GOP House Leader John Boehner is fighting back:
Taxpayer-Funded Abortion Is Not Health-Care ReformHow long will it be before abortion on demand becomes a government demand to abort babies born whose lives would impose costly burdens on government care?
By John Boehner, House Republican Leader
National Review
July 23, 2009
When most Americans talk about the need for health-care reform, they’re usually talking about the need to address rising health-care costs; they aren’t talking about the need for taxpayers to subsidize abortion. In fact, a November 2008 Zogby poll revealed 71 percent of Americans oppose government-funded abortion.
It seems Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill don’t share this perspective, however. With the unequivocal support of President Obama, they’ve written a health-care bill that won’t lower health-care costs for American families, but will require them to subsidize abortion with their hard-earned tax dollars.
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How many Americans currently realize the House bill contains provisions that will result in federally mandated coverage of abortion on demand in virtually all of America's health plans?
Fact: The bill as currently written will allow the federal government to classify abortion as an "essential benefit" — a health-care right that would be guaranteed to all Americans. This will make it illegal for health-care providers nationwide — even Catholic and religious-based hospitals with missions that reflect a fundamental moral objection to the killing of the unborn — to provide anything less than abortion on demand for anyone who seeks it. As a result, the bill will repeal laws in many states that currently require commonsense limitations on abortion-on-demand, such as mandatory parental notification and waiting periods.
Fact: The bill would also establish a taxpayer-funded "public" health-care plan to "compete" with private-sector plans. This public plan, like all plans, will be required to classify abortion as an "essential benefit," forcing American citizens to directly subsidize abortion-on-demand with their tax dollars. And in addition to the public plan, individuals with incomes of up to 400% of the poverty level will receive subsidies to buy insurance to pay for abortion-on-demand.
Reps. Eric Cantor (R. Va.), Sam Johnson (R., Texas), and Mark Souder (R., Ind.) offered amendments this month in three different House committees to strike the provisions from the Democratic bill that force American taxpayers to subsidize abortion. All three amendments, sadly, were defeated by the Democratic majority in committee. And it remains to be seen whether Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), who champions the House bill and its abortion-related provisions, will allow such an amendment to be considered and debated on the House floor.
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[G]iven its controversial nature, it deserves a full and open public debate — the sort of debate that is impossible when major bills are rammed through Congress based on politically driven timetables.
If a health-care bill doesn't lower costs for middle-class families, but does require them to subsidize abortion-on-demand with their hard-earned tax dollars, one has to ask a fundamental question: For whom was this bill actually written? Was it written for the millions of Americans who were promised a health-care bill that lowers costs? Or is it really for the radical special-interest and lobbying groups that invested millions to elect a cooperative president and Congress?
Health care is too important to get wrong. Too much is at stake. For the sake of American families struggling with health-care costs — most of whom don’t want their hard-earned money being used by the federal government to subsidize abortion — President Obama should scrap the current health-care bill, and work in a bipartisan way for true reforms.
Worse still... An unaccountable Supreme Court for Health Care?
This from columnist David Broder:
WASHINGTON -- Americans are familiar with -- if not altogether comfortable about -- unelected officials exercising great authority over our lives. The nine justices on the Supreme Court and hundreds of other jurists exert their power from the bench. The economy is managed by the Federal Reserve Board, though no one ever forced Alan Greenspan or Ben Bernanke to campaign for a vote.
If President Obama has his way, another such unelected authority will be created -- a manager and monitor for the vast and expensive American health care system. As part of his health reform effort, he is seeking to launch the Independent Medicare Advisory Council, or IMAC, a bland title for a body that could become as much an arbiter of medicine as the Fed is of the economy or the Supreme Court of the law.
The only way decisions of this unelected body could be overturned would be with a vote in both the House and Senate 30 days or less after they reached a decision. If people like the "Communitarian" brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, a physician and part of Obama's health care policy team, were part of that board we would all be subject to the "social justice" edicts which would decide who lives and who dies based on what value liberals place on their lives.
This isn't health care "reform." This is Frankenstein medicine being pushed down our throats by liberals who have the gall to demand we pay for it!
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