Mary Poppins’ “A Spoonful of Sugar” was such a hit with my kids when they were little because it was fun to clean up toys while singing it. The line “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down” makes a lot of sense when children are busy with an “I don’t wanna do this” task.

But when it comes to Obamacare, I’m afraid a 10-pound bag full of sugar isn’t really going to matter. As Launcelot said in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, “Truth will out!” It always does. And in this case, despite the denials and personal attacks on upstanding Americans such as Sarah Palin, the truth is getting out, and then some.

Obamacare’s Trojan horse, known in some circles, as the “death panel” provision, is Obama’s Achilles’ heel. Even though those pesky “death panel” discussions have taken a turn, not all of us are convinced. Some Americans actually think that just because the Senate has announced that the panels are coming out of its version of Obamacare, we should all heave a sigh of relief and go on about our business. After all, folks, they would argue, don’t we all know how sincerely these men and women in the U.S. Congress care about the views of average Americans like you and me and how they are always looking out for us? Well …

For those of us who live in the real world, the news out of Washington that those panels are allegedly gone is nothing to get excited about. What the Senate took out is a reference to “advance care planning consultations.” The Senate has not removed references to the Independent Medicare Advisory Commission, nor has it finalized any piece of legislation. As we have learned over the years, what was there yesterday and appears to be gone today could come back in a different form tomorrow. It’s sort of like a chameleon; the lizard changes color to adapt to its surroundings.

But there’s a little more to this story than a Sarah Palin versus Barack Obama debate. As Palin wrote on her Facebook page, 

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

Sowell, to whom Palin refers, is a wise man who opined, 

 An old advertising slogan said, "Progress is our most important product." With politicians, confusion is their most important product. They confuse bringing down the price of medical care with bringing down the cost. And they confuse medical care with health care.

Nothing is easier than for governments to impose price controls. They have been doing this, off and on, for thousands of years – repeatedly resulting in (1) shortages, (2) quality deterioration and (3) black markets. Why would anyone want any of those things when it comes to medical care?

And this is precisely where Palin is going with her reference to “death panels” and the vulnerable. She had and still has every reason to bring this subject to the public’s attention. For those who doubt the veracity of it, just feast your doubting eyeballs on this little tidbit, which is reported on the Compassion & Choices (formerly the Hemlock Society) web site:  

Compassion & Choices has worked tirelessly with supportive members of congress [sic] to include in proposed reform legislation a provision requiring Medicare to cover patient consultation with their doctors about end-of-life choice. (emphasis added)

 It is clear that Compassion & Choices would approve “death panels,” as well as physician-assisted suicide or any other measure that would cut costs. Why not? Its business is helping people die.
So, was it a coincidence that the day after the Family Research Council pointed this out in a Washington Update segment appropriately entitled “Political Suicide?” the Senate Finance Committee removed the “death panel” provision? Or was it a ploy? While we are grateful to Tony Perkins and his wonderful staff at FRC, we are not convinced that the Senate, or for that matter, the White House, is sincere in any promise they make to the American public on the delicate subject of health care – whether the question at hand is abortion, euthanasia or anything else having to do with respect for the dignity of the human person.

But don’t take my word for it. Just yesterday, the Washington Times published an article written by attorney Robert W. Painter, who handles medical malpractice matters and testified before the Texas legislature on that state’s Advance Directives Act of 1999. In “’Death Panels’ exist already,” Painter writes about what has occurred as a direct result of the Act becoming law. And he warns that what has happened in Texas is a harbinger of what could happen nationwide if the Obama proposal moves forward. The results in Texas have been devastating for families.

The end-of-life provisions of the Obama health care plan would upset the balance of power in health care decision-making in favor of doctors and hospitals and against individuals and families. The federal legislation provides an economic incentive for doctors and hospital administrators to use Medicare funds to start hastening certain patient deaths a bit sooner under existing state laws. In Texas, that balance already is tipped in favor of the health care providers, and the proposed federal legislation would only make matters worse by placing more Medicare dollars on that side of the scale.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, is rightly concerned that the end-of-life provisions in the proposed federal law could be "misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly." Federal lawmakers interested in protecting individual and patient rights need to study carefully the end-of-life provisions with the understanding that the law will be implemented in health care settings governed under 50 different sets of state law.

Admittedly, the warning of "death panels" is a shocking claim. But when I inform people of the effect of the Texas law and how it has trampled on individual rights, they are understandably shocked. If the Texas Advance Directives Act has shown us anything, it is that governments should leave end-of-life decisions to patients and their families.

It occurs to me that President Obama’s rush to impose his prescription for health care reform on the nation is riddled through and through with problems. But at the core of it all, the real question is why should the federal government be regulating medical practices as a way of cutting costs? 

If the entire purpose of health care reform is to save money, we’d better be more than vigilant. A spoon full of sugar is one thing, but Conium maculatum (poison hemlock) is quite another. 

In June, Terry O’Neill was elected president of the National Organization for Women at its annual conference. A discussion about conscience clauses then took center stage. The subject came up in the context of health care workers who refuse to provide contraceptive information or services based on moral or religious grounds. 

O'Neill said, "Conscience clauses, where pharmacists refuse birth control sales because it's against their conscience, must go. Guess what? Women have a constitutional right to birth control," adding, "There is no constitutional right to be a pharmacist" (Jacobs, Indianapolis Star, 6/21).

Perhaps O’Neill’s invective sounds a bit ridiculous to you. Upon closer scrutiny, the statement appears to reflect the overriding attitude of not only NOW’s current president, but perhaps entities as far-reaching as the White House itself. It is quite possible that what was once perceived to be protected by the Constitution of this nation may not be what is actually recognized by the current political power structure. 

A situation in North Carolina, which involves a constitutional right to religious freedom, provokes my opinion on this critical matter.

The news reports are quite clear on exactly what happened at Belmont Abbey, a Catholic college in North Carolina. The college has been warned by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that if the administration doesn’t stop discriminating against female employees by denying contraceptive benefits in the college’s health coverage plan, the EEOC will take them to court!

