|
|
Freedom of Conscience and Freedom of Religion are Under Attack
FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE AND FREEDOM OF RELIGION ARE UNDER ATTACK
The recent controversy surrounding ObamaCare is not about contraception, as the Administration would like us to believe. The Catholic Church believes it is unconstitutional for the government to FORCE them to offer and PAY for birth control pills, sterilization, and abortion inducing drugs for their employees, which are in direct opposition to the moral teachings of the Church. This government over-reach is an attack against our God-given rights to freedom of religion and freedom of conscience which are guaranteed in our U.S. Constitution.
ObamaCare gives DHH Sec. Kathleen Sebelius the power of the government to FORCE institutions of the Catholic Church to include and pay for, birth control pills, sterilization, and abortion inducing drugs for their employees in their health care plans, despite the Church's objections on moral grounds. This mandate is a direct attack on the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
Amendment I
"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."
The spin by the Obama Administration tries to fool us into thinking that it is about contraception. Please see "The HHS Mandate for Contraception/Sterlization Coverage: An Attack on Rights of Conscience," on the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops website in the following link:
http://usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/conscience-protection/upload/preventiveqanda2012-2.pdf (PDF file)
If the freedom of conscience is not up-held, will our physicians be forced to dispense birth control pills, or do sterilizations, and abortion inducing drugs to de-sensitize them; possibly paving the way for them to be forced to perform abortions or force them to practice euthanasia to keep health care costs down? If doctors don't comply, would they then risk being dropped as a provider under ObamaCare? The Administration has shown that it cannot be trusted to honor their word that they gave to the Bishops previously, that conscience rights would be protected under ObamaCare.
If we are not Catholics and/or we are not pro-life, why should it matter if the government issues mandates to the Catholic Church regarding health care. These mandates will have a ripple effect on all religions and all individuals and religious freedom can be denied to not just one, but to all groups.
After WWII, Martin Niemoller, a protestant minister who lived in Germany during that time, wrote the following words of warning:
"First they came for the Jehovah's Witnesses, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Jehovah's Witness.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Catholic.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me."
His message convey's remorse at being silent, and the resolve to never be silent again.
If you wish to speak out in defense of Religious Freedom and Freedom of Conscience, please read the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act; House Bill 1179, and Senate Bill 1467 in the link below. Then please call your Congressmen through the U.S. Capitol Switchboard (202) 224-3121, and ask your District 7 U.S. Representative Charles Boustany and your U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu and U. S. Senator David Vitter and ask them to co-sponsor these bills...if they are not already doing so!
hdl.loc.gov › THOMAS Home › Bills, Resolutions
Mar 28, 2011 – H.R.1179. Latest Title: Respect for Rights of Conscience Act of 2011. Sponsor: Rep Fortenberry, Jeff [NE-1] (introduced 3/17/2011) Cosponsors ...
The Catholic Bishops see the mandate as unconstitutional, "We cannot - we will not - comply with this unjust law." Please visit the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' website: www.usccb.org/conscience -TAKE ACTION via email:
May God Grant us Wisdom to Save Our Constitution! Sandy Hindelang
Independent Women's Voice
A voice for the mainstream
www.iwvoice.com
Your ObamaCare August Recess Guide -
The Knowledge You Need, The Questions to Ask
Independent Women's Voice
Just in time for August recess, Independent Women’s Voice has released a series of informational handouts on ObamaCare. The flyers focus on a range of topics from changes to health insurance, changes to Medicare, impact on the national debt, to Constitutional challenges, and how to join the movement for repeal. Our hope is that citizens will find the one-page handouts helpful as they continue the conversation about health reform with their lawmakers. Each flyer includes a suggested list of questions to ask Members of Congress – particularly useful during recess when Members will be at home, perhaps addressing the public or hosting town hall meetings.
Republicans Prepare for Next Phase of 'ObamaCare' Battle
Judson Berger - Fox News
Just because Congress spent the last several months locking horns over the debt ceiling doesn't mean Republicans have forgotten how much they hate the health care overhaul. They haven't. And when lawmakers return from break after Labor Day, conservatives are planning a renewed effort to chip away at the law. A new report Tuesday claiming budget analysts understated the cost of the law by up to $50 billion a year likely will only fuel concerns about the bill in a climate of austerity. Add that to GOP charges that the bill's individual mandate is unconstitutional, that its tax hikes will hurt the economy and that its subsidies represent another burden on a strained budget. Though a full-fledged bill to repeal the law died in the Senate early this year following its symbolic passage in the House, Republicans are not giving up.
