Expose Obama » Healthcare reform

ObamaCare Forces Catholics to Distribute Morning After Pill

Ben — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 17:32:51 +0000

Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com

The nation’s Catholic bishops and a Catholic organization that monitors Catholic colleges and universities are concerned about the Obama administration’s decision today.

As LifeNews.com reported, the Health and Human Services Department ruled that insurance companies are required to include birth control and drugs that can cause abortions in their coverage by virtue of defining them as preventative care. Pro-life organizations are also concerned that the decision will violate the conscience rights of Catholics and religious and pro-life groups that don’t want to have to pay for insurance that covers birth control and abortion drugs but don’t qualify for the narrowly-drawn conscience limits the Obama administration will put in place under the decision.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops sharply criticized the Obama administration’s “preventive services” mandate that it says “requires health plans to cover female surgical sterilization and all drugs and devices approved by the FDA as contraceptives, including drugs which can attack a developing unborn child before and after implantation in the mother’s womb.”

“Although this new rule gives the agency the discretion to authorize a ‘religious’ exemption, it is so narrow as to exclude most Catholic social service agencies and healthcare providers,” said Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, Archbishop of Galveston-Houston and chairman of the USCCB Committee on Pro-Life Activities.

C.S. Lewis vs. Barack Obama on Economics and Government

Ben — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 19:45:22 +0000

Dr. Marvin J. Folkertsma, FloydReports.com

As Americans prepared to mark the birth of their country with the usual outpouring of celebratory events, pundits on the political right were scratching their heads over President Obama’s most recent comment about America’s free-enterprise system.

This time, corporate jet owners got the hit, no fewer than six times during Obama’s late June press conference, apparently for taking advantage of Bush administration tax breaks at the cost of “your child’s safety.” Such financial obscenities were matched by continued tax breaks for “millionaires and billionaires,” whose wealth the political Left covets and whose sheer selfishness, in their view, has driven a stake through the heart of the president’s vaunted recovery summer. All the while unemployment rates remain stubbornly high, large and small businesses refuse to take their plunge into the world created by Obamacus Economicus, Americans by large majorities believe the country is going “in the wrong direction,” and administration officials remain puzzled by it all. The question is how to explain all this.

Two observers, one a 19^th-century Frenchmen and the other a 20^th-century Englishmen, offered words of wisdom about the consequences of centralizing political control and, we shall argue, the moral relativism that accompanies such a development.

Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville’s famous warning in Democracy in America about the peculiar type of despotism to which democracies are especially vulnerable included comments about “an immense tutelary power” hovering over a mass of citizens, for whose happiness it “willingly labors, but it chooses to be a sole agent and the only arbiter,” leaving nothing for individual determination. “What remains,” de Tocqueville asked, “but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?” The result is a power that “prevents existence,” that “compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people,” to the point where they can no longer be considered human beings at all.

Or if they can, they have no chests. This designation was made famous by that bête noire of British moral relativists, C. S. Lewis, noted for his writings on Christian apologetics as well as his Narnia series and the space trilogy. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man consists of three lectures he gave during World War II and was not about politics per se, but rather about….

ObamaCare May Force You to Pay for Abortion Pill

Ben — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 21:10:45 +0000

Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com

Yesterday, the Institute of Medicine recommended that the Obama administration approve new guidelines calling for the Obamacare health care system to require every health insurance plan to cover all FDA-approved birth control drugs.

The decision, which is expected to be adopted by the Health and Human Services Department has far-reaching effects because it would force insurance companies to include coverage of drugs like the Plan B pill that may cause an early abortion of a newly-conceived unborn child or the Ella drug, which causes abortions days after conception. Health insurance plans would likely pass on the increased coverage costs to consumers.

Americans United for Life staff counsel Anna Franzonello said today that the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) recommendations on “preventive services for women” are “unsurprisingly supportive of abortion-inducing drugs because the IOM chose to invite abortion advocacy groupsto the table to make recommendations.” Franzonello, who testified before the IOM during hearings asking that the birth control and abortion-causing drugs not be included, says the Obama administration is responsible for the stacked hearings that led to the IOM recommendations.

If adopted, Franzonello says the recommendations would yield a horrendous result: “No American will be able to choose an insurance plan that does not include the abortion-inducing drug ella under the IOM plan released today.”

“No American will be able to choose an insurance plan that does not include the abortion-inducing drug ella under the IOM plan released today,” the pro-life AUL attorney explained. “Despite the fact that ella can kill a human embryo even after implantation, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has labeled the drug as emergency contraception. Thus, the IOM’s broad inclusion of the ‘full-range of FDA approved contraceptives,’ includes ella. This really was a one-two punch by the FDA and IOM to force all Americans to pay for the abortion-inducing drug.”

