PoliticsUSA: Healthcare-financed abortions: You will pay for it; Christian hospitals well do it

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No Change to  Contraceptives Mandate / Narrow Exemption The answer, delivered on Friday, was: No change Religious groups of various faiths have been protesting ever since the federal  government announced in the summer that all health insurance plans, except  for those offered by churches, will have to cover a wide range of birth control  measures. The mandatory drugs and procedures that must be offered by almost  all health plans starting this August includes all contraceptives, including two  abortifacient drugs, sterilization, and reproductive counseling. The administration's exemption for religious employers was broad enough to  protect from the mandate only churches and religious orders. But it was crafted  not to protect religious organizations that serve the public (and not only  co-religionists) or that offer material or psychological help (and not only prayer  or preaching). Churches would be exempt from violating their consciences  about paying for drugs and procedures they reject as immoral, but parachurch  organizations (faith-based service organizations) would not be exempt. Also  not exempt: individuals with a conscientious objection to paying for those drugs;  owners of secular organizations with a moral objection; religious colleges and  universities--they would have to include the drugs and procedures in the plans  not only for their employees but also for their students.

Source: eNews for Faith-Based Organizations (IRFA) (January23,2k12)  Editor: Dr Stanley Carlson-Thies, Institutional  Religious Freedom Alliance Re-posted here by Politicarp,  refWrite frontpage politics columnist Follow @Owlb general editor, refWrite frontpage I don't oppose all abortion, and strongly maintain  that Protestant Christian, Catholic, Jewish and other faith-based hospitals shoud not be forced into the abortion racket. — Owlb Dr Carson's article continues below: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Note that the contraceptives mandate applies to all health insurance plans— it is not a condition attached to federal funds such that a religious organization can avoid the violation of its convictions by refusing a federal grant or contract. Not only Catholic leaders, but also evangelicals and orthodox Jews, among  others, protested the mandate, because it requires including contraceptives because it includes abortifacients, or because of the evil of forcing religious employers to   pay for "preventive services" they regard as immoral. And they protested the  exemption that essentially defines most faith-based service organizations as not  being religious at all. That's a terrible precedent to put into federal law and  practice. On Friday the administration gave its answer to all of the protests is: No change!  No budging. No accommodation. No change in the mandate, for example, by eliminating the most controversial drugs, Plan B and ella, from required coverage. No change in the exemption, not even to protect church-governed charities. The administration blandly assured everyone that it had carefully listened to the  many protesting religious leaders. But it judged that no change was necessary.  Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services  said, "I believe this proposal strikes the appropriate balance between respecting  religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services."    Oh, there was a concession, one change: the administration announced a one-year delay in imposition of the birth control mandate for nonprofit  employers who currently do not pay for contraceptives in their health insurance  plans because of their religious convictions. This delay, Secretary Sebelius said, "will allow these organizations more time and fledibility and flexibility to adapt to this new rule." In other words, this is not a year to negotiate a change that would accommodate  religious convictions. No, just a year for the organizations to learn to suppress  their moral qualms. A year delay, many observers noted, puts the deadline for these protesting  organizations safely on the other side of the presidential elections. Among the responses to Friday's announcement: * Galen Carey, VP of Government Relations for the National Association of  Evangelicals, said, "No government has the right to compel its citizens to  violate their conscience.  The HHS rules trample on our most cherished  freedoms and set a dangerous precedent." * Richard Land, President of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious   Liberty Commission, called the decision "outrageous." "It's analogous to   giving a man on death row a one-year stay of execution. You can follow your   conscience for one more year." * Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S.  Conference of Catholic Bishops, said, "Never before has the federal  government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace  and buy a product that violates their conscience. This shouldn't happen in a  land where free exercise of religion ranks first in the Bill of Rights." * Even the Washington Post blasted the administration, saying that it should  have expanded the exemption and calling the one-year delay a "feint at a  compromise."    Remedies: Two religious colleges, Belmont Abbey College (Catholic) and  Colorado Christian University (Protestant) have already sued the federal  government. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty represents the two  colleges. Other religious institutions of higher education are contemplating  lawsuits. And several bills have been introduced into Congress to deal with  the religious-freedom and conscience concerns in the health reform legislation,  including the problem of the birth control mandate. Adding insult to injury, some defenders of the administration, to fend off  charges that its actions diminish religious freedom, try to heap credit on it  simply for upholding the law. For example, Sarah Posner, at Religion  Dispatches, has written, "[T]he notion that the federal government has  somehow discriminated against Catholics is rendered even more absurd by  the hard numbers: in 2011 alone, according to the federal government  database at www.usaspending.gov, Catholic Charities received over $753  million in federal funding. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has not, as  the president promised on the campaign trail, reformed faith-based funding to  ensure, among other things, that groups receiving taxpayer aid do not  discriminate in hiring." But, of course, the federal government awards funding  to particular private organizations not as an act of favor but because those  organizations appear to be the most cost-effective suppliers of services; and  what critics term "religious job discrimination" in fact is a management practice  that is undergirded by federal laws and court decisions.    Take Note:  The Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance organized two  letters from leaders of organizations of various faiths, protesting the mandate   and narrow exemption. Dec. 21, 2011   August 26, 2011

