he was not aware of any insurers that cover abortions in Louisiana anyway.

“It won’t change much right now, but we certainly would have preferred that and the abortion opt out,” he said. “But the committee did not allow us to do that.”

Clapper said that the Bioethics Defense Fund did the heavy lifting of drafting the opt-out legislation, but the model opt-out legislation from the National Right to Life Committee gave them the idea of also banning abortion coverage by private insurers.

After the Senate’s changes have been approved by the House, the bill will be sent to the desk of Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is expected to sign the measure.

In a separate statement, Clapper praised the Louisiana legislature for taking the opt-out bill over “its final major hurdle,” saying that state lawmakers representing the will of the people of Louisiana, “have resoundingly sent a message to our nation that abortion is not health care."

"Once HB 1247 has been stamped by the House and signed by the Governor, we will be at least the 4th state to opt out of abortion subsidies since the President signed his national health care reform bill into law three short months ago on March 23rd,” said Clapper. “We have helped initiate a growing state-by-state movement declaring that health care reform should not be used to expand abortion."

Lawmakers in Arizona, Mississippi, and Tennessee have enacted similar opt-out language for their respective states. Missouri legislators have also passed their own opt-out bill, which is awaiting their governor’s signature. Opt-out language was passed by lawmakers in Oklahoma and Florida, but then vetoed by their respective governors.

Oklahoma’s Gov. Brad Henry delayed his veto of his state’s opt-out bill to the point where the legislature had no time to mount another veto override effort and conclude pressing budgetary matters before the end of the legislative session. Gov. Charlie Crist, who scrubbed the pro-life section of his independent campaign for governor, also vetoed opt-out legislation that also would have required women to receive an ultrasound before going in for an abortion.