“Contraception, abortion and voluntary sterilization came off Belmont Abbey College’s faculty health care policy in December 2007 after a faculty member discovered that coverage, according to an e-mail Belmont Abbey College President Bill Thierfelder sent to school staff, students, alumni and friends of the college,” the Gaston Gazette reported. 

In a subsequent exclusive interview with Thierfelder, LifeSiteNews.com reported that “officials at the Charlotte division of the EEOC told him that a decision to close a discrimination complaint against the school for failing to offer contraception coverage was reversed after the matter went to the nation's capital.”

Sound like a strong-arm tactic? Well, read on!

"From a religious freedom standpoint, you don't have religious freedom," he said. Thierfelder stressed, however, that the college has "gotten a lot of support from people who are not Catholic, and who may not share our beliefs on abortion, sterilization, contraception…they see the principle and what they're saying is, 'Belmont Abbey College is not trying to tell anybody what they have to do, it's just saying what Belmont Abbey College will do.' And I think that's an important distinction." 

"To try to make us change [our beliefs], there's something very wrong with that," he continued. "And I think that's why this has garnered so much attention, and especially with the health care debates that are going on right now, and with all the things that are going on with Catholic hospitals ... what they are basically saying is, if you're Catholic, or if you are of any faith, it doesn't mean anything. You're going to do what the government tells you to do."

Thierfelder acknowledged that the fight could go to the courts, and emphasized that BAC officials were united in maintaining fidelity to Catholic Church teaching against pressure from the government.

"All of us need to have moral courage in today's world," he said. "We are so resolute in our commitment to the teachings of the Catholic Church that there is no possible way we would ever deviate from it, and if it came down to it ... we would close the school rather than give in. 

"So it is absolutely, unequivocally impossible for us to go against the teachings of the Catholic Church in any way. There is no form of compromise that is possible."

American Life League applauds BAC’s courageous defense of Catholic moral teaching and proper Catholic medical ethics. We also understand what is at stake if the Obama administration presses forward with this overt act of intimidation.

It is obvious to us, when one considers O’Neill’s version of the Constitution versus that of Catholic and other Christian pharmacists, health care workers and BAC officials, that something is incredibly askew. While it may be that the Constitution of the United States has a very large number of interpretations depending on whose ox is being gored, the Constitution is not an elastic document. 

Obama has said he will respect health care workers’ rights of conscience. But look at what is happening at BAC under his administration! Obama has also said that his health care reform proposals would not force anyone into a particular situation. But look at what is being attempted here.

NOW’s O’Neill may, in a very perverted sense, have hit the nail on the head, even though a careful reading of the Constitution would deny that this is so.

For those who need a refresher course, the First Amendment of the Constitution reads as follows:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Taken at face value, this amendment should protect not only the policies in force at BAC with regard to the removal of contraceptive coverage from the employee health insurance policy, but it should also protect the rights of those who are opposed to government policies that violate their religious beliefs or otherwise impose untenable requirements on their right of conscience.

As law professor Lynn D. Wardle pointed out in congressional testimony a few years ago, “Protection for rights of conscience underlie[s] and historically preceded the First Amendment. In June, 1776, even before the Declaration of Independence, the Virginia Declaration of Rights provided, inter alia, that 'all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.'"

By the same token, there is no place in the Constitution where one can legitimately find a right to contraception or to aborting a child. As constitutional expert Mark Levin has written, 

In order to strike down the Connecticut law prohibiting the sale of contraceptives, Douglas wrote that “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.”

Don’t be embarrassed if you don’t know what emanations from penumbras are. Young lawyers across America had to pull out their dictionaries when reading Griswold for the first time. A penumbra is an astronomical term describing the partial shadow in an eclipse or the edge of a sunspot — and it is another way to describe something unclear or uncertain. “Emanation” is a scientific term for gas made from radioactive decay — it also means “an emission.”

Douglas’s decision not only found a right to privacy in a penumbra of an emanation, it manipulated the facts of the case: Estelle Griswold, the executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and Dr. C. Lee Buxton, the group’s medical director, gave information and prescribed birth control to a married couple. Griswold and Buxton, not the married couple, were later convicted and fined $100 each. The relationship at issue, then, was doctor-patient, not husband-wife. Yet Douglas framed his opinion around a presumed right to marital privacy. He expounded at length about the sanctity of marriage but used vague phrasing to describe the rights at issue, never explicitly stating that married couples have a right to use contraceptives. He even raised the ugly specter of sex police, though no police had intruded into anyone’s bedroom. “Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives?” This little phrase has been used as holy writ by judicial activists ever since to further expand the right to privacy in a variety of areas, including abortion and sodomy…

The Constitution does, in clear and undeniably concise language, protect freedoms that you and I and millions of Americans hold dear and, until recently, took for granted. No longer!

This is indeed a grave situation. Clearly, the politics of constitutional rights have turned the founding document of this republic on its ear. What was once wrong is now a right, and what was always legitimately part of our national heritage is now under siege.

Such contradiction forces me to make but one assumption: If you don’t play ball with the Obama administration, there could be a price to pay, especially if you are a Catholic entity with every desire to serve Christ and His Church first and foremost.

Please write or call Belmont Abbey College President Bill Thierfelder and express your support for his courageous position:

William Thierfelder, President
Belmont Abbey College
100 Belmont-Mt. Holly Rd
Belmont, NC 28012
Call toll-free: (888) 222-0110

Please write or call the EEOC and express your concern over the bully tactics being used to intimidate BAC:

Stuart Ishimaru,
Chairman, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
131 M Street, NE
Washington, DC 20507
Phone: (202) 663-4900
TTY: (202) 663-4494
info@eeoc.gov

Please spread the word: As Americans, let us strive to protect our constitutional rights and expose the strong-arming by some in government today.

Over this past weekend a good friend, Paul Byrne, M.D., sent an interesting comment my way. He pointed out that one of the root words of palliative is pall.