Obama’s Tear-Jerking Story About His Uninsured Dying Mother was a Lie

Ben — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 20:27:55 +0000

Ben Johnson, The White House Watch

Despite our political and philosophical differences, one of the most touching and humanizing aspects of Barack Obama was his mother’s tragic death of uterine and ovarian cancer in 1995. Obama frequently stated his self-employed mother spent her last days frantic, desperately trying to assure the insurance industry would not deny her coverage, instead of resting and preparing to meet her Maker (Whom she apparently did not believe in). As it turns out, the entire story was, at best, greatly exaggerated and at worst calculated fabrication. Unlike so many of the president’s scandals, this lie has been reported not simply in conservative outlets like The Washington Examiner and The Blaze but in major Establishment media sources like Politico, and the New York Times.

Candidate Obama took little shame in cashing in on his dead mother’s lingering illness on the campaign trail. Byron York collected a few examples:

“I remember in the last month of her life, she wasn’t thinking about how to get well, she wasn’t thinking about coming to terms with her own mortality, she was thinking about whether or not insurance was going to cover the medical bills and whether our family would be bankrupt as a consequence,” Obama said in September 2007.

“She was in her hospital room looking at insurance forms because the insurance company said that maybe she had a pre-existing condition and maybe they wouldn’t have to reimburse her for her medical bills,” Obama added in January 2008.

“The insurance companies were saying, ‘Maybe there’s a pre-existing condition and we don’t have to pay your medical bills,’” Obama said in a debate with Republican opponent Sen. John McCain in October 2008.

It turns out, like much of what Obama says, this is a lie. The truth is embedded in New York Times reporter Janny Scott’s glowing biography of Stanley Ann Dunham entitled, A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother.

In fact, in the months before her death Dunham….

Obama’s Drug of Choice: Welfare Addiction

Ben — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 14:14:16 +0000

Susan Stamper Brown, FloydReports.com

Once upon a time, people’s hands were busy putting food on the table and they were too busy or too proud to consider extending those same hands out to the government for a handout. But that time has long passed, and time is running out before America the Great turns into America the Nanny State.

Let this Conservative go on record: When used properly, welfare can be a force for good for those most in need. Unfortunately, we have an administration, whose failed (0-97 in the Senate) 2011 budget bulged with middle-class handouts meant to expand the welfare state. Democrats are bent on making addicts of otherwise perfectly capable citizens to the designer drug of taxpayer dollars. In an attempt to make this addiction permanent, the administration rolled out Obamacare.

In 2008, anxiety over a failing economy and soaring costs of healthcare helped to propel Obama to the White House, but, three years later, and after the passing of Obamacare, the anxiety has morphed into anger – as the truth about this poorly constructed bill unfolds to find that it is nothing more than a compilation of mistakes, bloopers, paybacks and blunders that fix healthcare about as well as handing a bandage and bottle of blood thinner to a gunshot victim.

The most recent “blunder,” which involves dropping people from the middle class and rolling them onto the welfare rolls, will not only add billions of dollars of cost to the bill; it will throw millions of middle class retirees into the Medicaid program. Medicaid was created to help the most needy in our society. Medicare actuary, Richard Foster, told the House Budget Committee that a provision in Obamacare did not consider social security benefits when calculating eligibility for early retirees, effectively branding those making up to $64000 per year as destitute. Talk about the destruction of the middle class.

Most troubling is the White House admits Democrat lawmakers knew this provision was in the bill and passed it anyway….

Investigate Elena Kagan’s ObamaCare Lies, 49 Congressmen Demand

Ben — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 21:20:54 +0000

Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch

Back in May I told you that Judicial Watch had uncovered explosive documents from the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) indicating Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan was heavily involved in crafting a defense for Obamacare while she served as Solicitor General. The documents appear to contradict Kagan’s contention that she was merely an uninvolved bystander. Well, now Congress has joined the effort to get to the truth in the matter, calling for a full investigation.

According to today’s The Washington Times:

Forty-nine Republican members of Congress have asked the House Judiciary Committee to “promptly investigate” Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s role in preparing a legal defense for President Obama’s health care law when she served as solicitor general.

In a letter to committee Chairman Lamar Smith, Texas Republican, and the panel’s ranking Democrat, John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the lawmakers said….

Read more.

James Madison vs. Barack Obama on Funding Planned Parenthood

Ben — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 03:06:26 +0000

Dr. Paul G. Kengor, FloydReports.com

With a critical vote in its state Senate, North Carolina has voted to de-fund Planned Parenthood. Republicans hold a huge majority in the Senate—meaning, as a Republican majority usually does, that the Senate is pro-life. The governor of the state, Bev Perdue, is a Democrat—meaning, as a Democrat chief executive usually does, that the governor is “pro-choice,” and favors funding Planned Parenthood. Enough Republicans exist in the legislature to over-ride Perdue’s veto.

Prior to this vote, North Carolina infused Planned Parenthood with $434,000 annually, directed at state “family-planning programs.” That money was to go to “non-abortion services;” that is, “non-abortion services” by the nation’s largest abortion provider.