Medicare Actuary: ObamaCare Will Triple the Growth Rate of Net Insurance Costs
Avik Roy - Forbes
Remember when the President promised that ObamaCare would reduce the cost of health insurance? “Under [our] plan, if you like your current health insurance, nothing changes, except your costs will go down by as much as $2,500 per year,” said Obama in 2008. The law, like Romneycare in Massachusetts, would magically eliminate the mythical “free-rider problem” by massively subsidizing health spending for the lower middle class. Well, the Office of the Actuary in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently put out its annual projections of national health care spending. And, contrary to the President, the actuaries find that ObamaCare will dramatically increase the near-term growth rate of health care costs. In 2014, the actuaries find that growth in the net cost of health insurance will increase by nearly 14 percent, compared to 3.5% if PPACA had never passed. The growth rate of private insurance premiums will rise to 9.4 percent, from 5.0 percent under prior law: an 88% increase.
Why ObamaCare's Cost Controls Will Fail
Peter Suderman - Reason
Before the passage of last year's health care overhaul, supporters of the law repeatedly made the case that it was intended to help control costs. Obama and various administration officials promised that it would hold down health insurance premiums while restraining the long-term growth of health care spending. They rigged the bill to get the Congressional Budget Office to score the law as a net reduction of the deficit. But despite all the effort put into gaming the numbers, the fiscal argument was never very believable. As in Massachusetts, the bill was about coverage expansion first, cost-control second. And the law fundamental approach to cost-control was to hand off responsibility to bureaucrats, who would then look for successful cost-control innovations and try to replicate it throughout the system.
Restaurants Brace for Job-Killing ObamaCare Regulations
Alana Goodman - Commentary Magazine
As if the job market hasn’t suffered enough recently, chain restaurants are now bracing themselves for the additional financial hardship of enforcing an ObamaCare policy requiring them to include calorie information on their in-store menus. The new rule might now sound expensive in theory, but Phil Klein explains the unintended impact it’s already having on small, individually-run franchises: While it’s easy to assume that a large corporation can afford to make such changes, most of the burden for complying with the new rules falls on franchisees, who are essentially small-business owners.
The Federal Government Wants You to Know That Your Pizza
Contains Between 1,840 to 3,740 Calories. You're Welcome.
Katherine Mangu-Ward - Reason
In its ongoing campaign to make sure Americans know that fast food is bad for them, the federal government snuck a provision into ObamaCare that mandates shoehorning nutritional information onto menu boards. Now restaurants are struggling to comply with the law—and may wind up confusing customers rather than informing them. From today's Washington Examiner: Section 4205 of the national health care law, "Nutritional Labeling of Standard Menu Items at Chain Restaurants," caused little stir when ObamaCare passed last year.
ObamaCare Bleeds Another Fifty Billion
John Hayward - Human Events
Neil Munro of the Daily Caller brings us the latest news about the worst legislation of the modern era: Federal payments required by President Barack Obama’s health care law are being understated by as much as $50 billion per year because official budget forecasts ignore the cost of insuring many employees’ spouses and children, according to a new analysis. The result could cost the U.S. Treasury hundreds of billions of dollars during the first ten years of the new health care law’s implementation. Wait… what? The official budget forecasts assumed nobody would want to extend insurance to their families? How could such an incredibly boneheaded mistake have been made?
ObamaCare Costs Additional $50 Billion a Year More Than Predicted,
Based on Yet Another False Assumption in Calculating its Costs
Hans Bader - Open Market
“Federal payments required by President Barack Obama’s health care law are being understated by as much as $50 billion per year because official budget forecasts ignore the cost of insuring many employees’ spouses and children, according to a new analysis. The result could cost the U.S. Treasury hundreds of billions of dollars during the first ten years of the new health care law’s implementation,” notes the Daily Caller. “The Congressional Budget Office has never done a cost-estimate of this [because] they were expressly told to do their modeling on single [person] coverage,” and “the Joint Committee on Taxation directed the Congressional Budget Office to ignore family members when determining whether employees actually pay more than 9.5 percent of their household income on insurance” and thus qualify for government subsidies.
Side Effects of ObamaCare on the Postgraduate Youth
Nicole Delli Paoli - Examiner
One of the biggest age groups affected by this decision to pass the health care bill are those of the postgraduate culture. Being a postgraduate means they can no longer obtain health insurance provided through the school. It also means, depending on the age they become a postgraduate, that they can no longer be covered underneath their parents. (The age is now 27 which is a normal age a graduate school student enters the postgraduate world anyway.) Donna, a postgraduate since May 2010 currently living in the Tampa Bay area, lost her health insurance when she had to leave her full time job to relocate. Since then, she has yet to find a full time position within her degree field. Donna is currently working a part-time, contract only position at an hourly rate. She is in the age bracket of being covered underneath her parents, but her parents do not have coverage themselves.
