From Chuck Asay:
(Click on the cartoon for a larger version.)
He’s just going to introduce efficiencies into the system, that’s all. No, really.
Health care and any overhauling thereof should not be done lightly. It should not be rushed through Congress, like, say, the TARP bill was. This is a big deal.
Well, apparently Obama thinks it’s too big to fail.
President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress are poised to trample Republican opposition to his health care bill with a controversial legislative tactic known as reconciliation.
The fast-track process would protect Obama’s ambitious plan to overhaul the U.S. health care system from a potential GOP filibuster and limit the Republicans’ ability to get concessions. It also would give Democrats far more control over the specifics of the health care legislation.
Under typical Senate rules, 60 votes are needed to advance a bill, but reconciliation would enable Democrats to enact the health care plan with just a simple majority and only 20 hours of debate.
Democrats hold 56 seats in the Senate, and two independents typically vote with the party. Republicans have 41 seats, and there is one vacancy.
Republicans have complained furiously about the prospect of health care reform passing under fast-track rules. But they’re not planning to go down without a fight.
And that’s not the only ill-considered option not being properly considered.
But Democrats aren’t stopping at health care. Obama’s plan to cut private banks and other lending institutions out of the market for student loans would also move on a filibuster-free path.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Friday that most House and Senate negotiators have resolved most of their differences over a congressional budget blueprint designed to advance Obama’s agenda through Congress. The measure will set the rules on how Congress considers Obama’s agenda for the rest of the year.
Lawmakers are rushing to agree on the budget framework in time to give Obama a victory within his first 100 days in office.
The negotiations have centered on the annual congressional budget resolution, which sets the parameters for the legislation that follows. Congressional votes next week would provide a symbolic victory for Obama’s sweeping agenda to enact a universal health care system, invest in education and clean energy and cut the exploding budget deficit to manageable levels.
Obama marks his 100th day in office on Wednesday.
This is big government run amok. All Republicans can do at this point is try to get in amendments to ameliorate the damage. Some Congressman, and many constituents, including those at the recent Tea Parties, complain that far too many legislators didn’t actually read the bill or know what was in it. And yet they’re going to do it again; make the same mistake twice, very deliberately.
A government big enough to make these sweeping changes in the blink of an eye is big enough to foul it up in a big way. And there’s a better than even chance it will be fouled up the faster it’s done and the less debate there is.
Last December, the Bush administration granted protection to health care workers who refused to perform certain procedures on moral grounds. If a hospital, health plan or clinic didn’t accommodate the consciences of their employees, they’d lose federal funding. Abortion rights activists proceeded to take the low road.
But women’s health advocates, family planning proponents, abortion rights activists and some members of Congress condemned the regulation, saying it will be a major obstacle to providing many health services, including abortion, family planning, infertility treatment, and end-of-life care, as well as possibly a wide range of scientific research.
Never mind moral issues, and never mind that plenty of people who have no problem with performing these procedures exist, there must not even be the slightest impediment to these procedures. Guess we know where their priorities lie.
As well as the priorities of some Democrats in Congress.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) introduced a bill last month to repeal the rule, said: "We will not allow this rule to stand. It threatens the health and well-being of women and the rights of patients across the country." Similar legislation is pending in the House.
No, it does not threaten anyone’s health or well-being. Allowing an employee to follow their conscience simply means finding someone who’s ethics aren’t similarly bothered.
In spite of these overwrought pronouncements, the rule was put in place.
That was then, this is now.
Taking another step into the abortion debate, the Obama administration Friday will move to rescind a controversial rule that allows health-care workers to deny abortion counseling or other family-planning services if doing so would violate their moral beliefs, according to administration officials.
The rollback of the "conscience rule" comes just two months after the Bush administration announced it last year in one of its final policy initiatives.
This rule is important, mostly to protect health care workers from losing their jobs over their personal beliefs. They weren’t supposed to be able to lose it, but that didn’t stop the health care industry.
For more than 30 years, federal law has allowed doctors and nurses to decline to provide abortion services as a matter of conscience, a protection that is not subject to rulemaking.