I checked it in my trusty Merriam-Webster's dictionary and found the following:

2b (1): a heavy cloth draped over a coffin (2): a coffin especially when holding a body
3a: something that covers or conceals; especially: an overspreading element that produces an effect of gloom <a pall of thick black smoke> <a pall of suspicion> b: a feeling of gloom <his absence cast a pall over the celebration>

In the context of the ongoing debate regarding whether or not a form of euthanasia may appear in the final version of the nationalized health care [insurance] reform bill, this word has a connotation which cannot be ignored. It has already been shown that palliative care can be used to either relieve pain or expedite a quick exit for the patient. It all depends on who is administering the medicine and whose orders are being followed.

The Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance for Health Care Workers wrote the following in the seminal document, Charter for Health Care Workers, in addressing “The use of painkillers for the terminally ill” in Chapter III, 246:

Sometimes the systematic use of narcotics which reduce the consciousness of the patient is a cloak for the frequently unconscious wish of the health care worker to discontinue relating to the dying person. In this case it is not so much the alleviation of the patient's suffering that is sought as the convenience of those in attendance. The dying person is deprived of the possibility of "living his own life", by reducing him to a state of unconsciousness unworthy of a human being. This is why the administration of narcotics for the sole purpose of depriving the dying person of a conscious end is "a truly deplorable practice."

It is a different matter when there is a serious clinical case for the administration of analgesics which suppress consciousness, as when there is violent and unbearable pain. In this case the anesthetic is said to be licit, provided certain conditions are fulfilled: that the dying person has fulfilled or could still fulfill his moral, family and religious obligations.
 

In other words, the very same medication that can bring relief can also be used to kill. It’s not that difficult to comprehend. This is but one reason to be concerned that current discussions relating to Obamacare could lead to some pretty unfathomable horrors.

All anyone has to do is pay close attention to the discussions regarding end-of-life care. It is not beyond the pale to imagine that in one form or another, euthanizing the older generation may become one of those cost-cutting activities that cannot be avoided.

Consider the recent comments of author-screenwriter Richard Dooling, who is clearly no health care expert. Be that as it may, he weighed in with these acrid words in a New York Times commentary: 

One thing’s for sure: Our health care system has failed. Generational spending wars loom on the horizon. Rationing of health care is imminent.

I am not, of course, talking about euthanasia. I’m just wondering why the nation continues incurring enormous debt to pay for bypass surgery and titanium-knee replacements for octogenarians and nonagenarians, when for just a small fraction of those costs we could provide children with preventive health care and nutrition. Eight million children have no health insurance, but their parents pay 3 percent of their salaries to Medicare to make sure that seniors get the very best money can buy in prescription drugs for everything from restless leg syndrome to erectile dysfunction, scooters and end-of-life intensive care.
 

Then there’s Ross Douthat, who wrote about the enormity of the "burden" created by overspending Medicare dollars:

And if you think reform is tough today, just wait. We’re already practically a gerontocracy: Americans over 50 cast over 40 percent of the votes in the 2008 elections, and half the votes in the ’06 midterms. As the population ages — by 2030, there will be more Americans over 65 than under 18 — the power of the elderly and nearly elderly may become almost absolute.

In this future, somebody will need to stand for the principle that Medicare can’t pay every bill and bless every procedure. Somebody will need to defend the younger generation’s promise (and its pocketbooks). Somebody will need to say “no” to retirees.

Both of these writers did not mention other citizens whose care can be very costly. For example, the extremely premature baby who is born with specific problems caused by early birth, or the newborn with critical problems requiring special attention, or the individual who suffers a severe disability due to accident or genetic anomaly. In each of these cases, large sums of money are required to treat them. What about their future under regulated health care spending? Based on the sensitivities being expressed toward spending too much on certain types of treatment, it isn’t difficult to imagine that those I have just mentioned could also be required to make sacrifices for the greater good of a culture committed to financial savings over life saving.

It’s all about “quality of life” after all, and some people are, well, expendable!

When Obama spoke to a gathering of 50+ Americans at an AARP gathering, he recommended that they consider his suggested reforms to the Medicare program as fiscally responsible and necessary in today’s economy. Among Obama’s preferences is the Independent Medicare Advisory Committee. IMAC has been defined as a group of individuals who would oversee how Medicare is administered and would recommend ways to make it more efficient. Some have suggested that such a committee could recommend health care rationing based on cost cutting. Washington Post political commentator David Broder wrote, 

Obama's proposal almost certainly would accelerate change in the way health care is delivered -- and it might actually save money in the long run.

But Congress will have to decide if it is willing to yield that degree of control to five unelected IMAC commissioners. And Americans will have to decide if they are comfortable having those commissioners determine how they will be treated when they are ill.

Without belaboring this point, it is wise and prudent to step back and examine the ramifications of any proposal in view of the groups of citizens for whom the proposal could have life-altering effects. For as Mark Steyn wrote recently,

The problem with government health systems is not that they pull the plug on Grandma. It's that Grandma has a hell of a time getting plugged in in the first place.…This ought to be of particular concern to Americans. As is often pointed out, U.S. life expectancy (78.06 years) lags behind other developed nations with government health care (United Kingdom 78.7, Germany 78.95, Sweden 80.63). So proponents of Obamacare are all but offering an extra "full year" of Euro-Canadian geriatric leisure as a signing bonus.

While some might think that Steyn is flippant about the problem that is confronting our nation, I would counter by suggesting that at least Steyn is talking about it! It is a provocative subject, and the more that is said about it, the better. There is still time, at this point, to stop such madness, but first the electorate has to realize that the White House smoke-and-mirrors show has another agenda, and it’s not a pretty one.