HealthcareUSA: Patients: Majority want want online access to doctors

Nearly three/fourths want 

lab results, 

appointment booking,

med bills payment online,

communication with MDs office

thru secure portals

Report on Intuit Health study. 

by Nicole Lewis ,  InformationWeek 

March 4, 2011 10:46 AM

Slideshow: Health IT Boosts Patient Care, Safety

As a growing number of Americans use the Internet to perform a variety of health-related tasks, a new study shows that nearly three-quarters of those polled say they want the convenience of having an online connection to their doctor's office.

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At CES in Las Vegas, TechWeb's David Berlind stumbles across a scanner that's no bigger than a credit card

These findings come from Intuit Health's second-annual Health Care Check-Up Survey, which found that 73% of Americans surveyed would use a secure online communication solution to make it easier to get lab results, request appointments, pay medical bills, and communicate with their doctor's office.

Doctors should take note of these trends, particularly since a connected office may determine the number of patients they attend to. The survey also found that almost half of respondents would consider switching doctors to a practice that offered the ability to communicate and complete important healthcare tasks online.

The survey, which was conducted in January by Decipher Research for Intuit Health, polled 1,000 American adults online. The survey confirmed what other studies have shown, that Americans are increasingly turning to the Internet to help them manage various aspects of their healthcare.

Among the findings are:

-- Nearly 20% of Americans feel they cannot easily reach their doctor's office to ask questions, make appointments or obtain lab results.

-- A full 81% would schedule their own appointment via a secure Web service and fill out medical/registration forms online prior to their appointment.

-- A secure online method to access medical histories and share information with their doctor would be used by 78% of respondents.

-- Among Gen Y respondents (born 1965 to 1983), 59% said they would switch doctors for one with better online access, compared to only 29% of Baby Boomers (born 1946 to 1964).

Page 2:  Patients Want More Control Over Health 

1 | 2 Next Page »

refWrite:  Obamacare insufficiently opens the way for these needs of patients who use online communication for most of their needs, especially the aging population, and persons unable to
get about or who don't want to drive autos to a medical doctors's offices. - Lawt

-- Info Week material posted by Lawt

JuridicsUSA: Health / Illegals: Alliance of 20 states allowed to sue Feds re Obamacare

Reuters reporter, Tom Brown, presents the action by a US District Judge, Roger Vinson, to let states sue the Fed gov over the new healthcare law. Brown:

Opponents of Obama's overhaul of the $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare system have said it violates the Constitution by imposing what they consider unlawful taxes and requiring citizens to obtain healthcare coverage, among other issues.

A fascinating Constitutional case has also been admitted continuance, altho most other of 6 claims have been thrown out. The Supreme Court USA (SCOTUS) need not accept cases, but with 20 of 50 states now joining the suit, it seems unlikely that SCOTUS will turn down this one.

Another case brawt by the Fed gov Department of Justice under Attorney General, Eric Holder, regarding Arizona's new illegals law, has been joined by a bevvy of Latin American countries -- "Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru and Chile — [which want] to submit friend-of-the-court briefs in Justice’s challenge to SB 1070, which [Arizona Gov Jan]Brewer signed into law in April and is considered one of the nation’s toughest immigration-enforcement measures [against illegals]."