How ObamaCare Threatens Solvency of Health Insurers
John R. Graham - Investor's Business Daily
One of the most remarkable outcomes of ObamaCare is how the stock market has treated commercial health plans, which have rallied significantly. In the two years between the 2008 and 2010 elections, the Morgan Stanley Healthcare Payors' Index rallied 26% (annualized), vs. only 9% for the S&P 500. Outperformance increased even more since the mid-term election. Investors believe that the government guarantee of millions of customers to health plans will lead to profits. Unfortunately, this optimism is likely unfounded. ObamaCare distributes federal grants to states that encourage their insurance departments to increase power of prior approval of premium increases. And the coming wave of political interference will threaten health plans' very solvency. We already know that such laws do not keep a lid on health costs.
HHS Awards $8.5 Million in ObamaCare Money
to 25 Migrant Health Centers
Matt Cover - CNS News
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced it has awarded approximately $8.5 million in money from the ObamaCare health reform law to 25 new Migrant Health Centers designed to target the migrant farm worker population – money that may end up paying for free health care for illegal immigrants. The money is part of $28.8 million in ObamaCare funds from the New Access Point grant program for community health centers. Migrant Health Centers are a special type of community health center that specifically targets migrant farm workers. “These awards demonstrate a commitment to improving and expanding access to quality health care for local communities. We are removing barriers that stand in the way of affordable and accessible primary health services,” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement on Tuesday announcing the grants.
Kansas Gov. Brownback Rejects Federal Health Care Grant
Brent D. Wistrom - The Wichita Eagle/ Sacramento Bee
Citing the federal government's debt obligations, Gov. Sam Brownback said Tuesday he will return a $31.5 million federal grant intended to help implement the new federal health care law. Kansas had applied for the money last December as part of its effort to integrate the state's complicated health insurance databases and policy networks into a user-friendly system. The "early innovator" grant, awarded to Kansas and six other states in February, would have helped pay for an online exchange system where people could compare health insurance policies and buy one that best fit their needs. Kansas had proposed to build a model system that could be adopted by other states striving to meet the Jan. 1, 2013 deadline for developing an exchange system.
Rationing in the Obama Health Law
Obamacare and its future
remains out of the American public's hands.
After an overwhelming pro-repeal vote in the House, the Senate vote to repeal Obamacare failed, 51-47. All 47 Republican Senators, even the RINOs from Maine, voted for repeal, but no Democrat did. Not even Joe Manchin, the new Senator from West Virginia, who campaigned against Obamacare. This shows once again it doesn't matter what they say, it's what they do once elected.
The definite unconstitutionality of Obamacare is now in the hands of the Courts. That would be the entire Federal judiciary, all of whom are appointed for life after confirmation by the Senate. Removal of a Federal judge can occur only if impeached and convicted by the same government body, the Congress, that granted the appointment. The last Federal judge impeached, convicted and removed, for bribery, is now a U.S. Congressman.
Twenty-six of the fifty states (including Louisiana) have combined in a lawsuit to declare Obamacare unconstitutional, recently achieving such judgement in Federal District Court. After passing through the Appeals Court, this lawsuit will be heard by the Supreme Court. Indeed, the Virginia State Attorney-General has just asked for the lawsuit's expidited transit to the Supreme Court.
Thus, it will come down to nine people, the Supreme Justices, to decide the manner and cost of healthcare for over 300 million Americans. It is entirely reasonable to expect the four Constitutionally conservative Justices to rule in favor of the lawsuit, the four "Living Document" Justices to rule against. Which leaves one Justice, Mr. Kennedy, to cast the tie-breaker. One man will in all likelihood determine this matter of critical importance to every one of us, all 300 million of us. And he has his job for life.
Ain't that just great?
K. Thomas Noell, M.D.
|
Lafayette City/Parish UPDATES
Charettes
Changing Communities with a Steamroller
Taxed Enough Already?
Joyce Linde - Tea Party of Lafayette
Louisiana Legislative
UPDATES
National Legislative UPDATES
The Tea Party of Lafayette is comprised of a group of citizens in pursuit of truth who have joined together because of a mutual belief in the need for preservation of liberty, freedom and promotion of limited government as put forth by our Founding Fathers in the Constitution.
|