CNS News did some investigating, and Ed Morrissey came up with this analysis:

At least ostensibly, this is an unfunded mandate on the states, which run the exchanges. What happens when no insurer in the state offers abortion coverage? At the moment, 87% of all abortions are purchased outside of third-party payers, so this is not an academic question. Do the feds intend to shut down an exchange that doesn’t offer an abortion plan? Or do they expect the states then to cover abortions instead?

… Once Congress stops re-enabling the Hyde Amendment, the mandates in Reid’s Section 1303 will force the federal government to supply the coverage for abortion where state exchanges have none. It will give the federal government an entree into broader health-insurance offerings, and that will have one ironic effect: it will crowd out those few private insurance plans that offer elective abortion coverage. Where Stupak’s opponents insisted that his language would create a “price signal” that would encourage private insurers to abandon abortion coverage, this would all but guarantee the same result, as private insurers would get undercut by the federal plan that would come into play.

This is nothing more than a mandate for federally-funded abortions. How long would it take a court to make that same determination? I suspect that Planned Parenthood and NARAL already have their legal counsel preparing for it.

It’s not exactly a surprise that the health care bill would include funding for abortion. Feminists have been howling about the Stupak amendment, the abortion lobby has been furious. Liberals were bound to cave in to their demands, and they were bound to try to hide it from the federal public. It is typical of liberals. And it’s infuriating to anyone with any kind of morals or respect for the sanctity of life. It’s bad enough that abortion is celebrated as some kind of right in this country, like it’s glorious for a woman to be able to go and kill her baby. Feminists in particular revel in it, like it’s some kind of sacred cow. Apparently, you have to be a member of the “I <3 Abortion" club in order to be a feminist in today's world. There are currently about 1.3 million abortions performed a year, and this isn't good enough for feminists. They not only want abortion to be free and legal, they want it to be paid for by Americans whether they like it or not. It has to be taxpayer-funded.

It's important that we all understand this. It's not good enough for feminists just to have abortion be legal and freely accessible. Any woman who wants to can get an abortion. And there is already $300 million a year in taxpayer subsidies for Planned Parenthood. There's plenty of federal funding for abortion, but feminists always want more. It isn't enough for abortion to be legal, it isn't enough for it to be federally subsidized. How much do they want? Does every single abortion performed need to be taxpayer funded so that any woman who wants one never has to pay for it out of her own pocket? It's a disgusting state of affairs. Half the country is morally opposed to abortion. But liberals are a special group of people. If they believe in something, then everyone must be for it and it must be federally mandated and subsidized. If they don't believe in something, then no one should believe in it and it must be totally banned. And so, thanks to this mental outlook and the carping of the feminist/abortion lobby, we are now looking at forcing half of the people in this country to fund something to which they are virulently opposed.

Burn up that switchboard today. You can find contact information for your senators here.

Cross-posted from Cassy’s blog. Stop by for more original commentary, or follow her on Twitter!

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Sen. Claire McCaskill on Thursday touted the Senate healthcare reform bill by taking a dig at former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s new book.

McCaskill (D) said if the bill was printed in regular size font, it would be the same length as Palin’s (R) memoir Going Rogue: An American Life “but with more meat on the bone.” She tweeted:

If we printed the health care bill in regular size font it would be same legnth as Sarah Palin’s book, but with more meat on the bone.

The Senate healthcare bill is 2,074 pages long. Palin’s book is 413 pages long with 16 pages of photographs.

Best comment at the source

Senator McCaskill would do well to remember that no one is being asked to suffer under the yoke of the contents of Sarah Palin’s book. Nor will they be forced, against their will, and at perhaps great financial cost, to abide by the contents therein. Methinks Senator McCaskill should probably speak less, and listen, (to the American people), more. Dusan on 11/19/2009 at 22:32

Can’t add anything to that.

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Some points according to the CBO and the Senate Republican Policy Committee:

• Spending: The cost of the bill is $2.5 trillion over 10 years of full implementation (2014-2023).
• Taxes Increases: Taxes will go up $493.6 billion — nearly half a trillion dollars.
• Medicare Cuts: Medicare will be cut $464.6 billion — another half a trillion dollars.
• Government Plan: The bill includes a government run plan and provides states with the possibility of opting out of participating in that plan. According to CBO, the government run plan “would typically have premiums that were somewhat higher than the average premiums for the private plans in the exchanges.”
• Employer Mandate: The bill will impose $28 billion in new taxes on employers that do not provide government approved health plans.

