Completing Health Care Reform

A little good news from  Washington. House bill HR358, making permanent the ban on tax funding of abortion and  protecting the conscience rights of hospitals and health professionals and workers, has been passed by the House  Commerce Committee. The US Catholic Bishops welcomed this progress in an improvement to the health care reform now being implemented.

"The Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) welcomed the approval in committee of the Protect Life Act (H.R. 358). Sponsored by Rep. Joseph Pitts (R-PA) and Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-IL) and 123 co-sponsors, the Protect Life Act would apply longstanding federal policies on abortion funding, and conscience rights on abortion, to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) passed last March. On February 15, the full House Energy and Commerce Committee approved H.R. 358 in a bi-partisan vote (33 to 19), and rejected three amendments that would have weakened the bill."  Click here to read entire press release.

This bill is one of two measures being considered by the House on this issue. It is modelled after the 2010 Stupak-Pitts amendment (to Health Care Reform) that received bipartisan approval by the House but was then defeated in the Senate. Some of the elements of this measure are temporarily in force due to an executive order issued by President Obama last year but most American would prefer a permanent place for this measure in the law. 

There have be almost manic efforts to discredit the bill from the abortion industry and their lobbyists. Since  most Americans have supported this measure it seems these 'talking points' are intended to give the false impression that this is a entirely different bill. Here is a sample and of some of them and some comments.

Claim one: This measure proposes to decriminalize rape.

Facts:    The measure bans the use of Federal Tax dollars to pay for abortions and protects conscience rights of hospitals, heath care professional, and health care workers. It does not decriminalize rape.

Claim two: This measure will insert the Federal Government in every woman's pregnancy.

Facts: This measure would bar the Federal Government from using our taxes for abortions or insurance that pays for abortions and  would bar Government from forcing hospitals, professionals and workers to perform actions that violate their ethical standards (conscience).

Editorial Comment: I seriously doubt that one measure could be libertarianistic (decriminalize rape) and socialistic (have government take over your pregnancy) at the same time. HR 358 has essentially been around for may months and is supported by a majority of Americans and is not characterized by these claims.

Claim three:  This is just a token measure that the Republicans have concocted to satisfy  radical conservatives in their party.

Facts: The supporters of this measure, a majority of Americans, cannot be characterized in this way. We are conservatives, liberals, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, gays, straights, religious, non religious, men and women. What we have in common is an opposition to our government paying for or forcing individuals or institutions to perform violations of human rights.

Claim four:  This measure outlaws all reproductive health care.

Facts: This measure addresses only the funding of abortion and heath care industry conscience protections. While some claim that abortion is health care there is much more to reproductive health care than ending the life of  the fetus.

Editorial comment: Abortion is a human rights violation currently permitted by our courts. This measure and the earlier Stupak-Pitts amendment do not change this brutal fact.

Pro Abortion Talking Points Try Alarmist Ploy

What a cry has gone up from the pro-abortion commentators on our media over the efforts in our national congress to make the ban on tax funding of abortions a permanent part of our national law. This is the same ban that is passed by conress every year known as the “Hyde Amendment.” It is also the same ban approved by bipartisan vote in the US House of Representatives last year as part of the Healthcare reform known as the “Stupak-Pitts Amendment”. This ban was not accepted by the Senate, however.

What did happen in the face of the Senate’s turning it’s back on the peoples’ preference in this matter was that Representative Stupak asked President Obama to issue an executive order that prohibits tax funding of abortions in the healthcare reform implementation. The President, who has openly acknowledged his support for abortion, did issue that order. Mr Stupak is clearly the Pro-Life hero of 2010. In face of threats to his life and the life and safety of his family from both pro and anti abortion extremists, the animosity of many of his confreres, Democrats and Republicans, he was resolute in his support of human rights.