Leave it to Pat Boone, a dear friend and outspoken critic of Obamacare, to set the tone. He explains it is not just the "radicals" who are beginning to tell the truth about Obamacare:

•    Congress plans to pay for this "reform" by cutting $500 billion from Medicare. –Washington Post (July 16)
•    There will be long waits for care. –USA Today (July 17)
•    There will be cuts to MRIs, CAT scans and other vital tests. –Associated Press (June 24)
•    Seniors will lose their choice of doctors. –New York Times (April 2)
•    Government bureaucrats – not doctors – will decide if older patients are worth the costs of care. –Los Angeles Times (June 25)

Friends, these are not "right-wing" talk-show hosts holding the president's feet to the fire – these are some of the most liberal media outlets in the country! Even they are realizing that this bloated, misleading and outrageous scheme will set the stage, in actual practice and predictable bureaucratic perversion, for Orwellian governmental control over who gets care and what kind. They factually have to report that it's IMPOSSIBLE to cut Medicare by $500 billion and still provide for the 40 million more baby boomers who are coming into eligibility! The president's analysts say they can – but ordinary citizens know it's IMPOSSIBLE.

Obamacare is having the expected effect on the general population. The pall has been placed over the truth, and the unsuspecting will go forth believing that Obama is providing them hope and change! 

Pallbearers will soon be the next change agents unless we stop this current rush to reform, bury it and start over.

This guest commentary was published on the Lead Us Not into Temptation blog site on August 3, 2009 and is used with its kind permission.

By Carol McKinley

It’s been a tough few weeks for President Obama. The urban legends he has told to garner support for the march towards socialism are finally losing their traction.

You could hear the sound of screeching brakes all over America at the collision between an elite Harvard professor and a president making a racial incident out of a police officer’s response to a 911 call – and the government takeover of health care. America is coming out of the trance.

As a warrior in the trenches, I couldn’t count the number of times prayer mercenaries have transformed a blunder into a period of grace. Catholics had better take full advantage of the reprieve. We have a lot to lose in the ethical conundrums of rationing treatment and mercy in a government-controlled HMO.

The mission of providing ethical, compassionate, quality health care to the sick and poor is about to be “reformed” into setting criteria that determine the value of the patient’s life measured against the cost of treating their illness.

The Church’s teachings

Denying medical care to the poor, elderly and catastrophically ill to benefit the government is diametrically opposed to Catholic ethics and the Catholic animus. Pope Benedict XVI expounded on “[t]he inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual” as a “constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Section 2273, emphasis in original) in his recently published encyclical, Caritas in Veritate:

Openness to life is at the centre of true development. When a society moves towards the denial or suppression of life, it ends up no longer finding the necessary motivation and energy to strive for man’s true good… (Section 28, emphasis in original)

In order to protect nature, it is not enough to intervene with economic incentives or deterrents; not even an apposite education is sufficient. These are important steps, but the decisive issue is the overall moral tenor of society. If there is a lack of respect for the right to life and to a natural death, if human conception, gestation and birth are made artificial, if human embryos are sacrificed to research, the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology… (Section 51, emphasis in original)

To the tragic and widespread scourge of abortion we may well have to add in the future – indeed it is already surreptitiously present – the systematic eugenic programming of births. At the other end of the spectrum, a pro-euthanasia mindset is making inroads as an equally damaging assertion of control over life that under certain circumstances is deemed no longer worth living. Underlying these scenarios are cultural viewpoints that deny human dignity. These practices in turn foster a materialistic and mechanistic understanding of human life. Who could measure the negative effects of this kind of mentality for development?... While the poor of the world continue knocking on the doors of the rich, the world of affluence runs the risk of no longer hearing those knocks, on account of a conscience that can no longer distinguish what is human. (Section 75)

Obama projects that giving access to our health care system to 50 million more people will cost Americans less money than it does now. In fact, at the breaking point, Obama claims his health care program will start paying for itself. Like his projections about the economy, writing off the debt of irresponsible people who caused the mortgage crisis, cash for clunkers and “racial profiling,” Obama is, once again, way off the mark.

You don’t have to be a mathematician to figure out that giving access to 50 million more people in an already burdened health care system and spending less means the patients currently in the system will be sacrificing their present level of care and services. There have been negative impacts on health care access, cancer survival rates, and the quality of life for the elderly, learning disabled and sick in every country where there has been a government takeover of health care. Obama can’t escape the laws of supply and demand. Supporting laws destined to place life-threatening hardships upon the disadvantaged and suffering is fundamentally immoral.

We’ve got to digest the threats to the sanctity of life and Catholic conscience protections, educate grassroots Catholics and make a lot of noise in the public square in the next several weeks. We’re going to see Obama infomercials pushing overhaul in the mainstream media in the month of August, ad nauseam. The theologically fallacious Catholics United is firing salvos. Catholic Charities USA, the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul and the Catholic Health Association are banding together to advance the taxpayer-funded abortions and euthanasia assistance crafted into the legislation.

Stand up and fight.

The threat to the elderly

Reading the proposals, there is no doubt that seniors would pay a heavy price. The White House has proposed the creation of an independent panel to recommend Medicare and Medicaid cuts. Seniors would not only be losing benefits. From all indications, it appears that they would be losing control over life-and-death decisions and care. This is inhumane.

Last week, EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo put up a must-read post on his blog, raising the same concerns many have over disturbing references in the bill:

The elderly or people with catastrophic diseases are clearly in the sights of the administration and the congressional leadership for the simple reason that they cost too much. A quarter of all Medicare payments occur in the last year of life, costing the government more than 100 billion dollars a year, according to Forbes Magazine.

“One troubling provision of the House bill compels seniors to submit to a counseling session every five years (and more often if they become sick or go into a nursing home) about alternatives for end-of-life care (House bill, p. 425-430). The sessions cover highly sensitive matters such as whether to receive antibiotics and ‘the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration.’ This mandate invites abuse, and seniors could easily be pushed to refuse care.” [interview with Betsy McCaughey, patient advocate and former lieutenant governor of New York]

This “Advance Care Planning Consultation” would encourage all of us, but especially those with severe illnesses to submit to hospices rather than pursue expensive therapies that might extend life (and cost a bundle). The bill also establishes a tracking system to insure that doctors are advocating “advance care directives” where you predetermine what type of care you would accept or refuse at the end of life. The problem with all of this is it assigns a utilitarian value to human life. If you are too old or disabled, there will be a built-in incentive to push you into hospice and palliative care rather than work to beat the disease.