Additional CBO Background:

• The bill would bend the federal cost-curve up.
• 24 million people would be left without insurance.
• States will have to spend an additional $25 billion in Medicaid expenditures
• Taxes on uninsured individuals will total $8 billion.
• Taxes on employers from the “free-rider” penalty would total $28 billion.
• 5 million Americans would lose their employer coverage.
• Only 19 million people will get a subsidy to help them buy health insurance. None of the 162 million people with employer-based care will even be eligible for a subsidy.
• The costs of the subsidies in the exchange would grow at 8 percent a year.
• The tax on high value plans will quickly be applied to almost all plans. CBO expects the revenues from the Cadillac plan tax to grow at 10-15 percent per year outside the budget window.

(H/T John Goodman)

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The health watchdog has blocked a critical liver cancer drug, saying it is too pricey for the state health service, leaving manufacturer Bayer vowing to appeal the decision.

Most people who get the aggressive form of cancer are diagnosed too late for surgery to help, meaning that the drug — Nexavar — is one of the only options left, and it has been shown to prolong life by almost four months on average.

The decision, announced on Thursday, is a setback for Germany’s Bayer and its partner Onyx Pharmaceuticals, which have already seen Nexavar turned down by the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) to treat kidney cancer.

NICE said in the final draft recommendation it would not recommend Bayer’s Nexavar to the National Health Service (NHS) for the most common type of liver cancer as it was too expensive…

In a free country, you can have whatever drug you want, provided you have arranged to pay for it. But no doubt bureaucrats know best when it’s time for us to die.

On a tip from Gore blimey, the sky is falling. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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Either today or later this week, Senate Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev) wants the Senate to vote on a “motion to proceed” on the Senate’s version of the healthcare bill. That wouldn’t be so bad except for the fact that it has barely been seen by anyone in the Senate. At least not as far as most Senators are concerned. Why is that? Because the bill has not been shown to them with sufficient time to study it, that’s why.

What Reid wants is for the Senate to vote to proceed on a bill that has not been seen, not read, not studied by the very Senators from whom he wants to force a vote. If this bill is so important, why isn’t it imperative that our Senators actually get to see the thing they are expected to vote on?

And that isn’t the worst of the unconscionable dirty tricks that Reid is playing with this “important” legislation. He’s also planning on a bait and switch tactic once he gets his vote to proceed.

News is that Reid wants to use a Senate procedure where a bill can be swapped out with another on the floor. He wants to bring an unassociated bill to the floor and once it gets there he wants to swap that bill out with the healthcare bill. In other words, he wants to bring a fake bill to the floor and pull a bait-and-switch act to suddenly plop before the Senate the heretofore unseen healthcare bill. Then he wants to force a quick vote.

Alarmingly, Reid is making an effort to eliminate any time for Senators to see what is in this economy killing, liberty slaying, big government leviathan before a vote is forced down their throats.

If this bill was a legitimate bill would all of these dirty tricks be necessary? Further, if this bill had such wide acceptance and agreement among Congress and the people alike, why are Democrats afraid to let everyone see the bill?

Reid isn’t a fool, though. He knows that once America gets to see what is in this mess it will become nearly impossible to pass this thing. Naturally, that is why he is trying to eliminate any possibility that anyone might get a glimpse of what is in the bill before it is passed.

The fact is, though, if Reid cannot get his 60-vote “motion to proceed” his sly maneuvers will be stymied for now. So, call your Senators and tell them where you stand on these underhanded tactics, won’t you? Tell them not to vote to proceed until they’ve at least gotten a chance to see this mysterious, invisible healthcare bill.

Lastly, one wonders why the most “transparent” president in history is allowing the Congress to continue day in and day out to press votes on legislation no one has ever seen on bills that haven’t been written? What ever happened to the hoary days of campaigning when Obama kept promising that we’d all get 5 days to see a bill before a vote?

How times change.

Note: As of today, the bill has been posted online so that we can see it. But Reid wants to vote on the motion to proceed today or tomorrow. This is hardly the 72 hours timeline that transparency advocates have pressed for, nor is it anywhere close to the five days that President Obama promised us all.