The media coverage of the healthcare reform effort and Bart Stupak in particular was likewise bipolar. On one major cable channel Stupak was praised for his courage and dedication and was seriously and politely interviewed by one commentator. A couple of hours later another commentator on the same channel repeatedly characterized him as “single handedly bringing down healthcare reform.” This latter claim is far from the facts. I think a case can be made that, in the end, it was the courage of Bart Stupak that singlehandedly got heath reform finally accepted in Congress after decades of campaign promises by Republicans and Democrats to do just that.

Now that the Hyde amendment, the Stupak-Pitts Amendment and the Obama Order have been proposed as a permanent part of our national healthcare regulation, the abortion supporters in the editorial media and the abortion industry in advertising media have really gone off the deep end.

Their first ploy was an alarm that a measure was being pushed by radical element in congress to redefine “rape”. This sounded like some new libertarian members of Congress were proposing to decriminalize rape to get the government out of our private lives. In fact what had set them off was the move to make the Hyde-Stupak-Pitts-Obama ban on tax payer funding of abortion permanent. Unlike the outlandish characterizations made about the Healthcare Reform bills this one seems to have fizzled quickly. In fact there are currently at least two bills proposed in the House (HR3 & HR358) to do this. As is almost always the case the final wording of the bills is not yet know. These fall far short of the thousands of pages that characterized the health bill and so can be read and understood more quickly.

Moving from the “libertarian” alarm to the opposite extreme claiming that the Hyde-Stupak-Obama or the Smith-Lipinsky-Pitts (the bipartisan sponsors of the two current measures listed above) measures would be a big government intrusion into private behavior with the “government involved in every woman’s pregnancy.” In giving this talking point they give the impression that Hyde-Stupak-Obama or Smith-Pitts-Lipinski were bans on abortion. This clearly is not the case.

I suspect they think their efforts to alarm extremes on both ends of the political spectrum will have the effect of defeating the very measure that most Americans want, to not have tax dollars spent in carrying out these human rights violations currently permitted by our courts. Most of us Americans are neither libertarian or socialist as described by these alarms but do support these bipartisan measures. We need to be proactive in being sure that such inaccurate characterizations of them are not given credence or left unchallenged.

I urge you to write, call, Email, Text or Twitter your Congress members. Ask them to participate in making the Hyde-Stupak-Pitts-Obama ban on tax funding of abortion a permanent provision of our law.

Heathcare Reform Sidelines Key Supporters

Kathy Saile, Director of Domestic Social Development for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, explains the importance of health care reform for the U.S. Bishops and why the bishops insist that the legislation not federally fund abortion.

Here is Kathy explaining again the importance of health care reform to the Catholic sense of human dignity and the contradiction that tax funding of abortion presents to that same ideal.

Had this issue been addressed in the Senate health care bill I think the president would have had a bill on his desk last year simply because a major block of his support for health care reform (Catholics and Pro Life Liberals) would have been working full time for it rather than dividing our effort in order to resist using health care reform to use tax dollars to fund abortion providers , create an economic incentive to increase the use of abortion and to attempt force heath care professional to violate their consciences.

Since the president had made many of us optimistic by his campaign messages about finding common ground, serving the common good and reducing abortions, it is puzzling why he seems to have done nothing about them. Had he simply called the Senate leadership and said "lets accept the amendment already passed in the House and we will have a bill that has much wider support" he would have honored these positions that made him such an appealing candidate to many Washington weary Americans.

However, he had been quite clear from his writings that he accepted significant funding from the abortion lobby but would refuse funding from me and millions of others who support human rights. One has to wonder how much of the old Washington culture has crept into this administration.

The old Washington, that Washington that American citizens are fed up with, requires politicians to give priority to the interests of those institutions and businesses that had bankrolled his or her campaign rather than the the interest of those who elected him or her. I don't know who or how the silence from the White House was motivated but I do know that had the President acted bravely and quickly he would have greatly re inflated our hopes for an administration that might really change Washington.