-- Lawt

EconomicsUSA: HealthCare: Prez's new healthcare webs+t, for the masses?

With a low-bowing Hat Tip to Information Week for the iconically exemplary logo graphic. It arrived on my desktop in my email Inbox.   Semiotics analysis:  Note the soothing colors -- Blue is the Virgin Mary color and the sky color (at times and places).  It comes with an underline in the graphic,  which m+t indicate semiotically that perhaps the digital sign that a live-link is present here, as I make this blog-entry.  If so, I plan to press that problematized underline, it being at least a come-on or if it be instead a payoff infodoor, I will press/click the underline as soon as this line of text is itself complete.) ........ 

returning after a minute or so: I pressed the underline and nothing happened ......

I find the layout, design, and news reportage of this page to be excellent.

Taking into account the content of the InfoWeek report by Elizabeth Montalbano on July 1, here we are now receiving word of the Prez's recess-appointment of a new head of Medicare and MedicAid,  Donald Berwick, a full medical doctor, and a fullout set of whacko medical-empire ideas -- "his talk about rationing, his discussion of health reform as a matter of redistributing wealth, and his effusive praise for the British system. If the president wanted to buy a fight like this, he ought to have been better prepared to wage it" (WaPo columnist Marcus, Jul 8,2k10) Obama's cynical recess appointment of Donald Berwick.  -- no pause to cry over spilt milk; now its Berwick's job, nothing wrong with Presidential gaming the Senate whose committee badly wanted to examine hotshot Berwick. Anyway, Berwick in his nu spot -- what's the title? -- medical enforcer for the fed USA govt's nu ObamaCare(s for U)?  

But, reverso, rather revolutionibus planetarium moralis, when the nu law is to be enforced, the stage will come in its periodicity when we have a Doctor of Public Medicine who wants maximal entitlements for everything medical (it woud seem, but wait). 


Yet the Congressional experts on the subject matter were not permitted to hold confirmation hearings.  The Prez waited until the two Houses of Congress had gone into recess and entered into a bit more the recession of their constituents, the Senators (100, 2 from each of the 50 states) and Representatives (c. 435) who coudnt confirm this Social Medicine whacko doctor, coudnt confirm or refuse confirmation because the Prez wanted this guy, this guy of all the doctor whackos grasping for the reins in the ObamaCare law enforcement.  At the reins in order to drive American public health in a certain direction, I woud add, in the direction of the preferential option for the poor and of  community organizing a coalition majority of nonwhite ethnic forces of different origins -- American Blacks (or Afro-Americans) and Hispanics, legal and illegal (or la Raza to which nu SCOTUS judge Sotomayor belonged/s?) .  And others.  As the Obama govt woud have it, The full list must not be seen as favouring any specific demographic groups in which people can have deep emotional investments of personal identity.

Further developments:


Christian Science Monitor: Obama and recess appointments: He's not the only one to make them often

Still, in the immediate almost astrological situation:

That's the second trajectory and it intersects with the first mentioned (below) -- namely,  transparency. See Elizabeth Montalbano's report below: 

Read more ...

EconomyUSA: Jobless increase: Impacts and impasse on job creation in the new healthcare-driven American economy

To contrast with UK's unemployment crisis (mentioned in yesterday's blog-entry), here's a recent stat from USA's labour crisis (May 13, 2k10). Jeffry Bartash wr+ts in MarketWatch, "Weeklu jobless claims little changed at 444,000" --

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - The number of people applying for unemployment benefits essentially held steady at 444,000 in the latest week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Claims actually fell by 4,000 for the week ended May 8, but the data was revised up by 4,000 for the prior week. The net effect: no change from last week's headline number. The four-week average of initial claims - a better gauge of employment trends than the volatile weekly number - dropped by 9,000 to 450,500. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch predicted initial claims would dip to a seasonally adjusted 440,000.

Uncannily, the number echoes with biblical sobriety -- "And I heard the number of them which were sealed: [and there were sealed one hundred forty four thousand -- 444,000!--of all the tribes of the chldren of Israel" (Revelation 7:4 KJV; see also Rev. 4:1). Am I the only person who noticed that parallelism?