In promulgating the new rule last year, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said it was necessary to address discrimination in the medical field.
He criticized "an environment in the health-care field that is intolerant of individual conscience, certain religious beliefs, ethnic and cultural traditions and moral convictions."
Doctors have been successfully sued for not performing procedures they objected to, so the rule is necessary to give this same protection to other, non-abortion-related procedures.
The Obama administration claims:
Officials said the administration will consider drafting a new rule to clarify what health-care workers can reasonably refuse for patients.
How about we find out what the administration considers "reasonable" before doing away with this valuable protection? Or is conscience not that big a deal to Barack Obama? It doesn’t sound like it.
Melanie Phillips in the London Daily Mail observes:
The story of 13-year-old Alfie, who reportedly has become a father by 15-year-old Chantelle, is a fable for our tragically degraded times.
Most of the attention has focused upon Alfie, who looks about eight and doesn’t even understand the word ‘financial’. But while Alfie’s youth is exceptional, this situation is not.
Whether or not Alfie is the father of baby Maisie or whether that honour goes to one of Chantelle’s reputed other boyfriends, the fact is that the length and breadth of this country there are many Chantelles, having sex and often getting pregnant while under age.
Phillips points out what has long been a refrain in societies where liberal programs have taken hold; the unintended consequences of government intervention.
There has been a profound loss of the very notions of self-restraint and boundaries of behaviour, promoted from the top by narcissistic liberals and funded at the bottom by welfare benefits which cushion people from the consequences of their actions.
The liberal intelligentsia pushed the idea that the worst things in the world were stigma and shame. Illegitimacy was accordingly abolished, lone mothers provided with welfare benefits and any talk about the advantages to children from marriage and sexual continence was to be banned as ‘judgmental’.
With all constraints on behaviour vilified as ‘moralising’, sex became treated merely as a pleasurable pastime devoid of any spiritual dimension.
As parents careered through serial sexual partnerships, putting their own short-term desires first and effectively behaving like children, they no longer wanted to be bothered with taking responsibility for their own offspring and so started treating them as if they were grown-up.
This was massively reinforced by the approach to sex education and contraception by schools and public health professionals, who treated children as quasi-adults capable of making their own life choices.
What they actually needed, as all children do, was firm and consistent boundaries which taught them that sex was properly an adult activity.
Instead, they were taught to treat sex a bit like bungee-jumping or paragliding – to have fun doing it, but to take precautions to avoid getting hurt.
And, she notes, the only definition of "hurt" was "getting pregnant". Never mind the emotional or psychological harm that might be involved.
Read the whole thing. Seems the more sex education we have and the earlier it starts, the more stories like this that we get. Phillips’ article is a strong argument for the teaching of responsibility and its consequences rather than covering the world in bubble wrap.
Congressman Chris Murphy (D-CT) is championing his support of what’s called the Protecting Patient and Health Care Act of 2009. From his website:
WASHINGTON, D.C. – With the clock ticking down on the implementation of a sweeping Bush Administration rule that will deny vital health services to Americans, today Congressman Chris Murphy (CT-5) joined a group of colleagues to introduce the Protecting Patient and Health Care Act of 2009 to stop it.
In late December, the Bush Administration finalized the "refusal clause", which would cut off federal funding for any state or local government, hospital, health plan, clinic, or other entity that does not accommodate employees who refuse to participate in care that they find ethically, morally, or religiously objectionable. Set to take affect on Sunday, this sweeping change in access to vital health services, including birth control, abortion, HIV and STI testing, end of life care, and fertilization treatments, trumps current practices that accommodate health care providers’ religious beliefs while also providing their patients with access to care. It even goes as far as to allow whole hospitals or health plans to refuse services even if individual doctors and providers are willing to perform them.
What’s missing in this description is the reason the "refusal clause" was needed. It’s really only emphasizing how the law currently is, because a number of court cases, and the judges of those cases, have shown that apparently the judicial system doesn’t quite understand the concept.