This isn’t hype and hysteria from the fringe. Calm, credible people reading the bills are drawing these same conclusions across the board. Arm yourself with citations from the bill, go to senior centers in your hometown and educate them about the contents of the “reforms.” The mainstream media is not going to publish the truth, but there is nothing holding us back from doing a little “community organizing” of our own.

‘By their fruits, you will know them’

Seniors and, in fact, most people in this country, are unaware that Obama recently appointed a science czar (John Holdren) who co-authored a book entitled Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment. Among Holdren's philosophies are the following: 

• Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;
• The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food;
• Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;
• People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility.”

This correlates with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s recent, breathtaking admission that Roe was to rid us of undesirables, i.e. “growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

The president has surrounded himself with radical pro-abortionists, including Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who will have a heavy hand of influence in shaping and executing policies. Catholics, other Christians and other decent people can’t ignore the dangers of giving such people power over life, death and health. Educate your priests and those in your parish. With enlightenment on Obama’s trajectory, the health care bill will take on a new patina.

The Massachusetts experience

Catholics should be outraged that the poor are being used and exploited by the White House to swindle them out of benefits and life itself. Catholics United, Catholic Charities and other social pirates who are propagating the myth that this type of health care “reform” is about service to the poor should be vigorously castigated. The poor already have health coverage in combined federal- and state- subsidized programs. (For example, in Massachusetts, there is MassHealth – Medicaid and SCHIP.)

In Massachusetts, where health care “reform” was instituted in 2007, benefits have been siphoned off from the indigent and transferred to households earning $77,400 for a family of five. For a family of eight, the household income can be up to $111,080. But families earning $30,000, previously eligible for free health care, are burdened with premiums and co-payments costing nearly $10,000 for the least expensive plan.

In fact, in early July, Boston Medical Center (formerly known as Boston City Hospital, serving the poorest of the poor in Boston) filed a lawsuit against the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:

The suit says the hospital will lose more than $100 million next year because the state has lowered Medicaid reimbursement rates and stopped paying Boston Medical “reasonable costs” for treating other poor patients.

“We filed this suit more in sorrow than in anger,” said Elaine Ullian, the hospital’s chief executive. “We believe in health care reform to the bottom of our toes, but it was never, ever supposed to be financed on the backs of the poor, and that’s what has happened in Massachusetts.”

The central charge in the suit is that the state has siphoned money away from Boston Medical to help pay the considerable cost of insuring all but a small percentage of residents…

According to the suit, Massachusetts is now reimbursing Boston Medical only 64 cents for every dollar it spends treating the poor. About 10 percent of the hospital’s patients are uninsured – down from about 20 percent before the law’s passage in 2006. But many more are on Medicaid or Commonwealth Care, the state-subsidized insurance program for low-income residents.

Astoundingly, with all the rancor and rhetoric from Democrats about the compassionate immigration policies absent in the Republican agenda, when the cost of operating “health care reform” produced an ever-growing deficit, 30,000 legal immigrants were the first people thrown under the bus by the Democrat-controlled Massachusetts legislature: 30,000 of them received letters of health care termination.

The cost of providing health care to the 30,000 immigrants is approximately $130 million a year. A vote on July 29 restored $40 million of the budget, leaving uncertainty about the effect of eliminating $90 million in coverage for permanent residents who have had green cards for less than five years.

Karl Rove, President George W. Bush’s former senior adviser, provided an informed analysis of the siphoning off of funds from the poor:

Mr. Obama’s problem is that nine out of 10 Americans would likely get worse health care if ObamaCare goes through. Of those who do not have insurance – and who therefore might be better off – approximately one-fifth are illegal aliens, nearly three-fifths make $50,000 or more a year and can afford insurance, and just under a third are probably eligible for Medicaid or other government programs already.

For the slice of the uninsured that is left – perhaps about 2% of all American citizens –Team Obama would dismantle the world’s greatest health-care system.

Don’t wait for clerical leadership

There are valuable lessons to be learned from the Catholic trenches in Boston in terms of what lies ahead nationally. In late February of this year, the Caritas Christi health care delivery network sought and was awarded a contract that includes providing abortions, family planning services and other moral evils to the uncatechized, the unsuspecting poor and women emotionally distraught due to an unplanned pregnancy.

With the advice and public consent of Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley, Caritas gave the Commonwealth written assurances that Catholic medical staff would inform women of health care options, including abortions. They appointed NARAL members to serve as advisors and agreed to give them access to monitor Catholic health care workers to ensure compliance.

Caritas set up a corporation, sought out and signed contracts with abortionists, set up a 24-hour family planning/abortion hotline number and hired employees to direct women to the abortionists with whom it contracted and took a 49-percent interest in the operation. A handful of Catholics relentlessly exposed the arrangement and, with some assistance from American Life League, we were able to get Cardinal O'Malley to retreat from ownership in the operation. However, the arrangement marched forward with all the abortion contracts, the 24-hour hotline, written assurances and NARAL oversight of Caritas employees intact.

It should be noted that Cardinal O’Malley tried to generate support for the arrangement by purporting that Catholic theology permitted entering into a contract that binds a Catholic in the performance of moral evils; in effect, he claimed that even though we realize the sinful nature of performing those moral evils, so long as we recruit others to perform the evils, it does not violate Catholic ethics. Theologically, spiritually and ethically, nothing could be more unsound. Knowing something is wrong and sinful, and then baiting somebody else into doing it who doesn’t know, compounds the sin. The Caritas arrangement is as ethical as hiring Kevorkian to kill your elderly parents when they become a personal and financial burden.

The cardinal outsourced his conscience to the National Catholic Bioethics Center, which reportedly gave him a formal opinion stating the current arrangement is ethically sound. Repeated requests to the cardinal to release the opinion of the NCBC have been rebuffed.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is clear about those who give scandal by becoming their “neighbor’s tempter” (Sections 2284–2287). Leading others to do evil “takes on a particular gravity” for those in authority who cause it:

Anyone who uses the power at his disposal in such a way that it leads others to do wrong becomes guilty of scandal and responsible for the evil that he has directly or indirectly encouraged. “Temptations to sin are sure to come; but woe to him by whom they come!” (Section 2287)

The fight for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for the next generation of Catholics is in the hands of lay leaders. Every one of us must raise our voices in the public square.