In any case, the Bible verses are a distraction here. We have to retain our sobriety in order to guage the significance of a half-million unemployed workers applying for jobless benefits, pogey, the Dole over the course of a week, as averaged from a four week's total figure -- must give any considerate observer some considerable pause.

These jobless figures of a week's average nearly rises to a half-million, yet the portion of the economy signified by small businesses, which are the primo job-creators, are being taxed into immobility and somnolescence. Obamanomics is staggering under the new healthcare entitlement (praise God for that were there elsewhere in the Fed budget an adequate compensatory move toward spending cuts and paying down the national debt) -- instead, out of nowhere we have an unstoppable oil disaster we can't afford, and ... and ... we're in trouble in the USA economy. We need a public policy of encouraging and incentivizing the job creators, not big business so much as small.

Britain and America must both prioritize now the creation of jobs for the unemployed, and thus the creation of incomes spendable by wage-earners returned to work -- and taxable by Federal, state and local govts in significant part to pay for the budget-prioritization of healthcare (including the 32 million many of whom will be out of work and jobless). Economically speaking, everything else is secondary. Except of course, intelligent regulation of the financial and the energy sectors. We are not finished with our oil addiction, as President George W. Bush, termed it; rather our continuing and returned workers in many places need to drive their cars to get to work, public transit being unavailable in many places across the continent.

-- EconoMix

Politics: Health USA: CPJ USA still silent on the faith-based initiative for healthcare: Fed plan to support co-op health insurers

We can't depend on the Center for Public Justice (USA) to do what it was founded to do: advocate for the pluralization of the means whereby intermediate societal organizations may take root firmly in the population and thrive, so that government itself is not forced or self-driven to become an absolutist uniformitarian totality over all spheres of life -- schools, labor representation, and health insurers -- for instance. Obama's negation of the whole idea of sphere sovereignty, and worldview differentiation across spheres (faith-based and community initiatives, in part to fulfill First Amendment requirements on freedom of religion coupled with freedoms of association and speech): our incumbent Prez had already recently whacked us in his privileging uniformitarian anti-pluralist unionism, with no secret ballot and with checkoff of dues partly to finance the union elites' political agenda irrelevant to labor representation -- all the while he meets in weekly consultations with SIEU Boss Stern. I was a member and shop steward in the corrupt mentioned Service International Employees Union (however, that was decades before Stern's takeover thereof).

Just as the Obama govt grasps for more and more power to regiment American life, its libertarian enemies insist that only profit-making orgs are normative, doing so on the basis their own sectarian ideas of individuality (a pernicious individualism that cares nothing for the health of the poor and uninsured). For the libertarians who populate whole sectors of the rightwing and its media, only for-profit corporations (whether individually/family owned, or privately-held partnerships, or stock-market investor-owned) are considered the proper insurers of healthcare. Either totalitarian govt or totalitarian profit-making businesses are exalted to be the nation's one and only alternative. Neither are. And CPJ should be saying so, providing us, as it used to try to do, a practical alternative. I responded in an earlier blog-entry to the analysis for CPJ made by Dr Timothy Sherratt (Gordon College political scientist), "Party Leadership and the Fate of Healthcare" (CPJ's Capital Commentary, Jul 17,2k9).

Is it only a single-payer govt-run massive institution (Federal or divved among the states) that is to be mandated as the only "competitor" allowed to compete against the greed-driven health corporations? As Obama has moved away from his maximalist Fed healthcare ideal, backing down when some of his more clever minions have suggested that the 50 states instead each become surrogate separate single-payer insurers for each state's population; the chief single competitive feature has been elbowed out of the way. Namely, establishing the r+t of insurance-seekers to conduct their healthcare commerce across state boundaries without penalty and (thus) to choose a health-insurer anywhere in the USA: co-op, corporate, or in the last instance a residual govt provision for those poor who won't choose either of these full-menu options (a residual role that shoud not be permitted to leverage the mercy mission into power in the competition; rather just a listening post, as Petro Canada was intended to be -- it's now dead, I guess). USA: Interstate commerce plus the accompanying r+t of portability, when an insured person/family actually moves from one state to another, or from one job (corporation, business, or non-profit) to another. His/her/their insurance goes with them. Of course, not all co-ops are non-profits, one of a thousand details and factoids that needs to be factored in -- starting with CPJ, in my opinion.

