"A lot is being said and written about why national health care legislation is becoming a reality. The simple fact, available for all to see, is that the U.S. Catholic Bishops ensured passage of the bill in the House, enabling the Senate to move forward with its version."

"Like ‘progressive’ strategist Robert B. Creamer, the Bishops believe that health care is a right to be guaranteed by government. This position has driven the debate and has rarely been challenged by Republicans. The debate over abortion has been mostly a diversion. Perhaps it has been planned that way."

"As we were the first to disclose, Creamer, an ex-con and husband of Rep. Jan Schakowsky, emphasized using ‘the faith community’ to mobilize support for universal health care by highlighting the morality of providing medical care to people in need. His book, Stand Up Straight! How Progressives Can Win, emphasized that ‘We must create a national consensus that health care is a right, not a commodity; and that government must guarantee that right.’ "

"Now compare this to what the Bishops have said. ‘Our approach to health care is shaped by a simple but fundamental principle: "Every person has a right to adequate health care," ’ they say. They go on, ‘For three quarters of a century, the Catholic bishops of the United States have called for national action to assure decent health care for all Americans. We seek to bring a moral perspective in an intensely political debate; we offer an ethical framework in an arena dominated by powerful economic interests.’ "

"Reform, the Bishops said, would ‘require concerted action by federal and other levels of government and by the diverse providers and consumers of health care. We believe government, an instrument of our common purpose called to pursue the common good, has an essential role to play in assuring that the rights of all people to adequate health care are respected.’ …"

"Andrew P. Napolitano, the senior judicial analyst at the Fox News Channel, has written a very revealing article about what has been missing in the debate over health care. He writes, ‘In the continually harsh public discourse over the President’s proposals for federally-managed healthcare, the Big Government progressives in both the Democratic and the Republican parties have been trying to trick us. These folks, who really want the government to care for us from cradle to grave, have been promoting the idea that health care is a right. In promoting that false premise, they have succeeded in moving the debate from WHETHER the feds should micro-manage health care to HOW the feds should micro-manage health care. This is a false premise, and we should reject it. Health care is not a right; it is a good, like food, like shelter, and like clothing.’ Rights come from God, not government, Napolitano points out. …"

"In short, the Catholic Bishops have emerged as a major ‘progressive’ force in the United States, determined to saddle the country with a socialized medicine scheme. The disagreements over abortion among the ‘Big Government progressives’ should not distract our attention from this basic fact. The Bishops also favor ‘climate change’ legislation and amnesty for illegal aliens.

"In addition to the lobbyists who were working on Capitol Hill, the bishops have a staff of 350 in Washington, D.C. and operate on a budget that was estimated back in 2002 at $131 million a year. By contrast, the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress operates on about $48 million a year." Source: Cliff Kincaid, Accuracy in Media, 12/23/09

"Under the current versions of the health care bills, the IRS would oversee:

► Subsidies for low-income people purchasing health insurance through newly created state exchanges.

► Small-business tax credits to provide insurance to employees.

► Enforcement of mandate that all U.S. citizens and legal residents have insurance.

► A tax on insurers that provide high-cost ‘Cadillac’ insurance benefits.

► Contributions to Flexible Savings Accounts, which would be limited.

► Taxes on pharmaceutical companies, medical device companies and health insurance providers."

"I would submit that we do not have a health care problem in this country, but we do most definitely have a government problem in this country.

"Our health care system is a mess, but few understand why, and most tacitly accept the notion that government can or must provide the solutions. But it needs to be recognized that government encroachment into health care over the decades was the key ingredient in creating the bureaucratic, inefficient morass that is our current system.

"The logical answer, once this is appreciated, is not to allow the government to fix what it broke in the first place! The answer is to strive to do everything possible toward the goal of getting government out of health care completely. This means less regulation, not more. This means less government/corporate cooperation (collusion), not more. Lobbying for regulations favorable to one group over another is a toxic concept, based on the immorality of the method itself. Yes, I know that is the ‘way government works’ nowadays, and I hear the arguments that we need to have a ‘seat at the table,’ but that doesn’t make it any less wrong."