Carol McKinley is a pro-life activist, a paralegal working in the affordable housing industry and the creator of the Lead Us Not into Temptation blog site. Her activism was inspired by a desire to preserve her three children’s faith from the influence of Planned Parenthood’s ever-growing sexual promiscuity and abortion agenda in both public and Catholic academia. She resides in the challenging city of Boston.

This guest commentary was originally published by www.StumpReport.com and is used with its kind permission.

By Phil Kammer

I have always believed that our Creator has made His laws and precepts clear for all of His creation. So this thought came to mind one day …
 
A young woman finds herself living the typical college life: excited about her life to come and fearful of things that can go wrong. In school, she unexpectedly finds the man of her dreams and, although much in love, is panicked and fearful when she finds herself with child. She consults one of the many “family planning” businesses, and its advice seems reasonable: Protect your college education; protect your future: Have an abortion.
 
The young woman pauses and again her “family planning” counselor says, “It’s in your best interest; it’s merely a fetus and of no consequence.” As she ponders such assurances from a counselor who seems so caring, a date is set. And then the “procedure” is performed.
 
Years have now passed, guilt has faded and love has blossomed. The woman now finds herself in the deepest of love with the man of her dreams. They have a beautiful wedding with everyone there, their careers couldn’t be better and their life is grand. A great surprise has come to the newly married couple: They have now conceived a child. The young married couple could never have guessed what joy there would be in planning for a first child. A room is chosen and furnished with love. An ultrasound suggests a blue room, and joy is the order of the day.

One day, the couple decides that a slow walk in the park would be nice. But a thief lurks there in the shadows, waiting to carry out a robbery. Under a shady elm tree, he strikes. At gunpoint, he shouts, “Give me your money!” They pause; he becomes angry. Her young husband is heroic at heart, but is thrown to the ground. His young bride, still standing, bears the brunt of the thief’s anger as a single, surreal “pop” sounds under the elm tree. The young bride stands there, desperately clutching her stomach …
 
I end this short story here because here is where humanity takes control of the abortion debate. In life, a person chooses to be honest or not. They choose to follow the natural law – or not.

Are you an honest person?

When the young woman was in college, she was told that what was growing inside of her was just a piece of flesh – a fetus of no consequence.
 
When she was struck by the thief’s bullet, did she cry out, “My fetus, my fetus!” or “My baby, my baby!”?
 
Our Creator has endowed us with certain undeniable attributes, chief of which is that the truth is written in every human heart.

The vast majority of women will immediately respond that this woman cried out, “My baby, my baby!” Due to political conditioning, some will hesitate to answer this question. However, the truth remains: Our God-given nature tells all of us that what grows within a woman, regardless of her economic, social or political condition, is simply a baby.
 
I have not told this tale to play a trick, but rather to shed light on the use of the word “fetus” and how callously it is used by abortion profiteers. Many have written in defense of abortion. Most of these writings are lengthy and complicated – as intended.

Remember: The truth is simple.

Phil Kammer is an independent freelance writer, public speaker, and avid proponent of the U.S. Constitution and life’s simple truths. He earned a degree in public policy from California State University and an M.B.A. from Pepperdine University. He is also the creator and owner of www.StumpReport.com, a conservative web site dedicated to simple truths in American politics.

Responses

Thank you Judie for posting Phil Kammer's column "My Baby". I have sent this to as many people I can think of & Mr. Kammer's message really gives one something to think about. I abhor abortion & am reassured only by knowing that God will stop this barbarism at his chosen time & that those whose lives were taken by abortion will have their say in the matter on the day of the Judgement. Thank you again & may God bless you always!
Yours In Christ,
Kenneth E. MacAlister Jr.
Langhorne, Pennsylvania
Kenneth E. MacAlister Jr. | August 15, 2009

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I agree. The truth is simple. The truth will set us free (from sin). Jesus is the Truth. In His Will is our Peace.

I watched you on EWTN with Raymond Arroyo. Thank you for defending life. You were kind and respectful. You spoke the Truth and in a no-nonsense, clearly non-negotiable, and factual way.

As the above story illustrates, the truth is simple; a lie requires a bunch of baloney. Unfortuantely, only those who love the truth, will hear the Truth.

Thank you for all that you do in the defense of life. May God bless you and keep you safe.

Julie
Julianna Konkol | August 16, 2009

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This is very beautiful, and yet so true. We only call it a "fetus" when its "unwanted" we never call it a fetus or an embryo when we are glad we're pregnant! Thats sad!
elisabeth | August 16, 2009

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This article was published in the August 9-22, 2009 issue of the National Catholic Register and is presented as a guest commentary, with the Register’s kind permission.

By Robin Rohr

As the pro-life movement fights to keep abortion out of the health-care reform bill, an undercover attack on the elderly may be taking place unnoticed.

At issue is a provision that calls for end-of-life counseling of senior citizens every five years. That counseling can include topics such as how to decline nutrition and hydration, antibiotics and basic care treatments for specific conditions such as flu or pneumonia, and how to choose palliative and hospice care for the terminally ill.

“I’ve read about a third of HR 3200 and the counseling parts are designed to encourage euthanasia,” claimed Dr. Katherine Schlaerth, an associate professor of family medicine at Loma Linda University School of Medicine. “Seniors will be counseled every five years, and more often if they get sicker.”

Schlaerth, who emphasized that she does not speak for Loma Linda University, said that a frail, elderly, ill and depressed patient or that patient’s family “may easily agree to withhold antibiotics or fluid without realizing the full implication.”

“Patients who have a worsening of their chronic condition, but who may not even be pre-terminal, are included in this strong-arm counseling, and their respect for authority figures could pave the way for agreement with cessation of care not in their interest at all,” Schlaerth said. “Health-care providers, meanwhile, may be forced to give counseling directly opposed to their religious or moral beliefs.”

