Tag Archives: Health-care

How government control of medicine leads to violations of conscience

Story here from the leftist Washington Post.

Excerpt:

Deep within the massive health-care overhaul legislation, a few little-noticed provisions have quietly reignited one of the bitterest debates in medicine: how to balance the right of doctors, nurses and other workers to refuse to provide services on moral or religious grounds with the right of patients to get care.

[…]The debate has focused attention on President Obama’s plan to rescind a federal regulation put into effect by the previous administration to protect workers who refuse to provide care they find objectionable. Soon after taking office, Obama announced he would lift the rule, arguing it could create obstacles to abortion and other reproductive health services. But a final decision about whether to kill, keep or replace the rule with a compromise has been pending as the debate over the health law raged. The outcome is being closely watched as a bellwether of how the administration will handle a possible thicket of conflicts under the health legislation.

“The act is thousands of pages of new government power, decision-making and funding,” said Matthew S. Bowman of the Alliance Defense Fund, which represents workers who object on religious grounds to being required to provide some forms of health care. “Any government power over health care can be exercised in a way that discriminates against pro-life health providers, especially when officials already support abortion and oppose enforcement of conscience laws.”

And more:

Bowman and others point to Catherina Cenzon-DeCarlo as an example of what they fear could become increasingly common as the government becomes much more deeply entwined with health care. Cenzon-DeCarlo was working at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York last year when the nurse was stunned to learn that she had been assigned to help abort a 22-week-old fetus. A devout Catholic, Cenzon-DeCarlo thought she had a long-standing agreement with the hospital that let her avoid abortions. But this time, despite her pleas, Cenzon-DeCarlo’s bosses insisted.

“It felt like a horror film unfolding,” Cenzon-DeCarlo said. “It was devastating. I have suffered intense emotional pain. I’ve had nightmares. . . . I felt violated and betrayed.”

Cenzon-DeCarlo, who filed state and federal lawsuits against Mount Sinai, is the only health-care worker who has filed a complaint under the previous administration’s rule, which remains in effect. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is investigating, but officials would not comment on the case. The hospital also declined to comment.

Government is necessarily secular, and it is typically run by people who are born rich and educated at expensive schools. It causes them to think they are better than other people. They become extremely disdainful of the moral law, and the Judeo-Christian worldview that supports it – because they view the moral law (and the Constitution, etc.) as a  antiquated brake on their pursuit of happiness in this life. The desire for happiness now causes them to believe in anything that will push the demands of the moral law off.

And their personal views inform their political views. Those on the left favor policies that push moral rules aside, and sometimes even the people who believe moral rules – like pro-life doctors. The problem is that dismissing the moral law only works when you have a rich grandmother to bail you out. That’s why we need to elect more people like Michele Bachmann, who are self-made and had to work for a living, and who have raised their own children. People who don’t have contempt for the beliefs and values of ordinary people.

CBO raises Obamacare cost projections to over 1 trillion dollars

Story here from center-left Politico.com. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Congressional Budget Office estimates released Tuesday predict the health care overhaul will likely cost about $115 billion more in discretionary spending over ten years than the original cost projections.

The additional spending — if approved over the years by Congress — would bring the total estimated cost of the overhaul to over $1 trillion.

[…]The CBO released the estimates in response to a request from California Rep. Jerry Lewis, ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee. A spokeswoman for Lewis said the inquiry was filed before the House voted on the bill.

“[L]arge sums of discretionary spending in both the House and Senate versions of the health care reform bills have not yet been included in estimates by the CBO, rendering it impossible to make informed decisions regarding the outcome of this legislation,” Lewis wrote in a February letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, asking her to postpone votes until the discretionary spending analysis was complete.

Isn’t that why so many people people voted for Obama? So that he could make us more like Greece?

Why didn’t the media cover the new CDC study on HIV transmission?

Here’s the Center for Disease Control press release.

Excerpt:

A data analysis released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention underscores the disproportionate impact of HIV and syphilis among gay and bisexual men in the United States.

The data, presented at CDC’s 2010 National STD Prevention Conference, finds that the rate of new HIV diagnoses among men who have sex with men (MSM) is more than 44 times that of other men and more than 40 times that of women.

The range was 522-989 cases of new HIV diagnoses per 100,000 MSM vs. 12 per 100,000 other men and 13 per 100,000 women.

The rate of primary and secondary syphilis among MSM is more than 46 times that of other men and more than 71 times that of women, the analysis says. The range was 91-173 cases per 100,000 MSM vs. 2 per 100,000 other men and 1 per 100,000 women.

While CDC data have shown for several years that gay and bisexual men make up the majority of new HIV and new syphilis infections, CDC has estimated the rates of these diseases for the first time based on new estimates of the size of the U.S. population of MSM. Because disease rates account for differences in the size of populations being compared, rates provide a reliable method for assessing health disparities between populations.

I noticed an analysis by Marcia Segelstein of why these numbers are not communicated more widely here. (H/T RuthBlog)

She writes:

In an effort to look at these figures from a purely scientific and public health perspective, let’s substitute smoking and cancer for homosexual sex and HIV.  If the CDC released information which made a direct correlation between smoking and extremely high rates of getting cancer, people would take notice.  The media would write about it.  Public health organizations would make sure the news was spread.  Campaigns would be launched to save lives by discouraging smoking.  Public funds would be spent to deter people from engaging in such dangerous behavior.  Schools would teach children about the dangers of smoking.

Of course, as we all know, that scenario is real.  Because of the now-known dangers of smoking, a warning from the Surgeon General appears on every pack of cigarettes.  Public service ads saturated the airwaves over a period of years discouraging smoking.  The dangers of smoking are a standard part of most health classes in schools.

I really recommend that everyone who is concerned about this issue read Jeffrey Satinover’s “Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth“, which talks about the health risks of certain behaviors. Dr. Jeffrey Satinover has practiced psychoanalysis and psychiatry for more than nineteen years. He is a former Fellow in Psychiatry and Child Psychiatry at Yale University and a past president of the C. G. Jung Foundations. He holds degrees from MIT, the University of Texas, the Harvard University. If you want to change your mind – and your will – on a topic, you study that topic by looking at the evidence from the experts in the field. Dr. Satinover’s book is compassionate and measured. It is a great place to start learning.

No one is trying to make anyone else feel bad by telling them the truth. On the contrary – by telling people the truth and by setting appropriate boundaries, we can protect others from harm. And that’s why everyone needs to be told the truth. We aren’t helping people by hiding numbers like these from them. Speak the truth in love, and let people decide for themselves.