I’ve touched on one example last August where a pair of doctors in California were sued successfully when they declined to give their services to a lesbian couple. (Actually, they did everything but the physical insemination, which is all they declined to do.) Acting as though they were the only option in the state, the couple took the case all the way to the State Supreme Court and won. This was an elective procedure, and the State Supreme Court seemed to think they were obligated to do it if asked. (And as noted in the original post, the CA Medical Association was on the side of the doctors until they got bullied by the gay-rights community, and they caved.)
So the action by the Bush administration was simply to reiterate that this refusal is legal, and put some oomph behind it. The whole idea the people have no where else to go for these treatments, elective or otherwise, is absurd, but the danger to a guaranteed constitutional right is real.
But Democrats, who insist that they’re just as concerned about religious freedom as anyone, put the lie to that by making the First Amendment a second-class citizen.
With all the promises of change that Barack Obama got his supporters to believe, we’re now finding out that "promises" are more like "goals". Or perhaps "hopes".
Close Gitmo on the first day in office? First week? First 100 days? Well, technically, he may only issue an order to do it soon, but it’s "a challenge" to even close it within the first 100 days. The ACLU wants a timetable. Good luck with that.
"That’s a challenge," Obama said on ABC’s "This Week." "I think it’s going to take some time and our legal teams are working in consultation with our national security apparatus as we speak to help design exactly what we need to do."
It’s not as easy as some on the Left expected it would be. The "Reality-based community" finds that facing reality isn’t what they thought it would be.
Iraq withdrawal within 16 months? Well, Biden has said that they’re going to follow the Bush plan instead. Additional take on this and all the Iraq issues at RedState.
Universal Health Care is being back-burnered. Indeed, the economic crisis should be one of the top priorities, but I thought this whole scheme was supposed to save us all money. If it’s such a win-win for the economy and health care, why delay? Hmmm. (Perhaps it has something to do with how poorly UHC is working in places like Massachusetts?)
No lobbyists serving in policy areas they have worked to influence in the past year. So then, September 2008 is technically last year.
Interrogation techniques that Obama campaigned against may actually get a new lease on life. Newsweek tells us:
Dick Cheney, who will step down as vice president on Jan. 20, has been widely portrayed as a creature of the dark side, a monstrous figure who trampled on the Constitution to wage war against all foes, real and imagined. Barack Obama was elected partly to cleanse the temple of the Bush-Cheney stain, and in his campaign speeches he promised to reverse Cheney’s efforts to seize power for the White House in the war on terror.
It may not be so simple
This could be another entry in my "New They Tell Us" category. This was so simple during the campaign, but now they tell us it’s complex. Nuance, anyone?
All this added to Obama’s waffling on tax cuts, windfall profits taxes on Big Oil, and FISA. Now, I have no illusion that Obama has become some sort of bedrock conservative (though he’s been seen in the company of some), and we’re still likely to see many a liberal policy enacted. However, underneath all this complaining by the Left that the new boss seems the same as the old boss is one thought; maybe the old boss got some things right.
The latest advancement in stem cells is that it’s getting safer to convert adult stem cells to "induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells" (basically what embryonic stems cells are). Adult stem cells are already curing loads of diseases, without the need for destroying embryos. This is just one less reason to want to rely on the ethically murky embryonic ones.
One of the problems I have with socialized healthcare is that it takes the responsibility for payment out of the hands of the person getting the care and places it in the hands of a massive bureaucracy that has, depending on the system, either a monopoly on being the payer or at least one of the larger ones. As such, it has an incentive to cut costs, but its incentive isn’t nearly as personal as an individual payer. The larger the bureaucracy, the less concern for the individual.
I’ve noted before how this led to the state of Oregon denying cancer medication to a woman, but still gave her coverage for physician-assisted suicide. It also leads to a British medical ethics expert suggesting that the elderly should take the same route, for the good of society.
Elderly people suffering from dementia should consider ending their lives because they are a burden on the NHS and their families, according to the influential medical ethics expert Baroness Warnock.