Key lawmakers are in agreement with Schlaerth. “Section 1233 encourages health-care providers to provide their Medicare patients with counseling on ‘the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration’ and other end-of-life treatments and may place seniors in situations where they feel pressure to sign an end-of-life directive they would not otherwise sign,” said the House Republican leader, John Boehner, R-Ohio, and the Republican Policy Committee chairman, Thaddeus McCotter, R-Mich., in a July 23 statement. “This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia.”

Death as Cost Savings
At first glance, the counseling of elders for care options seems like an innocuous requirement. But Schlaerth says the purpose of the counseling has darker roots.

“The real reason for these draconian provisions directed against elders who are not terminal, I believe, is to save on Social Security payments as well as Medicare payments,” Schlaerth said. “The math is obvious. If you kill the disabled and give ‘quality preventive care’ to the well, your health-care statistics will look excellent.”

Bill May, chairman of Catholics for the Common Good, also views the mandatory counseling sessions as an outrageous cover to introduce assisted suicide.

“We need to pay attention to issues related to shortening the lives and hastening death for the elderly, infirm and disabled – another way of getting rid of undesirable, non-useful and costly people,” he said. “This bill creates a platform for assisted suicide for the elderly, infirm and disabled at times they are most vulnerable, depressed and open to suggestions of ending their lives early. Compassion & Choices, the former Hemlock Society, wants to get into the end-of-life counseling business, and it looks like the health-care bill will open the door for them to become government contractors as purveyors of the culture of death.”

The legislative language of the bill regarding counseling is vague and open to interpretation. “I’m a lawyer, and I find this language incomprehensible,” stated Wesley J. Smith, associate director of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide. “I believe it is done maliciously. What is clear is that seniors will receive counseling – read ‘re-education’– every five years or whenever their health status changes. The point is to reduce cost. While the language doesn’t require it, these mandatory sessions will often be directed towards not wanting care, in much the same way that genetic counseling of a mother carrying a Down [syndrome] fetus often is directed toward abortion.”

Smith said patients could be referred to organizations like the assisted suicide advocacy group Compassion & Choices to help sort out their choices. “In practice, if not in law, ‘counseling’ will usually be a one-way street,” he said.

Compassion & Choices is an organization that describes itself as working to improve care and expand choice at the end of life. “Wesley J. Smith says the bill is ‘incomprehensible,’ which may explain why he repeatedly misstates what the bill does,” said Steve Hopcraft, a spokesman for Compassion & Choices. “It’s a myth that C&C or any organization [would] be the counselor. The bill specifically says M.D. or nurse practitioner.”

Section 1233 does state the consultation will be performed by a medical provider; however, included in the topics to be discussed is direction to provide “suggested people to talk to” and “a list of national and state-specific resources.”

Rationed Care
Concerns about Obama’s health-care reform adversely affecting older Americans are not new. Earlier this year, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the “Stimulus Bill”) appropriated $1.1 billion for research into “comparative effectiveness,” which compares clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of medical treatments, procedures and strategies. One aspect of this comparison is a concept called “Quality Adjusted Life Years,” where the value assigned to life varies with the health state of the person. This method is controversial because it means that some people will not receive treatment if the calculated cost is not warranted by the benefit to their quality of life.

Burke Balch, director of the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics at the National Right to Life Committee, explained that a person’s Quality of Adjusted Life Years determines if a procedure is allowed. “Of significant concern is the phrase ‘comparative effectiveness,’” he said. “This becomes [how] you end up discriminating against a disability. The language in the health-care bills being considered by the House and reported out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee can be used for wide-open interpretation of cost-effectiveness leading to denial of treatment based on quality of life. The funding for the promises made in these bills cannot be sustained, and that will create the atmosphere for rationing.”

May agrees and says that health-care rationing takes place in Oregon, one of two states where physician-assisted suicide is legal. People fighting life-threatening illnesses there regularly receive letters saying that the state insurance plan would not cover their medication but would pay for a lethal prescription to end their lives, he said.

Boehner and McCotter also warn that with Oregon and Washington having legalized assisted suicide, “Section 1233 could create a slippery slope for a more permissive environment for euthanasia, mercy killing and physician-assisted suicide because it does not clearly exclude counseling about the supposed benefits of killing oneself.”

Robin Rohr is a National Catholic Register correspondent and writes from Willits, California.

Responses

Its sad that its always about money! Now life is less important then a couple bucks. No one should be able to tell someone when to die, just because they are ill! Its disgusting
elisabeth | August 14, 2009

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I am not an expert on health care rationing and end-of-life questions. But I know how to find experts, and the leadership of LifeTree, a pro-life Christian educational ministry, certainly qualifies. Executive director Elizabeth Wickham, Ph.D. and her associate, Ione Whitlock, have dedicated their lives to these matters. LifeTree’s Medical Decisions at the End of Life brochure provides the following answers to frequently asked questions:

What is palliative care?

Traditional palliative care is symptom management at life’s end. Symptoms such as nausea, shortness of breath, and pain can usually be mitigated or "palliated." Unfortunately, some palliative care groups are now training physicians to introduce palliative care (comfort care rather than cure) very early in the diagnosis of a chronic condition or terminal illness. This trend blurs the distinction between ordinary pain control and end-of-life care (palliative care). Moreover, terminal sedation and withholding hydration (see below) are often part of the mix.

When should food and water be withheld?

Death by starvation and dehydration is painful and inhumane. Withholding food and hydration is imposed death, unless the food/water cannot be assimilated, as when death is imminent—when the patient is actively dying, and death is expected within 24–48 hours.

Nancy Valko, RN, notes: “When people are truly [actively] dying and the body's organs begin to shut down, we often see people lose their appetite and desire to drink much. This is a process that can protect a person from suffering from fluid overload at the end and the dying person remains comfortable. But this is very different from a deliberate decision to ‘fast’ to death.”

What is terminal sedation?

