Category: 2016 Election

Ban Federal Funding for Planned Parenthood, Say Members of the Black Leadership Network Project 21

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S. 1881, Senator Joni Ernst’s Bill to Do Exactly That, to be Voted on Shortly

Washington, DC – Members of the Project 21 black leadership network are joining calls for passage of S. 1881, a bill to prohibit federal funding of Planned Parenthood,” sponsored by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA).

The legislation, which would ban federal grants and Medicaid reimbursement payments to Planned Parenthood, but keep overall funding levels for womens’ health care services the same, will be voted upon in the U.S. Senate at approximately 5:30 PM on Monday, August 3.(1)

Project 21 members say:

* Dr. Day Gardner: It is mind-boggling that American taxpayers are forced to pay more than $500 million to Planned Parenthood

“Planned Parenthood is a billion-dollar-a-year organization that makes most of its blood money by killing children by way of abortion. It is mind-boggling that American taxpayers are ‘forced’ to pay more than $500 million to an organization that kills unborn children in the most gruesome and brutal ways possible, and then deals in selling their lungs, heart and liver and other body parts for profit.

“What does Planned Parenthood do with the money? There is the obvious, of course: Planned Parenthood’s CEO makes more than half a million dollars a year. They also pay high salaries to abortionists who fly from abortion mill to abortion mill, killing children.

“You may have heard that Planned Parenthood does ‘cancer screenings.’
What that means is the same type of breast exam that every woman can do herself at home. They do not do mammograms.

“They also say their funding provides for contraception, treatment and tests for sexually transmitted diseases, and other women’s health services. First of all, what are ‘other women’s health services’? Secondly, aren’t all those things supposed to be covered by ObamaCare?” – Dr. Day Gardner, Project 21 member, president of the National Black Pro-Life Union and an executive member of the Washington, D.C.-based National Clergy Council.

* Joe R. Hicks: Why is this heinous organization still being subsidized by federal tax dollars?

“Only heartless or hopelessly ideologically-blinded leftist political partisans were unaffected by the horrific video clips of Planned Parenthood operatives coldly discussing the lurid details of dismembered aborted babies. However, the question must now be – why is this heinous organization still being subsidized by federal tax dollars? Planned Parenthood, a billion-dollar so-called ‘non-profit,’ performs 300,000 abortions each and every week, yet describes itself as a ‘women’s health care group.’ Are they really? They claim to provide valuable health services, like mammograms, yet is has been discovered that they do no such thing. They ‘refer’ women to health clinics that do provide this service. Planned Parenthood argues that ‘research,’ performed on crushed and dismembered aborted babies, has advanced stem cell cures, yet cannot provide independent data to show this is the case. What’s clear is that they perform abortions, subsidized by tax dollars. Congress must act now.” – Mr. Joe R. Hicks, Project 21 member and vice president of Community Advocates, Inc. in Los Angeles.

* Bishop Council Nedd: If there’s a constitutional right to a lifestyle, why isn’t there a constitutional right to life?

“Last week, a friend of mine who is a bishop and constitutional lawyer, remarked, ‘If there’s a constitutional right to a lifestyle, why isn’t there a constitutional right to life?’ So, the question in my mind is, why are the taxpayers subsidizing the murder of innocents in violation of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution?

“Planned Parenthood received $500 million in taxpayer dollars last year. If we are now so enlightened that the courts are now signing off on protecting lifestyles, protecting lives would theoretically give the courts more lifestyles to protect. However, it is sadly still the case that the lives that the courts are abandoning to the social engineering of the elite and enlightened are the least of those among us. To protect the most vulnerable, Congress should pass a law that bars Medicaid from reimbursing its clinics for patient visits.” – Bishop Council Nedd II, founding member of Project 21, rector of St. Alban’s Anglican Church in Pine Grove Mills, PA and author of the books Does America Hate God? Faith Under Fire (2015) and The Final Four: A Scriptural Journey Through Advent (2013).

* Stacy Washington: There are 666 Planned Parenthoods and 9,069 federally-funded Community Health Centers. Women don’t need Planned Parenthood.

