Overview articles:

The Truth About Death Panels.  PolitiFact awarded "death panels" as 2009's Lie of the Year.  Everyone from NPR to Forbes wrote hundreds of thousands of words declaring Palin a liar and the notion a myth.  As time has unfolded, however, truths have been revealed.  This in-depth article [...] will show you that death panels have been around for a long time, in plain sight.  One of the few things I agree with Sarah Palin on is this:  you will not see the words "death" and "panel" next to each other in any legal document.  However, death panels are real. [...] While good people work at insurance companies, the guy on the other end of the phone line doesn't get to make the decisions, and we're all at the mercy of the suits who are far removed from our reality of budgets and disease.  In essence, a panel of people decide the common good is not your life-saving medication.  They won't come out and say they're sentencing someone to die, but they will refuse to pay for the life-saving treatment that no ordinary person can afford.

House Votes to Repeal Obamacare's 'Death Panel'.  IPAB was ostensibly created to control Medicare costs, but it won't address cost at all.  It will inevitably devolve into a rationing board that uses abstemious provider payments (i.e. price controls) to prevent seniors from receiving the benefit of lifesaving procedures and drugs.  The model for IPAB is the UK's National Institute for Health & Clinical Excellence (NICE), which uses a ghoulish form of cost benefit analysis to determine who receives care and who doesn't.  This is precisely what IPAB will do if it isn't repealed.

Obamacare's Three-Step Cancellation Program.  You may have thought that the most painful part of Obamacare was the rollout of healthcare.gov.  Sadly, the worst is yet to come.  Obamacare has a Three-Step Cancellation Program that ends with cancelling you. [...] ACA's Independent Payment Advisory Board — IPAB, Sarah Palin's "Death Panel," recently renamed HTAC, Health Technology Assessment Commission — is meeting right now in secret (if they are following the law).  In 2014, they will declare some medical treatments Cost Effective and others Not Cost Effective.  The latter, obviously the expensive ones, will not be authorized for payment and therefore not available to 99% of the American populace.

PPACA's Anti-Constitutional and Authoritarian Super-Legislature.  In 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) created the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB.  When the unelected government officials on this board submit a legislative proposal to Congress, it automatically becomes law:  PPACA requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to implement it.  Blocking an IPAB "proposal" requires at a minimum that the House and the Senate and the president agree on a substitute.  The Board's edicts therefore can become law without congressional action, congressional approval, meaningful congressional oversight, or being subject to a presidential veto.  Citizens will have no power to challenge IPAB's edicts in court.

Timely news and commentary:

I went for a mastectomy and they offered me assisted dying, Canadian cancer patient reveals.  A woman undergoing life-saving cancer surgery in Canada was offered assisted suicide by doctors as she was about to enter the operating room.  The case comes as the number of people opting to end their lives under the country's medical assistance in dying (MAID) program has risen thirteen-fold from 1,018 to 13,241 in 2022.  Assisted dying, which was legalised in Canada in 2016, is now the fifth-leading cause of death in the country.  The case will sound alarm bells in the UK, where a bill on assisted dying is set to be brought forward in parliament this month.  If it passes, it would pave the way for the practice to be legalised.  Although details of the British bill have not yet been finalised, it is expected to propose granting terminally ill adults who have six months or less to live access to medical help to end their own lives.

We remove the taboo on assisted dying at our peril.  On Monday, in a remote forest on the Swiss-German border, a surreal scene played out.  A gleaming blue and white capsule, stands poised and waiting, looking like a rocket about to take off.  A 64 year old woman is sealed within the device, gazing out from behind a transparent window.  She presses a button within the machine, and it gradually fills with nitrogen gas.  Her breathing slows, her eyes close.  She is dead.  The woman, still unnamed, is the first person to die via the "Sarco suicide pod". A photographer was on hand to capture the moment, and two people who assisted in the death have been arrested by the Swiss police.  But what they have been arrested for is not so clear.  In Switzerland, assisting a suicide is not a crime.  Already, people come from across the world to end their lives with the assistance of Swiss clinics, including hundreds of British nationals.  By some estimates, someone in Britain goes to die in Switzerland every week.