You can see the bill at http://www.scribd.com/doc/22734971/Senate-Democrats-Health-Care-Reform-Bill.

(Cross posted at BigGovernment.com.)

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Power-hungry TVs will be banned from store shelves in California after state regulators adopted a first-in-the nation mandate to lower electricity demand.

On a unanimous vote, the California Energy Commission on Wednesday required all new televisions up to 58 inches to be more energy efficient beginning in 2011. The requirement will be tougher in 2013, and only a quarter of all TVs on the market currently meet that standard.

And then I found out that Los Federales did the same thing.

There will be three consequences of the Nannyfornia law. 1st, the costs will skyrocket for those that meet the standards. 2nd, people will go out of state, or even down to Mexico, to purchase their TV’s. 3rd, there will be fewer choices. I witnessed something similar first hand in NJ back in the day when they jacked the taxes on automobiles. So, people went to Pa., NY, and Delaware to purchase. Cars in NJ were on short supply. Dealers were going out of business. NJ repealed those taxes quickly, though. Something like this will never go away.

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That was what he replied when asked where in the Constitution did Congress have authority to mandate health care on every American.

Using the general welfare excuse is like a get-out-of-jail-free card for liberals. The Constitution is not a particularly long document, nor is it a complicated one. But it does not agree with government controlling industries, or mandating what Americans can or cannot have, or government regulation of religion, and so on. Yet all liberals have to do is pull out that little golden ticket: general welfare. To liberals, it cancels out everything else the Constitution says. They can do whatever they want, as long as it’s supposedly “for our own good”. They can use those two little words — general welfare — to excuse all manner of evils. And while there are plenty of wonderful words in the Constitution they could zero in on — freedom, justice, liberty — liberals will always hone in on the one phrase they can use to excuse all the wrongs they’re committing. It’s a perverted meaning, but what does that matter? It gives them the ability to excuse anything they try to shove onto us — amnesty, government run health care, abortion, civilian trials for terrorists — and still be able to say it’s “in the Constitution”.

Don’t think of this as a flaw by our Founding Fathers. It isn’t. What liberals are doing is a distortion and a perversion, and deep down, they know it. The Constitution of the United States is one of the most profound documents ever written in the history of man, and all liberals want to do is twist it around to use it for their own sick means.

Cross-posted from Cassy’s blog. Stop by for more original commentary, or follow her on Twitter!

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Women in their 40s should stop routinely having annual mammograms and older women should cut back to one scheduled exam every other year, an influential federal task force has concluded, challenging the use of one of the most common medical tests.

In its first reevaluation of breast cancer screening since 2002, the independent government-appointed panel recommended the changes, citing evidence that the potential harm to women having annual exams beginning at age 40 outweighs the benefit.

Coming amid a highly charged national debate over health-care reform and simmering suspicions about the possibility of rationing medical services, the recommendations immediately became enveloped in controversy.

“We’re not saying women shouldn’t get screened. Screening does saves lives,” said Diana B. Petitti, vice chairman of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which released the recommendations Monday in a paper being published in Tuesday’s Annals of Internal Medicine. “But we are recommending against routine screening. There are important and serious negatives or harms that need to be considered carefully.”

Several patient advocacy groups and many breast cancer experts welcomed the new guidelines, saying they represent a growing recognition that more testing, exams and treatment are not always beneficial and, in fact, can harm patients. Mammograms produce false-positive results in about 10 percent of cases, causing anxiety and often prompting women to undergo unnecessary follow-up tests, sometimes-disfiguring biopsies and unneeded treatment, including surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.

But the American Cancer Society, the American College of Radiology and other experts condemned the change, saying the benefits of routine mammography have been clearly demonstrated and play a key role in reducing the number of mastectomies and the death toll from one of the most common cancers.

“Tens of thousands of lives are being saved by mammography screening, and these idiots want to do away with it,” said Daniel B. Kopans, a radiology professor at Harvard Medical School. “It’s crazy — unethical, really.”

The new guidelines also recommend against teaching women to do regular self-exams and concluded that there is insufficient evidence to recommend that doctors do the exams or to continue routine mammograms beyond age 74.

Some questioned whether the new guidelines were designed more to control spending than to improve health. In addition to prompting fewer doctors to recommend mammograms to their patients, they worried that the move would prompt insurers to deny coverage for many mammograms.