"We have gotten to the point where we are ready to hand over the last bit of control of our health care system to government bureaucrats…. Is it really so shocking to ask the question: ‘Why is the government involved in my health care at all?’ Maybe it’s shocking to some to state ‘Health care is not a right.’ But it’s only shocking to someone with no understanding of natural law, rights versus privileges, or why a socialistic system, health care or otherwise, is profoundly immoral. The wealthy will always find a way to skirt such a system while the shrinking middle class pays for it, and the poor, the ones the system claims to benefit, suffer the most. …"

"▪ Recommend to your members that if they are one of the 17% of American physicians that remain members of the AMA, get out. Let’s make it even clearer that the AMA doesn’t represent American physicians and exists solely to feed off its lucrative CPT franchise (merely one example of corporate/government collusion which poisons the system and raises costs).

"▪ Learn what’s really going on with health care in America. A good place to start is the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and its special project website, www.takebackmedicine.com.

"▪ Opt out of Medicare immediately. Continue to care for seniors, as most physicians who have opted out do, through private contracts with reasonable fees. Refuse to be part of a corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy that threatens its physicians with draconian punishments and fines while paying them a pittance for the privilege. Imagine the signal that would send if a large organization of physicians like yours had the backbone to recommend this. It would force Reid and Pelosi to tender the idea of forced physician labor. That would likely wake up physicians, and indeed the whole of the American people, to just how much power the government craves.

"It is only a true free market in health care which will lower costs for all patients, increase availability of care, and spur innovation. Most, unfortunately, have no idea what a true free market looks like. It’s not what we have now, and certainly not what is on the horizon. Sincerely, Douglas J. Mackenzie, M.D., F.A.C.S., December 4, 2009"

"It’s funny, the things that never make the news. Take the recent amendment to the Senate health care plan by Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-MT). This language allocates hundreds of millions of dollars of your money toward ‘Personal Responsibility Education for Adulthood Training.’ "

"What can this possibly mean? According to the amendment’s mostly vague language, $400 million from the years 2010 to 2015 will be spent on ‘evidence-based effective programs’ that will supposedly teach kids ‘healthy life skills,’ including things like ‘goal-setting, decision making, negotiation, communication and interpersonal skills, and stress management.’ This looks like standard Washington-speak: a great pile of words that mean whatever they need to mean."

"That is, it looks that way until we get to the part of the amendment that deals with sex. Here we find reference to very specific ‘activities to educate youth who are sexually active regarding responsible sexual behavior.’ The amendment claims to implement ‘evidence-based effective programs ... that have been proven on the basis of rigorous scientific research to change behavior, which means delaying sexual activity, increasing condom or contraceptive use for sexually active youth, or reducing pregnancy among youth.’

"And what good is ‘abstinence education’ if contraception and abortion are being pushed right alongside it? Kids receive a mixed message. They are told, with a wink and a nod, that maybe they should abstain from sex, but the chances are that they simply can’t – and that no one really can. The past teaches us that ‘evidence-based’ or ‘comprehensive’ sex education is simply code for sexual education that treats sex as unavoidable, rather than a human choice. …

"William Smith, Vice President for public policy at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), congratulated the Senate for including in the health care bill a ‘new comprehensive sex education program for the states.’ ‘This is a huge step in putting evidence and common sense over hypermorality,’ he gloats." Source: LifeNews.com, 12/10/09, Colin Mason

Excerpted from Howard Phillips Issues & Strategy Bulletin of November 30, 2009

"Decades of data confirm a simple truth: If we want to lower health costs, we need to put consumers back in charge.

"Many people now feel like second-class citizens when they enter the doctor’s office. That’s because everyone in the office knows that the patient isn’t really the payer – that the patient doesn’t hold the purse strings.

"The greater the percentage of medical costs that patients pay to their insurance company in premiums, the more insurers are in charge.

"The greater the percentage that patients instead pay directly to their doctor out-of-pocket, the more patients are in charge.

"Whether it’s televisions, computers or Lasik eye surgery, when consumers are in charge, prices stay in check. In 1970, consumers paid for 62% of all privately purchased health care out-of-pocket. Today that percentage is just 26%. …

"Consumers are paying less directly to doctors, but they’re paying four times as much overall – to insurers or the IRS. …

"Only two basic ways exist to cut costs: putting consumers in charge and letting them pursue value; putting the government in charge and letting it ration care.

