Obama's Health Care Woes

Wednesday's Times told us that US President Barack Obama delivered an "emotional closing argument" for his health care reform proposal. Friday's paper quoted Obama saying "You've got a good package, in terms of substance", "if they vote against it [the bill], they're voting against health care reform" and "This notion that this has not been transparent, that people don't know what's in the bill, everybody knows what's in the bill...the final provisions are going to be posted for many days before this thing passes". Sadly, the articles failed to tell us why the bill has encountered such difficulties in getting passed. That difficulty is that Obama's plan will provide public funding for elective abortions on an enormous scale.

The version of the bill Obama would like to pass into law would require anyone enrolling in the federal health insurance plan to make a monthly payment into a fund that will pay for other people's abortions. This is outrageously unjust, as people who would like to have the federal insurance but are opposed to abortion will have to choose between going without the federal health care program and helping pay for abortions.

Obama's favourite version would also allow the head of the Health and Human Services Department (Ministry) to declare abortion "preventative medicine" and insist that health insurance plans pay for abortion. Obama put pro-abortion Kathleen Sebelius in that position. It takes little imagination to think what she would do if this bill became law.

Obama's preferred version does not protect medical personnel from penalties if they choose not to participate in abortion. This means that if a doctor or nurse does not want to be involved in abortion, their career may suffer or be ended.

Obama's desired version includes $7 billion ($7,000,000,000) for Community Health Centers. The bill puts no restrictions on this money's use; this means the money could be used for performing and/or promoting abortion. Not surprisingly, the Reproductive Health Access Project and the Abortion Access Project, two pro-abortion organizations, are pushing for Community Health Centers to carry out abortions.

Obama would like people to believe that he has been transparent in this health-care reform debate. In his debates with Hillary Clinton for becoming the Democrat candidate for the presidency, Obama said concerning health care reform that "all of this will be done on C-SPAN in front of the public." In January of this year, it came to light that he, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi held private meetings on how to get Obama's health care bill passed. Secret does not equal transparent. And to call "transparent" the posting of 2,400 pages of complex legislation on the internet "many" days before a vote and expect people to read and thoroughly understand it does test the limits of credulity.

Still, Obama is partly right in saying "everybody knows what's in the bill". The American public has slowly realized how strongly Obama's preferred health care reform scheme promotes abortion, and they are liking it less and less. A recent poll by newspaper The Wall Street Journal found 48% of people think Obama's health care reform idea is a bad one, while 36% think it is a good one. This is the greatest disapproval percentage since the newspaper starting polling in April 2009. A poll by Rasmussen Reports found 53% of respondents opposed to Obama's plan and 43% in favour. This same Rasmussen poll found 46% of respondents strongly oppose Obama's plan, while 23% strongly favour it. Specifically addressing the use of public money for elective abortions, a poll last December found 73% of respondents opposed. Obama's plan will, in fact, divert tremendous amounts of money into publicly-funded abortion. Contrary to Obama's statement "You have a good package", polls consistently show more people disagree with him than agree with him.

Chillingly, a poll by the New England Journal of Medicine found 46% of medical doctors would consider leaving their medical practice if Obama's bill becomes law. The magazine observed that "While a sudden loss of half of the nation's physicians seems unlikely, a very dramatic decrease in the physician workforce could become a reality as an unexpected side effect of health care reform." Kevin Perputua, managing editor of the company which completed the poll for the Journal, said "Health care reform and increased government control of medicine may be the final straw that causes the physician work force to break down."

Obama says he's not "worrying about what the procedural rules are in the House or Senate". Maybe that's because those rules are so complex that an air traffic controller at London-Heathrow would struggle to keep them all straight. The point is that Obama is considering ways to bypass an open, transparent debate and vote on this reform and ram it through over growing disapproval. Whatever happened to all the promise of hope, bipartisanship, unity, and "one United States" he rode into office?

62% of the doctors in the New England Journal of Medicine poll thought health care reform is needed, but Obama's way is too much too soon. Millions of Americans want to see health care costs brought under control and health insurance available for people without it. Millions of Americans would join hands with Obama over health care without abortion coverage; but for some reason, Obama insists that abortion be part of the deal.

Obama has put himself in a no-win situation: if the health care plan fails, no reform will take place and the estimated 50 million Americans without health insurance will still lack it. If the plan goes through, Obama will have needlessly kicked the hornet's nest that is the abortion debate and further divided the people of the United States on this critical issue.

Passage of the bill will not mean the end of the health care reform debate. The state of Virginia has threatened lawsuits should Obama's preferred plan go through, and the decades-long struggle to protect women and children from the abortion machine will continue with added impetus.

It boggles the mind as to why Obama has placed himself, and the United States, in such a position when a large number of people will be disappointed with either passage or defeat of the bill. Women and children deserve better than abortion. If only Mr. Obama understood and acted on that truth.