Will NHS staff be able to veto Christian prayers during assisted suicides?  If assisted suicide becomes legal in the UK, would NHS staff have a right to veto Christian prayers being said when the lethal injections are administered?  The question may seem far-fetched, but it is raised by the experience of writer Matthew Hall who witnessed the recent death of his late aunt in Canada.  In Canada, assisted suicide has been legal since 2016 and is officially termed Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD).  Hall wrote about his experience in The Spectator magazine on September 21 and it makes for fascinating reading.  His aunt was 72 and in the early stages of motor neurone disease.  She made the decision earlier this year to undergo MAiD against the wishes of her family.  Hall wrote: "My aunt had wanted me with her at the end.  She knew that I am a practising Christian (there is nothing like being brought up in the 1980s by self-proclaimed 'radical vegans' to drive you into the arms of the church) and I sensed that deep-down she was conflicted about religion — that beneath all the crystals and dream-catchers there was still a remnant of the faith that as a teenage art student in late-1960s London she had dismissed as stuffy and old-fashioned."

Assisted suicide and the NHS are a truly toxic mix.  In the midst of the summer recess, it may seem perverse to look ahead to the legislative agenda for the next parliamentary session.  However, as Labour's options for governing appear increasingly constrained by the tight public finances, it seems ever more likely that assisted suicide will be a defining policy.  It is one of those classic issues where initial, uncomplicated polling suggests widespread support.  However, the more people end up learning about it, and the practicalities of how it might work, the less enthusiastic they become.  A new poll has revealed that, though the public generally favours assisted suicide, a plurality fear that it might incentivise doctors to encourage patients to take their lives to ease pressures on the NHS.

Socialized Medicine and Death.  [Scroll down]  There's another way the socialists can solve the problem of shortages.  This by killing people.  If there are fewer people around, demand will go down.  Do you think that this is too bizarre to put into practice, even for socialists?  If you think so, you are giving the socialists too much credit.  That's exactly what they are doing in Canada.  The Canadian government makes euthanasia available to people for free.  If you've got a problem, why not "solve" it by ending tour own life?  A crazy Canadian "doctor" enjoys killing people.  She recently snuck into an Orthodox Jewish nursing home and killed an 83 year old resident, even though Jewish law prohibits euthanasia.  She was not prosecuted for this gross violation of property rights or subject to any sanctions.  She remains free to go on her with her murderous ways.

Death Is the New Treatment for Depression.  The Dutch and the Canadians are in a race to see which country can come up with the most excuses for killing their citizens.  With the Canadians putting off their move to kill people with mental illness for a while, the Dutch are rushing into the lead.  Perhaps, though, the Canadians will respond by making death a treatment for acne.  [Advertisement]  [Tweet]  Suicide hotlines will remain a thing, but they will transition from suicide prevention to suicide scheduling.

Disabled Canadian Man Celebrates Escaping being Euthanized by Government over Debts.  A disabled Canadian man is now celebrating his "deathaversary" after escaping being euthanized by his government over his crushing debts.  Amir Farsoud was due to be euthanized by the Canadian government's "assisted suicide" program because he was struggling to pay off his financial debts.  Farsoud said he was booked into to be killed under Canada's "Medical Assistance in Dying" (MAID) law after being faced with the grim choice of death or homelessness.

As MPS debate euthanasia, the facts its advocates don't tell you.  Today MPs will debate euthanasia and assisted suicide following a concerted high-profile campaign calling for a change in the law.  Assisted suicide isn't compassionate.  If you deliberately take a human life you cross a line, and open the door to all kinds of abuse.  Along with disability groups, Christian Concern will be holding a rally outside parliament to urge MPs to reject assisted suicide and euthanasia.  We are repeating this article by Simon Caldwell, first published on March 15, in which he sets out the horrific consequences that its advocates ignore.  Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party and the man on course to be the next Prime Minister, this week committed himself to bringing forward a Bill to legalise 'assisted dying', the contemporary euphemism for assisted suicide or euthanasia.

