Posts tagged “Obamacare”

Unholy Marriage: Planned Parenthood and Obamacare

Posted on May 14th, 2013

In Planned Bullyhood, Karen Handel notes the financial windfall that comes to Planned Parenthood through Obamacare—and how Obamacare provides better coverage of contraception and sterilization than for actual illnesses. Planned Parenthood stands to gain under Obamacare. Nearly all insurance plans must provide contraceptives without a co-pay. Contraception services account for about one-third of its total services (according to Planned Parenthood’s most recent annual report). Clearly, Planned Parenthood benefits financially from this mandate— and one can see clearly why Cecile Richards aggressively lobbied for it. And, before anyone jumps to the conclusion that I am against all contraception, let me say that I am not. What I am against is forcing this mandate on religious organizations. It is a flagrant infringement on religious liberty and conscience.…

Categories: Culture, Politics

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Obama: HHS Mandate is all about “freedom from government interference and meddling”

Posted on May 11th, 2012

Doesn’t it feel like we’ve walked through the looking glass? Somehow the Obamacare Mandate requiring religious organizations to provide—against their conscience and long-held beliefs—abortion-causing drugs, sterilization, and contraception is all about promoting “freedom from government interference and meddling.” Huh? This is like the anti-bullying speaker who turns out to be … a bully. “This contraception fight in particular was illuminating,” Obama told a group of women at a campaign fundraiser yesterday. “This is a [Republican] party that says it prides itself on being rabidly anti-regulation. These are folks who claim to believe in freedom from government interference and meddling. But it doesn’t seem to bother them when it comes to women’s health.” I shouldn’t need to remind you, gentle reader, that pregnancy is not…

Categories: Politics

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Krauthammer on the coercive power of Obamacare

Posted on March 26th, 2012

Oral argument begins this morning before the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of Obamacare. Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post looks at the coercive power of the HHS mandate in his broader look at the constitutional problems of Obamacare: Serendipitously, the recently issued regulation on contraceptive coverage has allowed us to see exactly how this new power works. All institutions — excepting only churches, but not excepting church-run charities, hospitals, etc. — will be required to offer health care that must include free contraception, sterilization and drugs that cause abortion. Consider the cascade of arbitrary bureaucratic decisions that resulted in this edict: (1) Contraception, sterilization and abortion pills are classified as medical prevention. On whose authority? The secretary of health and human services, invoking the Institute…

Categories: Politics, Religion

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In the contraception mandate, who is in bed with Obama?

Posted on March 15th, 2012

We have seen previously how the contraception mandate is a dream of the new fascists: inconsequential sex, disregard for children, erosion of religious liberty, and more power ceded to the government. But there is also money to be made here, and Big Pharma is the winner. Here’s Peter Schweizer on the role of Big Pharma: It’s important to point out that among President Obama’s biggest financial backers are precisely the Big Pharma companies who benefit from the mandate.  Sally Sussman, head of government affairs for Pfizer, is one of his biggest campaign bundlers, who co-hosted a fundraiser for Obama on Thursday night. Pfizer sells numerous contraceptives that now must be covered by health-care plans.  Obama’s financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry run deep. During the 2008…

Categories: Culture, Politics

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Franks, McConnell defend religious freedom

Posted on March 5th, 2012

Rep. Trent Franks last week published an outstanding piece in the Daily Caller, “What’s behind the president’s assault on our religious freedoms?” It reads in part: The Founders believed in a hierarchy of rights, and they saw religious freedom as an “inalienable right” of all Americans. Alexander Hamilton, for example, eloquently wrote, “The sacred rights of mankind … are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the Hand of Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.” In drafting the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson included in the conclusion that, “If any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement…

Categories: Politics, Religion

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Congresswoman: “We’re not looking to the Constitution” on HHS Mandate

Posted on February 28th, 2012

Here’s congresswomen Kathy Hochul, D-NY, defending the HHS abortifacient/sterilization/contraception mandate: And there you have it. Asked what in the Constitution gives them the right to enact the mandate, she responds, “We’re not looking to the Constitution.” Which is very convenient, since it says: 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. But, “The congress has decided.” Towards the end of the video, an insightful questioner asks why they don’t give away free band-aids or cancer screenings? “Why is it contraception?” All she can stammer is, “More work needs to…

Categories: Politics, Theology

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A measured and deliberate attack on religion’s moral influence

Posted on February 25th, 2012

Archbishop Charles Chaput is one of the leading lights in American Catholicism. His entire statement on the HHS Mandate is worth reading, but in the following two paragraphs he makes a point that I have not seen elsewhere, at least not so directly: The current administration prides itself on being measured and deliberate. The current HHS mandate needs to be understood as exactly that. Commentators are using words like “gaffe,” “ill conceived,” and “mistake” to describe the mandate. They’re wrong. It’s impossible to see this regulation as some happenstance policy. It has been too long in the making. Despite all of its public apprehension about “culture warriors” on the political right in the past, the current administration has created an HHS mandate that is…

Categories: Politics

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A Whole New Can of Worms

Posted on February 25th, 2012

The faculty of my alma mater, Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, has released a statement on the HHS Mandate. Playing off of Luther’s famous stand at the Diet of Worms, it is cleverly titled “A Whole New Can of Worms.” It reads in part: According to this unconstitutional mandate, Christians who own insurance companies will be forced to offer contraceptives and abortifacients. Christian institutions will be forced to buy insurance from companies that will also have to provide their workers contraceptives and abortifacients. While we do not share with the Catholic Church the same teaching on contraceptives, we do honor their right, according to the First Amendment, to practice their beliefs according to their conscience. Furthermore, we do stand with them entirely on the…

Categories: Politics, Theology

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Resource documents on the HHS mandate violating religious liberty in America

Posted on February 23rd, 2012

Here is a list of documents from multiple sources on the HHS mandate and its violation of religious freedom and even federal law (Religious Freedom Restoration Act).   HHS Rule Final Rule (finalizing the troublesome Interim Final Rule WITHOUT CHANGE) Guidance on a Temporary Extension (to give time to religious entities to figure out how to violate their beliefs) White House Fact Sheet Promising a Faux Compromise (sometime between now and after the election) HRSA Guidelines on Preventive Care Services for Women (complete with the narrowest exemption for religious employers they could draft)   Legislation House legislation: H.R. 1179, Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, 198 cosponsors, Staff contact: Diana.Tasnadi@mail.house.gov   Senate legislation: S. 1467, Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, Sen. Roy Blunt, 37 cosponsors, Staff contact: Lauren_Weidmaier@blunt.senate.gov…

Categories: Politics

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Testimony summaries at the House hearing on the Obama administration curtailing religious freedom

Posted on February 23rd, 2012

The Most Reverend William E. Lori, Roman Catholic Bishop of Bridgeport, CT, Chairman Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops “We serve people of all faiths, and none because they are catholic, but because we are catholic and our faith prompts us to do it and it flows from what we believe, how we worship and how we are to live. And so, we regard, for example, our catholic charities as really an outgrowth of our discipleship of the Lord and our communion with one another in the Lord and not a side business.”   The Reverend Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, President, The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod “We deem this recent government mandate as an infringement upon the beliefs…

Categories: Politics

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