Not to be confused with control of physical pain, the goal of terminal sedation (TS, also known as “palliative sedation” or “total sedation”) is “to induce a state of decreased or absent awareness (unconsciousness) in order to relieve the burden of intractable suffering.” TS is controversial, and has been called a legal alternative to assisted suicide. Too often TS is used when a patient is not actively dying, and is combined with removal of food and fluids. Withholding food and water can only lead to death. To offer total irreversible sedation to a patient might convey the idea that he or she is a burden, or that his or her life is probably not worth living.

Should I be an organ donor?

Pope John Paul II’s 2001 address to the International Congress of the Transplantation Society insists there be moral certainty that death has occurred before the transplantation of any unpaired vital organ. Unfortunately, in medicine today determination of death (brain death and non-heart-beating death) set standards which are much less stringent than the Holy Father's guidelines. Examples of organs/tissues safe to donate after true death are corneas, heart valves (but not the entire heart), bones, skin, ligaments, and tendons.

How, and why, have medical ethics changed?

Several factors have contributed to changes over the years:

1) Bioethics: Hospitals and medical schools have appointed bioethicists as ethics experts. Bioethics, as currently practiced, focuses on quality of life. Bioethics expert Dianne Irving, Ph.D., explains that whereas “traditional medical ethics focuses on the physician's duty to the individual patient, whose life and welfare are always sacrosanct,” the “focus of bioethics is fundamentally utilitarian, centered, like other utilitarian disciplines, around maximizing total human happiness.” Too often, bioethics shifts the emphasis from improving quality of life, to assessing quality of life — weighing the benefits and burdens of life itself.

2) An entrenched right-to-die belief system:… From Supreme Court cases, to state living will laws, to physician education, the mission was to popularize the concept of forgoing life-sustaining measures. Partnership [for Caring—a right-to-die group] disbanded, but many of its members are now in policy-setting positions in hospice and palliative care organizations at the national level. Visit www.lifetree.org/timeline for more information.

In the rush toward a new, federally controlled health care system, there is a distinct possibility that in their hysteria, its supporters will leave many of these questions either dangling in thin air or completely ignored. It is my considered opinion that health care “reform” advocates will answer very few such questions factually, with evidence to support their claims.

Finally, many ask whether or not health care “reform” could lead to rationing of health care. This is not a crazy question. To find answers, I did some research.

Did you know that Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D., the brother of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, has written on the question of health care rationing? In fact, he has a long history of being deeply involved in end-of-life care discussions, and his statements do not provide comfort.

Wesley J. Smith, who studies bioethical questions, has examined Dr. Emanuel’s views. He believes that in his January 31 Lancet article, Dr. Emanuel did not “explicitly” advocate rationing “now  based on age.” However, Smith pointed out,

The same can’t be said of an article he wrote in the Hastings Center Report, in which he explicitly advocates rationing based on what appears to be a quality of life measurement. From the piece: 

This civic republican or deliberative democratic conception of the good provides both procedural and substantive insights for developing a just allocation of health care resources. Procedurally, it suggests the need for public forums to deliberate about which health services should be considered basic and should be socially guaranteed. Substantively, it suggests services that promote the continuation of the polity-those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations-are to be socially guaranteed as basic.

Conversely, services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.

A lot of people are frightened that someone who thinks like Emanuel is at the center of an administration seeking to remake the entire health care system. Having read these two articles, I think there is very real cause for concern.

Terri Schiavo’s brother, Bobby Schindler, who has been deeply involved in defending the vulnerable so that nothing like the horrors she died from will happen to others, likewise has words of warning about health care rationing: 

Much has been written warning us about the dangers of Obamacare, but mostly in terms of what it would mean for the elderly and perhaps the chronically ill. Unfortunately, I have not seen any reports of what will happen to those like Terri—the cognitively disabled. However, from what I am reading and what is being proposed for health care reform, I think it is safe to say that those like Terri don’t stand a chance. Especially, if the proposed Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC) is formed that will put bioethicists in charge of who can and cannot receive treatment.

We are in grave danger any time health care decisions are taken out of the hands of individual patients and their families and placed into the hands of government bureaucrats whose decisions are based on cutting costs rather than valuing the dignity and equal worth of every human life.

Finally, I defer to Zane F. Pollard, M.D., a pediatric ophthalmologist for Children's Healthcare of Atlanta (a nonprofit organization), who wrote the following regarding “Obamacare”: 

I have taken care of Medicaid patients for 35 years while representing the only pediatric ophthalmology group left in Atlanta, Georgia that accepts Medicaid. For example, in the past 6 months I have cared for three young children on Medicaid who had corneal ulcers. This is a potentially blinding situation because if the cornea perforates from the infection, almost surely blindness will occur. In all three cases the antibiotic needed for the eradication of the infection was not on the approved Medicaid list.

Each time I was told to fax Medicaid for the approval forms, which I did. Within 48 hours the form came back to me which was sent in immediately via fax, and I was told that I would have my answer in 10 days. Of course by then each child would have been blind in the eye.
 
Each time the request came back denied. All three times I personally provided the antibiotic for each patient which was not on the Medicaid approved list. Get the point -- rationing of care.

Over the past 35 years I have cared for over 1000 children born with congenital cataracts. In older children and in adults the vision is rehabilitated with an intraocular lens. In newborns we use contact lenses which are very expensive. It takes Medicaid over one year to approve a contact lens post cataract surgery. By that time a successful anatomical operation is wasted as the child will be close to blind from a lack of focusing for so long a period of time.

Again, extreme rationing. Solution: I have a foundation here in Atlanta supported 100% by private funds which supplies all of these contact lenses for my Medicaid and illegal immigrants children for free. Again, waiting for the government would be disastrous…

The bottom line is that I urge all of you to contact your congresswomen and congressmen and senators to defeat this bill. I promise you that you will not like rationing of your own health.

Responses

Your breakdown of the medical conditions and how they will be treated is well done. Pro-life leaders should read and re-read it and be ready to teach it to family, friends, church members, pastors, etc. The "man on the street" ignores some issues because he does not understand them, and he doesn't want to appear uninformed. It's up to us to inform him.
HELEN CINDRICH | August 12, 2009

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