The veteran Government adviser said pensioners in mental decline are "wasting people’s lives" because of the care they require and should be allowed to opt for euthanasia even if they are not in pain.
She insisted there was "nothing wrong" with people being helped to die for the sake of their loved ones or society.
The 84-year-old added that she hoped people will soon be "licensed to put others down" if they are unable to look after themselves.
Her comments in a magazine interview have been condemned as "immoral" and "barbaric", but also sparked fears that they may find wider support because of her influence on ethical matters.
Lady Warnock, a former headmistress who went on to become Britain’s leading moral philosopher, chaired a landmark Government committee in the 1980s that established the law on fertility treatment and embryo research.
(A tip of the Blogger’s Fedora to Right Wing News.)
The "leading moral philosopher" in Britain is asking people to die for the good of the state. What an insane world we live in.
One prominent Canadian OB/GYN says "Yes." Problem is, he finds that worrisome.
Sarah and Todd Palin’s decision to complete her recent pregnancy, despite advance notice that their baby Trig had Down syndrome, is hailed by many in the pro-life movement as walking the walk as well as talking the talk.
But a senior Canadian doctor is now expressing concerns that such a prominent public role model as the governor of Alaska and potential vice president of the United States completing a Down syndrome pregnancy may prompt other women to make the same decision against abortion because of that genetic abnormality. And thereby reduce the number of abortions.
Published reports in Canada say about 9 out of 10 women given a diagnosis of Down syndrome choose to terminate the pregnancy through abortion.
Dr. Andre Lalonde, executive vice president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Ottawa, worries that Palin’s now renowned decision may cause abortions in Canada to decline as other women there and elsewhere opt to follow suit.
He says not every woman is prepared to deal with the consequences of Down babies, who have developmental delays, some physical difficulties and often a shortened lifespan.
Well, we can’t have role models diminishing that 90% figure one little bit, can we? I just find it completely appalling that this sort of "concern" is expressed, let alone by a leading OB/GYN.
In California, the First Amendment is subordinate to the whims of the judges. The Associated Press reports:
California’s highest court on Monday barred doctors from invoking their religious beliefs as a reason to deny treatment to gays and lesbians, ruling that state law prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination extends to the medical profession.
What "treatment" was denied? How was care withheld, as the AP headline claims?
Justice Joyce Kennard wrote that two Christian fertility doctors who refused to artificially inseminate a lesbian have neither a free speech right nor a religious exemption from the state’s law, which "imposes on business establishments certain antidiscrimination obligations."
In the lawsuit that led to the ruling, Guadalupe Benitez, 36, of Oceanside said that the doctors treated her with fertility drugs and instructed her how to inseminate herself at home but told her their beliefs prevented them from inseminating her. One of the doctors referred her to another fertility specialist without moral objections, and Benitez has since given birth to three children.
Nevertheless, Benitez in 2001 sued the Vista-based North Coast Women’s Care Medical Group. She and her lawyers successfully argued that a state law prohibiting businesses from discriminating based on sexual orientation applies to doctors.
So what we’re really talking about here is an elective procedure, not "care" nor "treatment" of some condition. And the doctors did everything up to the point where their religious convictions wouldn’t let them continue. Even then, they instructed Benitez how to do it herself.
A detail you won’t find here but is brought up in the WorldNetDaily coverage, the case was dismissed when it was originally brought, but liberal Californians can be certain that, no matter the obstacles, their Supreme Court can be counted on to come through.
But don’t doctors have constitutional rights, too? Well the California Medial Association used to think so, but they changed their tune "after receiving a barrage of criticism from the gay-rights community." We have the bullying tactics of the "tolerant" Left connect with the political correctness of the medical community, with the result being a trampling of the Constitution.
This is what passes for the imprudent "jurisprudence" we find on the Left Coast. This almost calls for a Constitutional amendment, except we already have one and it doesn’t seem to be working.
Technorati Tags: California Supreme Court, Constitution, homosexuality, First Amendment, religious rights, Douglas Fenton, Christine Brody, Guadalupe Benitez