“The defense of Planned Parenthood by the media and politicians is disheartening. New videos released this week by the Center for Medical Progress provide evidence that doctors and executives working for Planned Parenthood may have committed gruesome crimes that make Dr. Gosnell’s clinic of horrors look tame. Each new video reveals more damning information including video of the Chief Medical Director of the Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood negotiating for the sale of baby body parts. This comes right on the heels of news that the Alliance Defense Fund has filed a criminal complaint after learning that a 13-year-old girl was brought in for an abortion by her rapist/sexual predator and Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood performed the abortion but didn’t report the abuse. Criminal. $528 million dollars of taxpayer funds are sent to Planned Parenthood on a yearly basis. Another $612 million dollars of taxpayer funds earmarked for ‘reproductive health services’ go to USAID for abortions abroad.

“Americans have had enough of the excuses and whitewashing of what increasingly looks like an organized crime syndicate hell-bent on selling human baby parts for cash.

“There are 666 Planned Parenthoods in operation, with some states only having only one. In contrast there are 9,069 federally funded Community Health Centers that provide identical services excepting abortion operating in all 50 states. Women don’t need Planned Parenthood; it does not deserve federal funding.” – Mrs. Stacy Washington, Project 21 member and radio talk show host on KFTK in St. Louis.

Project 21, a leading voice of black conservatives for over two decades, is sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research. The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank.

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New Book, “Medicare’s Victims: How the U.S. Government’s Largest Health Care Program Harms Patients and Impairs Physicians,” To Be Released

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Tells Intimate Stories of People Who Suffer Because of Medicare’s Policies

Why Senator Bernie Sander’s “Medicare-for-All” Won’t Work

Washington, DC – Dr. David Hogberg, senior fellow and health care policy analyst for the National Center for Public Policy Research, is scheduled to release his new book, “Medicare’s Victims: How the U.S. Government’s Largest Health Care Program Harms Patients and Impairs Physicians,”* on July 6, 2015.

“So many people think Medicare is a wonderful program,” says Dr. Hogberg. “My extensive research in writing this book shows just the opposite… there are often hidden victims of Medicare and my book examines how Medicare’s policies harm them,” he reports.

The victims of Medicare, Dr. Hogberg notes, not only include the patients but also doctors themselves, each of whom share a common trait. “The patients who receive poor treatment and the physicians, who are stymied in their efforts to provide good care, tend to lack political power,” he says. “That is, they lack the ability to compel Congress to make changes in Medicare. Usually the victims are too few in number to have any real impact at the ballot box. Furthermore, they are often too ill to engage in the sorts of activities, such as organizing, protesting and so forth, that can help change policy,” he says.

“Medicare’s Victims” examines the disabled on Medicare who struggle with Medicare’s two-year waiting period and Medicare’s cost sharing. It looks at seniors who fell into Part D’s donut hole, and patients who either received insufficient treatment or received too much care under Medicare.

The book also reveals why primary care physicians are either leaving Medicare or are limiting the number of Medicare patients they accept; how concerned physicians who try to spend more time with their Medicare patients are, in effect, penalized; and how lobbying groups for large hospitals used Medicare to squash their competitors, smaller physician-owned specialty hospitals.

“The book is timely because there are some more liberal politicians who are now pushing for a ‘Medicare-for-all’ single-payer system,” says Dr. Hogberg. “Specifically, Senator Bernie Sanders recently called for such a system. The book yields insight into why such a system wouldn’t work.”

“Medicare’s Victims” explains why the beneficiaries who do get good treatment under Medicare are the ones who do have political power, particularly seniors ages 65-74.

“They vote at rates higher than almost any other group and since many of them live in retirement communities or belong to senior centers, they are easy to organize if needed,” says Dr. Hogberg. “With that sort of political clout, members of Congress are going to make sure that, in general, seniors receive good treatment under Medicare.

“The problem with the Medicare-for-all approach is that you’d be extending Medicare to all sorts of diverse groups who don’t collectively have the political clout or wherewithal to institute any change within the system. As such, politicians will have little incentive to ensure that such groups are even receiving the good care they should expect under Medicare.”