Less than a year ago, these same people were decrying the decline in mammograms among women in their 40s. And now, suddenly, with Obamacare looming, this panel just coincidentally came to this conclusion? Not shockingly, Ed Morrissey examines the doctors on this panel, and finds not a single oncologist present.

Barack Obama claimed that he would be championing increased screening and prevention. Yet now we’ve got a federal panel wanting to just cut back the number of mammograms performed, mammograms that could potentially be life-saving, because you could get a false positive and feel anxiety? I don’t know if it’s just me, but I’d rather be safe than sorry. I’d rather get the mammogram and have the doctors look into that suspicious lump, false positive or not, than just shove it off for a few years and end up having cancer in a more severe stage. Isn’t that what Obama’s panel here is basically recommending?

And they aren’t even going after just mammograms. They don’t even want women doing self-exams anymore! I guess they don’t want to take the risk of a woman who is “too young” finding a lump on her breast and getting it checked out, just to be safe. I mean, jeez, that would just be waaay too costly. The motivation here is clearly not to save lives or decrease some imagined anxiety women get over their mammograms. (After all, what person wouldn’t be anxious if they thought they had cancer? It seems perfectly natural to me.) It’s just pathetic and extremely depressing to me that Obamacare hasn’t even passed yet — and already, we have federal panels recommending rationing care.

I keep asking — are you happy you voted for change now? Is this the hope you wanted?

No more of this if Obama has his way.

Cross-posted from Cassy’s blog. Stop by for more original commentary, or follow her on Twitter!

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The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn’t change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.

Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians.

Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city.

“If the city requires this, we can’t do it,” Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said Wednesday. “The city is saying in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. For us, that’s really a problem.”

Several D.C. Council members said the Catholic Church is trying to erode the city’s long-standing laws protecting gay men and lesbians from discrimination.

The clash escalates the dispute over the same-sex marriage proposal between the council and the archdiocese, which has generally stayed out of city politics.

Catholic Charities, the church’s social services arm, is one of dozens of nonprofit organizations that partner with the District. It serves 68,000 people in the city, including the one-third of Washington’s homeless people who go to city-owned shelters managed by the church. City leaders said the church is not the dominant provider of any particular social service, but the church pointed out that it supplements funding for city programs with $10 million from its own coffers.

“All of those services will be adversely impacted if the exemption language remains so narrow,” Jane G. Belford, chancellor of the Washington Archdiocese, wrote to the council this week.

The church’s influence seems limited. In separate interviews Wednesday, council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) referred to the church as “somewhat childish.” Another council member, David A. Catania (I-At Large), said he would rather end the city’s relationship with the church than give in to its demands.

“They don’t represent, in my mind, an indispensable component of our social services infrastructure,” said Catania, the sponsor of the same-sex marriage bill and the chairman of the Health Committee.

The standoff appears to be among the harshest between a government and a faith-based group over the rights of same-sex couples. Advocates for same-sex couples said they could not immediately think of other places where a same-sex marriage law had set off a break with a major faith-based provider of social services.

The council is expected to pass the same-sex marriage bill next month, but the measure continues to face strong opposition from a number of groups that are pushing for a referendum on the issue.

The archdiocese’s statement follows a vote Tuesday by the council’s Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary to reject an amendment that would have allowed individuals, based on their religious beliefs, to decline to provide services for same-sex weddings.

How pathetic. D.C.’s stance is basically that the Catholic Church should abandon its principles if it wants to keep working with the city, because this is going to pass whether they like it or not, and they have to make this awful choice — but they, of course, are the bad guys. This is, of course, the liberal meme, because anyone who is against gay marriage is prejudiced and backward and wrong and might as well be the KKK. Check out this explanation from Feministing:

The closing of a major homeless shelter and budget cuts have worsened the situation in a city already struggling to serve its poor and homeless residents. As someone who organizes for access to abortion I have obvious problems with gaps in the services provided by Catholic Charities. But that does not discount the vital work they do for the 68,000 D.C. residents who rely on Catholic Charities for shelters, health care, and food programs.