In a few short days we will see if we can pull reform out of the hat despite this hang over of "old Washington" that has delayed critical reforms that protect the health of all Americans and begin to reign in health care costs.

Catholic Bishops and Health Care Reform

Here is Bishop William Murphy speaking for the Catholic Bishops of the United States. The Catholic position on health care reform is clear and balanced. It truly represents our commitment to the dignity of all human life.

Healthcare and Small Business

Leo and Mike Schweiss are small businessmen in Minnesota. Leo's business is small and employs only himself.

"His brother Mike, however, has gone "big time," by small town standards. He has 50 employees working at his Schweiss Bi-Fold Doors company at nearby Hector, making him one of the largest employers in his southern Minnesota area. The factory is out on the Schweiss family farm "home place," which has a Fairfax telephone number but a Hector mail address.

So how does he provide health insurance coverage for his skilled work force?

"I can't," he said. His company's insurance costs were rising from $30,000 to $60,000 a year. "So what I do is I make a contribution to the employees' health insurance costs, and they have to find their own.

"That's not a health care system. That's no system at all. It's crazy."

Studies show this discourages would-be entrepreneurs from starting new businesses, holding back Minnesota's and the nation's economy.'

Read the entire interview at "Minnesota 2020".

Archbishop Wuerl on Healthcare Reform

Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl of Washington, DC has written an Op-Ed for 'Politics Daily'. He says in part,

“As Congress returns to work, the debate on health care reform surely will focus on the political, technical and economic repercussions of various proposals. What cannot get lost in this debate, however, are the moral implications. Health care is about life and death, who can take their children to the doctor and who cannot, who can afford decent medical coverage and who is left to fend for themselves. Because health care reform has real consequences -- literally life and death -- decisions must be evaluated through a prism of fundamental ethical principles to see how they will impact the dignity and value of each human life.

Universal coverage should be universal, including everyone. Health care reform cannot leave people out because of pre-existing conditions, chronic illnesses, their place of work or because they cannot afford insurance. Reform should not leave people out because of where they come from or when they arrived here.

The United Stated Conference of Catholic Bishops, following the Gospel mandate to care for the "least of these," urges us to look at health care from the bottom up. A particular gauge against which to measure true universal coverage would be how reform treats the immigrants in our midst who contribute their labor and taxes to our nation, but are at risk of being left out of health care reform."


Read Archbishop Wuerl's entire article.

Go to the Source Documents

I keep seeing editorials that call any healthcare reform “Obamacare”. Usually the position of commentators using the term are opposed to any reform. While we Americans did elected President Obama in part because he promised to support healthcare reform he has not created a plan but appropriately left that up to the legislature. Several healthcare plans or elements of a plan are in circulation. The text major bills actually processing through Congress are found at:

SENATE: Affordable Health Choices Act
(22 pages in length)
http://help.senate.gov/Maj_press/2009_07_15_b.pdf

HOUSE: H. R. 3200
(over 1000 pages!)
http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20090714/aahca.pdf

Since these bills are the product of our bipartisan legislative process it is certainly a misnomer to characterize them as Obama’s. Please go to the text of the bills for information on which to base your questions and suggestions to your legislators.

There are many serious and constructive commentators attempting to help the reform process.I recommend you check out:

• Americans United for Life: http://blog.aul.org/
  
• Catholic Health Association: http://www.chausa.org/
  
• US Catholic Bishops: http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/national/comphealth.shtml
  

Healthcare Rationing Common Sense

I have read a number of editorials about healthcare rationing which prompted my posting yesterday. On Friday the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published an editorial on rationing. While agreeing with me that Sarah Palin's claim of “Death Panels” is “over the top” they go on to say the following.