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* Copies of Medicare’s Victims are available to the working press and health policy experts. The best way is in electronic form such as PDF, Kindle or ePub. However, paperback copies are available upon request. 

Orwell Must Be Laughing in His Grave

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“… some of the animals remembered–or thought they remembered–that the Sixth Commandment decreed ‘No animal shall kill any other animal.’ And though no one cared to mention it in the hearing of the pigs or the dogs, it was felt that the killings which had taken place did not square with this.”  George Orwell, Animal Farm, Ch. 8

Policy aside, the Supreme Court of the United States is behaving in the most capricious manner. I understand that most American have no understanding of what our Constitution and the Bill of Rights say, which is why no one is appalled by the whimsy of SCOTUS.

We are truly living in an Orwellian nightmare where his hyperbole is becoming our reality. Big Brother is watching everything we do. Now we have evolved into Animal Farm situation where our post literate culture is fine with the government redefining itself by fiat.

Why is this ok with everyone?  Is our Constitution and the separation of powers just a historical curiosity from America’s past?

 

Supreme Court Ruling in King v. Burwell Means Americans Will Have to Wait Longer for a Free-Market Health Care System

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ObamaCare Is Unsustainable as Exchanges Will Eventually Devolve into a Death Spiral
Ruling Also a Blow to the Rule of Law

Washington, D.C. – The Supreme Court’s ruling in King v. Burwell means Americans will have to wait longer for greater liberty in their health care system, said Dr. David Hogberg, senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

“The Court has had two chances to stand up for freedom and against ObamaCare and has blown them both,” Dr. Hogberg said. “This won’t change the fight for health care freedom. It will just take more time to move toward a free-market based health care system.”

A ruling in favor of the plaintiffs would have been a great opportunity to start replacing ObamaCare with free-market based policies. Rather, Americans will have to suffer the problems of ObamaCare for the foreseeable future.

Dr. Hogberg notes that the ObamaCare exchanges are already exhibiting signs of a death spiral, where insurance premiums rise precipitously, causing young and healthy people to drop their insurance. This renders the “risk pool” older and sicker, causing premiums to rise again, and the process repeats.

“We’re seeing loads of insurers ask for big premium hikes, at least 20% and in many cases much higher,” said Dr. Hogberg. He recently examined this in a National Policy Analysis entitled “ObamaCare Premium Hikes for 2016–Ignore Them at Your Own Risk.”

“In the end, the exchanges are not sustainable, and free-market based reform of our health care system will be necessary. Today’s Court ruling only delays that,” said Dr. Hogberg.

In the longer term, Congress must adopt policies that repeal ObamaCare and replace it with policies that promote liberty. NCPPR provides an easy-to-access spreadsheet at http://goo.gl/y1ALI2 that summarizes a dozen plans from conservative and libertarian think-tanks and Congressional Republicans offering free-market alternatives to ObamaCare. The spreadsheet explains how each plan treats vital health care policy issues such as tax credits, pre-existing conditions, Medicaid and Health Savings Accounts.

“There are a lot of great ideas out there, from the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute to Rep. Tom Price and the Republican Study Committee,” said Dr. Hogberg. “Unfortunately, most of the media has ignored them, so most Americans are unaware that free-market alternatives to ObamaCare exist.”

While the ruling isn’t a fatal blow to achieving health care freedom, it is a serious blow to the rule of law.

“From here on out, presidents and the bureaucracy can apply the law however they like, even if the law says differently,” said Dr. Hogberg. “As long as they can plausibly claim that Congress intended for the law to say something different, presidents and the bureaucracy will win every time before the Supreme Court.”

David Hogberg is a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research. He is author of the forthcoming book Medicare’s Victims: How the U.S. Government’s Largest Health Care Program Harms Patients and Impairs Physicians.

The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank. Ninety-four percent of its support comes from individuals, less than four percent from foundations, and less than two percent from corporations. It receives over 350,000 individual contributions a year from over 96,000 active recent contributors. Sign up for free issue alerts here.

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