Most significant, North Carolina’s action signals a potential trend among states. It is the third state to vote to de-fund Planned Parenthood, following measures by legislatures in Indiana and Kansas, where the governors are Republicans and supportive. In Kansas, the governor is the solidly pro-life Sam Brownback, a gigantic change from Governor Kathleen Sebelius, who is now President Obama’s point-person to revamp America’s healthcare system. In Indiana, the governor is Mitch Daniels.

In all three states, North Carolina, Kansas, and Indiana, we see yet again how the Republican Party has become the pro-life party and the Democratic Party—the party of my family’s roots—has continued in the opposite direction.

The next key thing to watch is how the Obama administration reacts to North Carolina. In recent weeks….

Obama “Fixed” Medicare…With Rationing

Ben — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 20:06:36 +0000

John Goodman, FloydReports.com

While charges and counter-charges about Medicare are flying back and forth in Washington, hardly anyone seems to have noticed that Medicare’s financial problems have already been solved. They were solved by the health reform bill enacted last year, what some people call ObamaCare.

So why isn’t this front page news? Why aren’t people dancing in the street? Why isn’t the Obama administration boasting about this accomplishment far and wide? Probably because Medicare’s financial problems are slated to be solved by the unconscionable rationing of health care for the elderly and the disabled.

The most recent Medicare Trustees report conveys the same message as the last one: On the day that Barack Obama signed the health reform bill, Medicare’s long-term unfunded liability fell by $53 trillion. That sum is about three times the size of the entire U.S. economy. And, it gets better. Once the Baby Boomers work their way through the system, Medicare spending will grow no faster than the payroll taxes, premiums and general revenue transfers that pay for that spending.

So what does this mean for senior citizens who rely on Medicare?….

Video: Ben Johnson, Explosive Documents Prove Elena Kagan’s Conflict-of-Interest

Ben — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 19:55:33 +0000

The American Family Radio Network‘s Crane Durham is one of the best friends truth has on the radio. Crane recently interviewed Ben Johnson on his program “Nothing But Truth,” which is heard on 148 radio stations nationwide. They discussed the reasons Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan must recuse herself from the upcoming lawsuit over ObamaCare — and how the White House is stonewalling requests for documents that prove her conflict of interest. Part two of the interview shifts to an expose of George Soros’ financial influence over the mainstream media. If you enjoy this interview, please thank “Nothing But Truth” host Crane Durham and all the folks at American Family Radio for having me on.

ObamaCare Ruins Medicare Deliberately — But Why?

Ben — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 16:20:02 +0000

Dr. Milton Wolf, The Washington Times

“We don’t want to take away people’s health insurance,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius so graciously declared earlier this year. But then she quickly qualified that with these ominous words: “before they have some realistic other choices.”

Americans have overwhelmingly, consistently and wisely been opposed to a European-style, single-payer, government-run, socialized health care system. So how might the big- government types who are hell-bent on forcing their will upon us attempt to implement this oppressive system in America? Simple. By creating medical refugees desperate for any port in a storm. That storm is coming and, unlike global warming, it’s actually man-made.

America somehow managed to survive for 189 years without Medicare or Medicaid and, in fact, became the greatest nation in the history of humankind. Established in 1965 – a mere 46 years ago – too many politicians today lack the perspective to understand this health care altar at which they worship. Instead of reforming the system to align it with American values, they abuse it as an eternal source of giveaways to buy votes. As for the politicians of the 1960s, except for the mop tops and go-go boots, they were very much like the politicians of today: They made a lot of empty promises.

President Lyndon B. Johnson promised that Medicare would cost about $500 million a year – yes, million. He even said that if costs went higher, then he was going to look like the “worst kind of damn fool.” Just a year later, in 1966, the House Ways and Means Committee estimated thatMedicare would cost about $12 billion a year by 1990. The actual 1990 cost was $107 billion – off by an order of magnitude but close enough for government work. And that’s when costs really took off. By 2008, annual costs hit $599 billion and the program for the first time went into deficit-spending mode.

For all the Democrats’ dishonesty and reckless spending, Republicans weren’t exactly blameless either. In 2003, President George W. Bush and a Republican Congress doubled down and ushered in the largest expansion in Medicare history with their senior citizen prescription drug entitlement program. They claimed the price tag would be $400 billion for the first decade but quietly adjusted that estimate upward to $534 billion just one month after passage.

Parenthetically, just three years later, in 2006, the free market roared as a private company in Bentonville, Ark. – without a single dime of taxpayer money or the compulsion from know-it-all government bureaucrats – lowered prices of the top 331 prescription medications to just $4 per month (and later to $10 per three months), not just for seniors but for all Americans. And equally importantly, Wal-Mart did not send the bill to our children.

Today we know that LBJ and a lot of other politicians indeed are the worst kind of damn fools.