The curtains have come down on yesterday’s Obamacare summit mega-drama. As expected, no new ground was broken. The President and the House and Senate leadership vow to move forward and have every intention of using reconciliation to ram through the extravagant, pro-abortion, rationing measure known as Obamacare.
As stated in yesterday’s blog, the math does not compute well for Speaker Pelosi in the House. She needs 218 votes and may have around 206 votes to pass the Senate bill, the first step that must be taken. Where will she get those votes?
The Stupak contingent of 10-12 Congresspersons, who are not budging on opposing any bill which contains abortion funding, is blocking Pelosi’s path to victory. If she gives in to them and states that the second bill (the reconciliation bill) will remove the objectionable sections of the Senate bill on abortion, she will lose numbers of pro-abortion members of the House.
It is stalemate with abortion the big obstacle, as it should be.
The suspense and intrigue are palpable as the curtain rises on today’s health care reform summit. In many ways, this is a drama in too many acts with the life and health of Americans hanging in the balance. Here is how the drama unfolds:
Act 1: President Obama announces the February 25 health care reform summit featuring rolling cameras.
Act 2: President Obama releases a health care reform plan as a starting point. His bill expands abortion beyond the unacceptable Senate bill. It also includes rationing for senior citizens and limits the ability of all Americans to buy health care with their own money.
Act 3: Posturing, posturing, posturing by everyone.
Act 4: Key Democrats float the “reconciliation” balloon. President, Speaker and Senate leader say reconciliation is on the table. Is it a threat or a promise?
Act 5: House leaders announce that Speaker Pelosi doesn’t have the votes in the House for the Senate bill whose passage in the House is the first step in using the reconciliation process. The math adds up. She started with 220 votes. Two votes have retired, one vote is deceased, and one vote is the lone Republican who supported Obamacare in the House but will not support the Senate bill because it is pro-abortion. Take away another 10-12 Dems who voted for Obamacare because the Stupak Amendment was adopted but will not vote for the Senate bill because it is abortion-laden. That leaves Ms. Pelosi about 15 votes shy of what she needs.
Act 6: Enter the hero of the play, Rep. Bart Stupak, off stage, who says the President’s bill is unacceptable because it includes public funding of abortion.
Act 7: Enter pro-abortion House Democrats, also off stage, who vow they will not vote for Obamacare if the Stupak language is included.
Act 8: Just before the curtain rises, the White House tantalizes viewers by leaking that another scaled-down bill is lurking in the shadows. Will it contain abortion coverage and funding? Probably. Rationing? Probably.
Act 9: The entire cast enters the stage, scripts in hand, prepped for cameras which are already rolling. The curtain rises on this mega-drama. Lights, camera, action.
Stay tuned for the conclusion of this drama which has life or death consequences for all of us.
Rationing, pure and simple, says Burke Balch, of National Right to Life. The newest version of Obamacare released yesterday by the President imposes premium price controls on ALL insurance plans.
For senior citizens, Medicare Advantage plans will “be prohibited from charging seniors more than they would pay for services delivered under the traditional Medicare program.” Older Americans would be prohibited by law from making up the Medicare shortfall by using their own money to save their own lives. The proposal then goes on to claim that “all ideas that ration care…will be banned” — even as it imposes what will be ever-increasing rationing on senior citizens.
Americans of all ages will be significantly limited in being allowed to spend their own money to buy health insurance plans that will not deny treatment. Under the new proposal, states and the federal government would be empowered to review and reject premiums charged by a health insurance plan. This while the Administration states, “For Americans with insurance coverage who like what they have, they can keep it.” When every premium increase is subject to veto by government officials, it means that government bureaucrats whose principal duty is to hold health care spending down will decide what benefits Americans will receive.
For those who have believed there are enough votes in the U.S. Senate to kill Obamacare, think again. Obama, Pelosi and Reid are in full agreement to use reconciliation requiring 51 instead of 60 votes to push Obamacare onto the American public. The only question remaining is whether the House can garner enough votes to defeat Obamacare.
As expected, President Obama in his new health care reform proposal expands the involvement of the federal government in abortion. If the President has his way, the resulting health care reform would:
Allow direct federal funding of abortion on demand through Community Health Centers
Institute federal subsidies for private health plans that cover abortion on demand
Authorize federal mandates to require even non -subsidized private plans to cover abortion on demand.
President Obama essentially adopts the pro-abortion provisions of the bill passed by the U.S. Senate and proposes to increase funds that would be available to directly subsidize abortion procedures through Community Health Centers and to subsidize health insurance plans that cover abortion. None of these problems are contained in the House version of Obamacare because the Stupak-Pitts Amendment prohibiting the use of federal funds for abortions, either directly or indirectly, applies to all of the provisions in the bill.
A number of pro-life Democrats are on record with their constituents that they will not vote for the Senate-passed bill because of the abortion problems. For them, the President’s plan only makes matters worse.
Tomorrow — the rationing components of the Obama bill.
On Friday, the Massachusetts House Judiciary Committee announced it would hold a public hearing the very next day on H1468, a bill to legalize assisted suicide in Massachusetts. It has been have long recognized that the New England states would be the new front for Compassion and Choices, the leading proponent of assisted suicide in the United States. Here is the evidence:
The New Hampshire Judiciary Committee late last year decided not to recommend a measure to legalize assisted suicide. Earlier thisyear, the New Hampshire House defeated the measure by a 242-113 vote.