“(O)nce health care is nationalized, or mostly nationalized, rationing care is inevitable, and those who have lived the longest will find their care the most restricted. Far from being a scare tactic, this is a logical conclusion based on experience and common-sense. Once health care is a "free good" that government pays for, demand will soar and government costs will soar too. When the public finally reaches its taxing limit, something will have to give on the care and spending side. In a word, care will be rationed by politics.” (Read the entire Editorial)

It may indicate the isolation of the WSJ editorial staff from the American main stream and in particular seniors that they can say such things. The following should be considered rather than their undefined “experience” and “common sense”. [1]

• Seniors are already significantly covered by nationalized government health care insurance.
• Heath care is never a “free good”, even charities require resources to provide it.
• Government pays for nothing, in our system we citizens pay for the things government does. We also select those who set up government programs and set the tax levels needed to fund them.
• A large segment of us are already at our “taxing limit” and/or our “health care expense limit”. This is one urgent reason reform is needed.
• Health care insurance is currently regulated at the state level. Such regulation could be nationalized without instituting a national health care insurance program (but, duh, see first item above).

They do admit and argue that rationing is inevitable. Resources are indeed limited, new technology does takes years to deploy and is very expensive, resources are often not where they are needed and hard decisions are required every day. The reform needs to ensure that these unavoidable decisions are made fairly and do not violate human rights or conscience rights.

The conclusion that reforms undertaken to assure that healthcare is available to all, that healthcare decisions are fair, that healthcare cost are controlled and human rights are protected will cause the very things they would fix is irrational.

The tone of many editorials on this subject including this one is that it is bad to have such decisions made by government. In another section they say that Medicare (the existing government insurance) costs could be reduced if seniors had more control over their own healthcare and that this could be achieved with more “competitive” plans available to seniors.

Since such a shift of control to patients has not happened in the current private and competitive insurance marketplace it is not likely to happen without government action to reform the system! I would ask seniors to consider which decision maker is most likely to grant any control to you, the private marketplace over which you and I realistically have no control or the government which is charged under our constitution with protecting our rights and over which you and I have some control?

For another analysis of the WSJ opinion see the American United fro Life Blog.
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[1] I recall from teaching logic in college that specific true facts are required as premises to arrive at at logical conclusion. I don't think “experience” and “common sense” qualify as specific facts. Incorrectly calling something "logical" does not cancel it scary intent.

HEALTHCARE RATIONING AND SENIORS

One of the most rational and well researched Pro Life Web Sites is that of American United for Life (AUL). Charmaine Yoest, PHD, the President of AUL , is one the coolest heads in our national abortion discussion. Her July 30th posting commented on the end-of-life sections of the House and Senate bills. Here is her paragraph on Section 2707 of the Senate bill.

“Section 2707 of the Senate HELP bill requires that insurers develop and implement a reimbursement structure for making payments to healthcare providers that includes incentives for use of evidence based medicine and best clinical practices. This and other provisions in the bill create the possibility that health care coverage determinations could be based on a patient’s health status, age, and/or quality of life. The resulting structure could become a means of advocating for the least expensive treatment at the expense of respect for life. With cost as a primary driver, the elderly, sick, and disabled may find their options for care severely limited.”

Some crass politicians have taken analyses such as this, restated them as facts and use them to terrorize us seniors. In fact the potential situation Dr. Yoest wants to avoid in the Heathcare reform is already a fact in our current system, particularly the private (non-governmental) segment.

“ . . . the possibility that health care coverage determinations could be based on a patient’s health status, age, and/or quality of life. The resulting structure could become a means of advocating for the least expensive treatment at the expense of respect for life.” is the present reality for most of us today. It is one of the major problems that is to addessed by the healthcare reform that is underway!"

Let me demonstrate how this form of health care rationing is already in place in our current, non-governmental system. Since these sections are used most often to frighten seniors the analysis will be from our (seniors) perspective:

health status – By the time you are my age (70) “preexisting conditions” effectively exclude economically many seniors from needed health care.