The Archdiosese is making a clear statement: it considers keeping rights from same sex couples more important than the needs of this city’s most vulnerable. Their willingness to use the lives and health of 68,000 people in need as pawns in their fight for the right to discriminate is unconscionable. D.C. needs more social services, not less. I hope the Archdiosese can put aside the politics of hate for a moment to recognize what I would think they would consider a moral obligation to do vital life saving work.

With all due respect, this isn’t a choice the church can fairly make. They didn’t ask for this bill, and their input was completely ignored when it came to amendments in the bill. The passage of this bill puts Catholic Charities in the worst kind of situation. For the Catholic Church, this isn’t a political situation, which is what liberals want to make it into. For the Catholic Church, this is a religious issue, it’s a moral one. The church cannot just abandon its principles, and that’s what liberals are forcing the church to do. And if the church caves on this, it won’t stop here. Liberals will start putting the pressure on about abortion, and performing gay marriages, and who knows what else. Where will it stop? It’s disgusting that liberals are putting the blame on the church here, when they are the ones being forced between a rock and a hard place. The church is not the one using homeless people as pawns; the city is. And it is wrong for the government to be legislating religious beliefs, which is basically what has happened here. This is, at its core, a subtle attack on our rights to religious freedom. And apparently, there is no one who is going to stand up for religion in this case.

If this is the change you voted for, then I hope you’re happy.

Cross-posted from Cassy’s blog. Stop by for more original commentary, or follow her on Twitter!

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On November 5 on CNN, Florida Governor Charlie Crist told Wolf Blitzer that he didn’t back the $787 billion Obama stimulus bill. Crist has since said that it isn’t a flip flop when he says he supported the stimulus “in concept” but didn’t support the specific bill.

In essence he’s trying to have it both ways. Claiming he wasn’t a supporter of the actual bill, but hedging by saying he felt something was necessary. It seems to be Crist’s way of straddling the line.

Unfortunately, the facts seem to belie Crist’s delicately balanced tightrope act because in February of 2009 Crist was one of 18 U.S. governors (along with the governor of the Virgin Islands) that signed a letter informing President Obama that they supported the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). (See pdf of letter here)

Despite being a signatory of the letter Crist is now saying he didn’t support the specific stimulus bill. After speaking at the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Crist told the press, ““I think the question posed to me was, ‘Did you endorse this specific bill?’ And I said, ‘No, I didn’t,’ but the concept I thought, and still believe, was important, necessary and it helped Florida.”

The letter Crist signed, however, does not mention any ideas “in concept” but specifically supports the $787 billion stimulus bill itself. The letter begins quite clearly in support of the $787 billion stimulus bill saying, “We are writing to express our support for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).” What could be clearer?

How Crist can possibly claim that he never supported this specific bill when his name appears on this letter is anyone’s guess.

Text of Letter:

February 3, 2009

Dear Mr. President

We are writing to express our support for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which passed last week in the House and is under consideration currently in the Senate. As stewards of the economies of our respective states and regions, we urge the Congress to reach prompt resolution of all outstanding differences and you to sign the bill when it reaches your desk.

Families and businesses across the nation are hurting. Credit markets have seized up, which is affecting both business activity and consumer spending. Unemployment is rising sharply. While we all believe in the importance of free markets, we believe that the markets today need stimulating.

We support then objectives of the ARRA and welcome the partnership it offers us as governors. The support for a temporary increase in the federal commitment for public education, health care (including cost control through initiatives such as health records IT), and for rebuilding our public infrastructure will create and preserve jobs today, and represents a sound investment in our long-term economic interests as well. We look forward to working with Congress and your Administration to advance an economic recovery package that puts federal dollars to work in our states in the quickest and most efficient manner as possible.

Signed
Deval Patrick, Mass.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Calif.
Bill Ritter, Col.
M. Jodi Rell, Conn.
Jack Markell, Del.
Charlie Crist, Fla.
Pat Quinn, Ill.
Chester Culver, Iowa
Jennifer Granholm, Mich.
Jon Corzine, New Jersey
David Paterson, New York
Ted Strickland, Ohio
Brad Henry, Oklahoma
Ted Kulongoski, Oregon
Ed Rendell, Penn.
James Douglas, Vermont
Tim Kaine, Vir.
Jim Doyle, Wisc.
John deJongh, Virgin Islands

It is also telling that out of the 19 signers of the letter, only four are Republicans, all from very liberal states.

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