Doctors Euthanized Quadriplegic Man After Leaving Him on a Stretcher for 4 Days.  Rachel Watts reported for CBC News on April 12, 2024 that a quadriplegic man, Normand Meunier (66) "chose" to die by (MAiD) after developing a severe bedsore at a hospital in Saint-Jérôme, Québec.  Meunier experienced a tragic spinal [cord] injury in 2022. [...] Meunier's death by euthanasia is one of many stories of people who "choose" to die after receiving negligent medical care.

The inhumanity of 'assisted dying'.  In reality, any proposal for legalised assisted suicide assumes that humanity can be divided into two camps — those whose suicide we should strenuously try to prevent, and those whose suicide should be encouraged and assisted.  ASE campaigners have managed to hide this dark truth.  And they would have got away with it, too, were it not for that pesky Matthew Parris saying the quiet part out loud.

Physically healthy Dutch woman, 28, decides to be euthanized due to crippling depression.  A physically healthy, 28-year-old Dutch woman has decided to legally end her life due to her struggles with crippling depression, autism and borderline personality disorder, according to a report.  Zoraya ter Beek, who lives in a small village in the Netherlands near the German border, is scheduled to be euthanized in May — despite being in love with her 40-year-old boyfriend and living with two cats.  Ter Beek, who once aspired to be a psychiatrist, has been dealing with mental health struggles throughout her life.

Now Canada is euthanising autistic people.  Imagine one day you discover that your adult daughter, who still lives with you, wants to be euthanised.  As far as you are aware, she is healthy.  She suffers from autism and ADHD, but no physical illnesses or disabilities that you know of.  You know that she has faced many difficulties in her life, but you love her and desperately want to prevent her death.  You are left fighting against her doctors, who encourage her decision and are perfectly happy to help her go through with this.  To make this nightmare even worse, no one will even tell you why your daughter has been approved to die.  This is the awful reality facing one father in Alberta, Canada.  A judge issued a ruling this week that clears the way for a 27-year-old woman, known to the court only as MV, to be accepted into Canada's medical assistance in dying (MAID) programme.

Judge Rules 27-Year-Old Woman With Autism Can be Euthanized.  CBC News reporter, Meghan Grant published an article yesterday explaining that a Calgary judge ruled that a 27-year-old can go ahead with MAID death despite her father's concerns.  There is a publication ban on the names of the participants. [...] The judge removed the temporary injunction on January 31, 2024[,] that prevented the 27-year-old autistic woman in Calgary who lives with her parents.

Florida, Arizona, Virginia, And Tennessee Among States Weighing Legalization Of Assisted Suicide.  Lawmakers in 19 states are debating legislation this year that would make it legal for a doctor to provide life-ending treatment for patients diagnosed with terminal illnesses.  Currently, assisted suicide is legal in the United States in Oregon, Washington state, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Montana, New Jersey, Vermont, Hawaii, and Washington, D.C.  Bills to expand access to the procedure have been proposed in 19 states this year, showing a growing interest in the debate of a doctor's role in helping a patient end their life.

The Logical Inconsistencies of Physician-Assisted Suicide.  Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) trades on several logical inconsistencies: that suicide is bad, except when you're dying; that suicides don't act responsibly, except when they're facing death; that personal "autonomy" applies before a terminal diagnosis but not otherwise.  Euthanasia may be coming to a state near you.  About ten states and the District of Columbia already allow doctors to prostitute their healing profession by providing patients with lethal drugs.  Right now, there is a concerted push in Michigan (alongside, paradoxically, commercial surrogacy) to bring what is euphemistically called "physician-assisted suicide" to the Great Lake State.  My Virginia delegate proudly announced that, with a Democrat majority in Richmond, he was reintroducing legislation that would "decriminalize" suicide.  Has anybody ever asked about the logical contradictions in this movement?