Both sides are using the same binomial logic, and most of all both the statists and libertarians have shown they want to finish off any real third way in medical insurance. That's what their actions tell us. CPJ-USA (which should be documenting this and engaging in the debate now) instead is sitting on its hands, whistling and farting, doing so when the country is aflame with anger and fear. CPJ-USA has a long scheduled long-winded lecture coming up sometime in October to address healthcare issues then, in its annual Kuyper Lecture. Too late. Other than the scheduled lecture, CPJ seems to have deserted both we the poor and all rest of us who are not health-business owners and health-stock investors.

Meantime, the crisis has come to a head in America and is obviously working itself out with no courageous basic policy proposal articulated from a reformational Christian viewpoint. Hence the people have no leadership, the Christian community is left to be devoured by the wolves of statism and libertarianism.

For sure, neither the fundamentalist, evangelical, pentecostal, neo-puritan, reformed, emergent or reformational churches are encouraging their members to help each other put together hospitals, clinics, hospices, doctor's co-ops, or healthcare insurance co-ops each organized on an independent Christian communal basis, ready to take on the responsiblity that aggregately these Christian streams have mostly shirked for centuries in America.

Among American Protestants, the Lutherans have strong segments with the very helpful startup infrastructure for such a purpose of healthcare insurance, an infrastructure based on their long-established mutual-benefit society for life insurance, Thrivent, a 2.6 million-member core the members of which are by law, professing members of an explicit faith-based association for the fraternal benefits purposes by which they define themselves. Similar, is the Lutheran Brotherhood. At least, CPJ should be fiting to free these folk from the past restrictions imposed on them by the humanist cultural onslawt which extends to how we Christians pf various kinds care for our ill and provide healthcare insurance viably and long-term. The Adventists have established a marvellous school of medical research in California, Loma Linda University medical school and research center.

In stark contrast, the Christian Reformed community has let Calvin College emerge into its present undergraduate glories without a medical school, no provision for an explicitly Christian training of doctors and nurses has taken place. No Christian philosophy of medicine is nurtured. No Christian philosophy of distinct organization for a normative medical-insurance structure to help create a pluralist consociational environment in American healthcare, embracing and giving new depth and meaning to competition (not just a monetary matter, but that too). And around the inspiration of which, healthcare insurance co-ops could have been generated informally in the milieu Calvin's business programs, healthcare co-op organizing and management thereby becoming a distinguished element of a many-facetted academic business education. Faith, academics, medicine, healthcare insurance -- all of life redeemed.

Calvin College, sad to say, has none of these concerns. This institution, for all its good and achievements, is not a bastion of neo-Calvinism. Instead, it is an institution of the same old ideology of the Liberal Arts + Seminary, where Christ the Healer's dynamic does not work itself out in structured institutional form for our present concern, healthcare insurance. Instead it trains undergraduates as "pre-medicine" candidates only, then turns them over to secularism for their medical training, research, and care-giving. You can see how Calvin College's marketing structurally bypasses the issue of non-state, non-profit, viable innovative healthcare insurance co-ops. It has no communal vision for this particular arrangement, because all its medically-trained alumni seem to have bawt into the libertarian or statist worldviews.

The Christian stance that CPJ has tawt (some) Americans to believe and follow has now shown just how much the organization marinates itself in a "solution" of supine smug self-satisfaction. Now, when the increasingly enflamed "debate" is consuming the nation and when, amidst all this political volatility, we Americans are actually afforded a small opening in the historical situation regarding healthcare insurance law at the Federal level, CPJ's website is silent on the focal issue (except for the recent Sherratt bit). The staff's leaders and advisors have gone fishing. Or haven't yet arrived from Canada to conduct the planned leadership tour to "meet the constituency." Bloody October!

Yet this is the time. August. This is the moment. August. This is the kairos in which to offer a practical third way from the depth of the riches of the Gospel, of which CPJ USA used to speak with such a string of rhetorical niceties.

CPJ's outgoing President, Dr James Skillen, no longer wants to be known as a reformational political leader it woud seem, and instead puts himself forward as a "theologian," so he can keep his head firmly in the sand of Bible texts past. Dooyeweerd is groaning in his grave.

-- Politicarp