Age - Many seniors have NO CHOICE but the present public plans since private insurance rates or regulations have effectively blocked them from coverage.

quality of life – This includes the first item but most notably poverty bars seniors both from insurance coverage and economically from care. Also in this category are the handicapped, disabled veterans and others whose quality of life is judged by the current insurance industry as either “non-insurable” or effectively economically bar them from coverage. Many whose quality of life is considered below standard CURRENTLY HAVE NO CHOICE but the public plans if they are even available in their state!

the least expensive treatment at the expense of respect for life – This is a serious flaw of the current system! The private insurance industry makes no bones about doing it. Patients are routinely told that they are excluded from coverage, or their doctors or the the care their doctors have suggested are not covered. The industry is honest about this clearly appealling to their “bottom Line” to rationalize this cost based rationing.

These problems are rampant in the present system and are one of the reasons why the reform is so urgently needed. As I wrote so strongly to Senator Grassely and Issacson (see my Aug 12 posting) the Pro Life Voices must stay in the discussions to assure that this reform is actually accomplished. If your Senator or representative has abandoned the health care reform effort please contact him or her immediately and demand his/her return to the discussion. If he or she has chosen to oppose reforms such as this ask for an explaination of why he or she opposes your interests.

Read Dr Yoest's entire posting.

Political Scare Tactics Violate Human Dignity

Sarah Palin[1] and others have referred to a section of one of the Bills in the House of Representatives (HR3200-1233) as justification for their claim that Congress intends to enact “Death Panels” as a way to frighten us senior citizens. Please find below, verbatim, the defining text from this section. You will note that the “death panel” that Mrs. Palin sees here is made up of your family and your doctor!

Defining Texts from HR3200 Section 1233:

“The term ‘advance care planning consultation’ means a consultation between the individual and a practitioner described in paragraph (2) regarding advance care planning, if, subject to paragraph (3), the individual involved has not had such a consultation within the last 5 years. Such consultation shall include the following:

(A) An explanation by the practitioner of advance care planning, including
key questions and considerations, important steps, and suggested people to talk to.

(B) An explanation by the practitioner of advance directives, including living wills
and durable powers of attorney, and their uses.

(C)An explanation by the practitioner of the role and responsibilities of a health care proxy.

(D)The provision by the practitioner of a list of national and State-specific resources
to assist consumers and their families with advance care planning, including the
national toll-free hotline, the advance care planning clearinghouses, and State legal
service organizations (including those funded through
the Older Americans Act of 1965).

(E) An explanation by the practitioner of the continuum of end-of-life services
and supports available, including palliative care and hospice, and benefits
for such services and supports that are available under this title.”

Subsection (F) provides that your practitioner answer all your questions including those about the rules and requirements of your state of residence. Then in paragraph (2) the term “practitioner is defined.

“ A practitioner described in this paragraph is—

(A) a physician ---

(B) a nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant who has
he authority under State law to sign orders for life sustaining treatments.”


This law does not create these consultations! Many of us have had these discussions with our family and our doctor. Many of us have served as healthcare proxies for our loved ones and many have created healthcare directives to be sure that our end of life healthy care conforms to our moral and spiritual desires.

This law does, however, make these consultations an item covered by medicare. Those politician that characterize this fact as “a government death panel” or a “requirement that seniors be euthanized” reveal their gross disrespect for us seniors through their lie. Their willingness to terrorize[2] seniors leads me to ask who they are really serving if not us?

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[1] Americans United For Life Web Site - http://blog.aul.org/2009/08/13/whats-missing-from-the-white-houses-reality-check/

[2] Merriam Webster :
Main Entry: ter·ror·ize - Pronunciation: \ˈter-ər-ˌīz\ - Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): ter·ror·ized; ter·ror·iz·ing, Date: 1823
1: to fill with terror or anxiety : scare
2 : to coerce by threat or violence
— ter·ror·i·za·tion \ˌter-ər-ə-ˈzā-shən\ noun