"So, how do we put consumers back in charge? First, we need to reject the current bills in Congress, which would restrict consumer choice substantially. Then we need to empower consumers in three key ways:

"1. End the unfair tax on the uninsured. We should give tax credits to individuals and families who are uninsured or self-insured, thereby putting them on the same ground as those with employer-sponsored insurance.

"This would reduce the number of people who are uninsured, increase fairness and inject needed life into the insurance marketplace. Those with self-purchased insurance shouldn’t have to pay higher taxes than those covered by their employer.

"2. Make it easier for consumers to see prices. …

"3. Encourage consumer-driven insurance models to give consumers skin in the game. Intel offers a plan in which it pays all insurance premiums, while its employees pay all health costs up to an annual deductible of about $2,500 for families – with certain preventive care provided for free.

"Intel employees deposit part of their income into a health savings account tax-free, just like any income that’s used to pay for insurance premiums is tax-free.

"These consumers have a stronger incentive to shop for value – as everything they spend up to $2,500 comes from their own pockets, and everything they save is theirs to keep. Whole Foods offers a comparable plan. …

"Across nearly 40 years, the costs of government-run medical care have risen far more, per patient, than the costs of privately purchased care. As consumers’ opportunities and incentives to pursue value have diminished, costs have skyrocketed." Source: Tevi Troy (2007-09 deputy secretary of health and human services and now a senior fellow at Hudson Institute) and Jeffrey Anderson (senior fellow in health care studies at Pacific Research Institute), Investor’s Business Daily, 9/1/09, p. A11

Excerpted from Howard Phillips Issues & Strategy Bulletin of November 15, 2009

"One of the Virginia House’s most conservative members is seeking to insulate the commonwealth from national health care mandates, submitting the first in what could be a flurry of bills to defy the federal government next session.

"Del. Bob Marshall, R-Manassas, filed legislation – dubbed the ‘Virginia Health Care Freedom Act’ – proposing to block federal requirements that would fine residents for going without health insurance. The individual mandate is included in health care overhaul legislation passed by the U.S. House, which is now under consideration by the Senate.

"Marshall’s legislation would also ‘protect an individual’s right and power to participate or to decline to participate in a health care system or plan,’ according to the bill’s summary.

" ‘We see a threat that’s coming down the road here for individual mandates that’s got to be addressed,’ Marshall said. ‘This is something that state legislatures have to address. And frankly, if we don’t address it, we are morally delinquent to our citizens.’ " Source: William Flook, Washington Examiner, 12/10/09, p. 8

"Lost in detail, and guided by special interests, lawmakers have deliberately avoided asking the fundamental question that most Americans want answered: ‘why are there so many uninsured and who are they?’ " 21 MILLION NON-CITIZENS

"Immigration is the elephant in the room during the health care debate, but it has become an ignorable truth for those who want only to treat the symptom. More than one third of the uninsured in the U.S. are immigrants (legal and illegal). That same population constitutes almost half of the uninsured in California and 40% in Texas. This should be no surprise. 23% of the 21 million non-citizens in the U.S. were below the 100% threshold of the federal poverty level."

"The bulk of America’s legal immigrants are admitted simply because they have a relative here, not because they offer substantive skills or self reliance, common sense criteria to which most industrialized countries adhere. Sixty-nine percent of legal immigrants come to the U.S with no reported profession, occupation or job, and on average, a 9^th grade education. The result has been the establishment of a permanent underclass of ill-equipped low-wage workers who pad the pockets of business but who ultimately consume more than they contribute and require public subsidies to survive."

"President Obama and key congressional leaders claim their health care bill will decrease costs and increase accessibility for 36 million uninsured in America. That remains inconclusive but what is incontrovertible – and terribly inconvenient to include in the sales pitch – is that a staggering portion of immigrants will benefit from a nationalized health care plan. It is not hard, then, to conclude that the health care reform bill is really a massive bailout for years of irresponsible immigration policy as much as it is a bill to improve health care. Truth in labeling would dictate that the Senate Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590) would be more accurately described as the Immigrant Health Care Bill." Source: FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform) Immigration Update, 12/1/09