Compassion and Choices filed suit in Connecticut asking the Court to rule that when a physician helps a patient to commit suicide, it is “aid-in-dying,” not assisted suicide.
Now, the rush hearing in Massachusetts.
Not Dead Yet, other disability rights groups, a national Jewish group, the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, and Massachusetts Citizens for Life are gearing up for tomorrow’s hearing. It is hoped that the committee is not prepared to railroad the bill through the legislature.
A veteran British broadcaster made a stunning confession on a television program aired this week. He admitted smothering his lover who had AIDS sometime in the 1980s. Ray Gosling has been arrested and is now out on bail for his public admission.
As explained by Gosling on the BBC Inside Out television program: “In a hospital one hot afternoon, the doctor said, ‘There’s nothing we can do,’ and he was in terrible, terrible pain. I said to the doctor, ‘Leave me just for a bit’ and he went away. I picked up the pillow and smothered him until he was dead.”
This stunning story has fueled debate already raging in the United Kingdom over euthanasia and assisted suicide. British citizens travel to Switzerland to be assisted with death, causing some to promote legalization in Great Britain so that people do not have to travel for their “right-to-die.” A highly-publicized case asking that those who assist patients in traveling to Switzerland not be prosecuted resulted in interim guidelines being published by the Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales on when assisted suicide cases should be prosecuted.
A prominent British novelist, Martin Amis, is pushing euthanasia because people are living longer and would create “a population of demented very old people, like an invasion of terrible immigrants, stinking out the restaurants and cafes and shops.” Amis wants euthanasia booths on every corner “where you could get a martini and a medal.” Another British author, Terry Pratchett, is asking for the creation of special panels where people could argue their case to be legally put to death.
Debate is at fever pitch in Scotland over a bill introduced by a Member of Parliament to legalize assisted suicide. These developments are ominous not only for the United Kingdom, but for other countries who might follow their lead.
The most painful part of watching the public Palin is the focus on her family. So much of what is said about the Governor and her family would be considered horribly politically incorrect in a different world with different people. Just like the topic of abortion, the topic of Palin turns everything upside down.
If Chelsea Clinton had become pregnant as a young woman, would she be trashed like Bristol Palin has been?
If the Obamas had a Down syndrome child, would they be virtually ridiculed for having the audacity to bring the child into the world?
No one took notice that George and Barbara Bush had five children.
The cruelest and saddest part of this melodrama is the dumping on baby Trig. First, Kathleen Parker accuses the Governor of exploiting her child. Now, Fox television heaps it on by using a Down syndrome girl to “dig” at Palin in “Family Guy.”
It’s a new sport, a game — who can be the top trasher. It is lack of humanity run amuck.
It’s called the “peaceful pill” and has long been advocated by notorious euthanasia proponent Philip Nitschke as a means to kill oneself. The drug is Nembutal which is only legally available in Australia for veterinarians to euthanize animals. Nitschke helps people to obtain the drug illegally from Mexico and other overseas sources.
Nitschke’s organization, Exit International, claims it tries to restrict its suicide advice to older people. But now, young Australian people in their 20s and 30s are killing themselves using Nembutal. The Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine revealed that six people in their 20s and eight in their 30s were found to have died of an overdose of Nembutal.
Nitschke’s website allows people to download instructions on using Nembutal from The Peaceful Pill Handbook, a book whichhas been published online in the US. In Australia, those who download the book are subject to a $110,000 fine but no one has been charged to date.
Nitschke does not find the report about young people alarming. He says that numbers of people are committing suicide because they are “tired of life.” In Nitschke’s grand scheme, the young who fall prey to the suicide strategy are justified casualties because of the greater benefits for many other people.
Nitschke has now moved his workshops teaching people how to kill themselves to Washington State which legalized assisted suicide in late 2008.
Top Democrats have let the cat out of the bag. The ballyhooed “bipartisan” summit is merely a prelude to a plan already concocted by Democratic congressional leaders to use “reconciliation” to push through the massive pro-abortion health care overhaul known as Obamacare.
Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Speaker Pelosi have vigorously publicly defended using “reconciliation” now that the Senate leadership has lost its 60-vote majority. Word is the Dems will use reconciliation as a threat at the summit in an attempt to get Republicans to succumb and support Obamacare.
In response to these reports, Republican House leaders have written to Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid, asking them to reject using reconciliation to ram home Obamacare. “To ensure we can move forward in good faith, we ask that you publicly disavow these reports and assure the American people that Democratic leadership is not putting together any kind of backroom deal or plotting any kind of legislative trickery to pass it,” they write.
Valentine’s Day — it conjures up warm feelings of romance and love. Gifts are exchanged. We are pummeled with ads telling us what to buy to make this the sweetest day ever. Red hearts symbolize a throbbing heart filled with love.
Planned Parenthood is using this occasion to promote disgusting Valentine’s Day cards which promote reckless behavior and abortion. One features a heart with the message “I love pro-choice doctors. ” “Let pro-choice physicians know that you appreciate them. With the stigma and harassment our doctors face, they deserve to know that they make us proud,” says one pro-abortion leader. Proud of people that kill babies — that’s downright sickening.
Wisconsin Right to Life is promoting a Valentine’s Day message to “Act Responsibly.” States who keep monthly abortion statistics show that abortions are higher from January to April. The celebratory occasions of New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day could be fueling those abortion numbers. Promoting personal responsibility and the value of family is a good way to cut down abortion numbers.
See Wisconsin Right to Life Valentine’s Day campaign poster here.
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