Cuban death squads get a rebrand.  Apparently the Cuban communists finally wised up, and they've traded in the "extrajudicial assassinations" for judicial ones; according to Christian Caruzo at Breitbart in an article published yesterday, Cuba's Communist Party recently "approved changes to the nation's health code" that — yes, you all know where this is going — upon implementation, will permit the state to euthanize its subjects.  For compassion's sake of course. [...] State media claimed that the euthanasia provision is allegedly meant for 'people with chronic degenerative and irreversible diseases, with intractable suffering, who are in an agonizing or terminal phase of life or who have suffered injuries that place them in this condition.'  I wonder how many "accidents" are fixing to befall political dissidents or other "undesirables," ones that could place these poor unfortunate souls in a position of "intractable suffering" that demands an end by euthanasia.

'Assisted dying is a slippery slope — just look at the US, Canada and Holland'.  The Church of England has warned that countries where assisted dying is legal have shown that it can lead to a "slippery slope" where it becomes easier and easier to get help to end one's life.  In a submission to MPs, the Church said that when the law had been changed in other countries, such as Canada and the US, stringent safeguards had been dropped over time, opening up assisted dying to more and more people.  Pressure has been mounting for a change in the law to allow doctors to help certain people to die since Dame Esther Rantzen, who has cancer, said she was considering ending her life at the Swiss clinic Dignitas.  But in a submission to the Commons health select committee, which is carrying out an inquiry into assisted dying, the Church said it would be impossible to bring in systems to rule out the possibility that people had been coerced into wanting to die.  It said it would be "foolish" to think that elderly people would not be pressured into committing assisted suicide.

Canadian Woman Euthanized After Waiting 10 Weeks for Cancer Treatment Appointment.  Mary Griffin reported for CHEK news that Danielle Baker, the daughter of Samia Saikali (67), wants changes to cancer treatment in British Columbia since her mother died by euthanasia because she was forced to wait 10 weeks for an oncology appointment. [...] This is not the first British Columbia story of a person dying by euthanasia while waiting for cancer treatment.  A National Post story reported on December 5 that Dan Quayle also died by euthanasia in Victoria BC while awaiting treatment:  ["]Dan Quayle marked his 52nd birthday on Oct. 7 in Victoria General Hospital waiting to find out when chemotherapy would start for an aggressive form of esophageal cancer.  He would die waiting.["] [...] There was also the story of Allison Ducluzeau reported by Amy Judd and Kylie Stanton for Global News on November 27.  Ducluzeau was diagnosed with abdominal cancer and was offered MAiD (euthanasia) rather than treatment, instead she was successfully treated in the US[.]  Ducluzeau found several places where she could receive treatment in the US and she was then successfully treated at the Institute for Cancer Care at Mercy Medical Centre in Baltimore.

Assisted suicide a key reason for the third straight drop in Canada's life expectancy.  Canada's life expectancy rate has dropped three years in a row from the average Canadian dying at the age of 82.3 years in 2019 to 81.3 years in 2022. [...] Since the average person dies by euthanasia at the age of 77 and the average Canadian dies at the age of 81.3, it is likely that death by euthanasia is dragging down the life expectancy rate.

Canada's suicide hotline reveals Justin Trudeau's dystopia.  Canadian leader Justin Trudeau recently launched a new suicide hotline.  Internet jokers wondered whether its aim is to dissuade or to find new takers for Canada's notoriously liberal state-supported euthanasia programme.  Surely it is paradoxical for the same government to offer both pro and anti-suicide services?  But what if this isn't a paradox?  Then it becomes clear that, for Canada, the meaning of death is now less a moral question than a bureaucratic one.  This in turn offers insight into the trajectory and ambitions of the post-democratic, managerialist politics of which Canada is a leading exponent, and which is now spreading throughout the liberal West.

No, Helping Your Family Commit Suicide Is Not Compassionate.  Twelve U.S. states are considering legalizing euthanasia in 2023, and another 10 states currently permit it.  Canada recently expanded its euthanasia program to people who are not physically ill.  Euthanasia's growing reach makes it an issue of concern for all of us.  The issue demands a consistent, compassionate response that is founded in our shared humanity.  The perceived need for euthanasia is rooted in mistaken ideas about love, dependence, and compassion.  "When Patients Choose to End Their Lives," a 2021 New York Times article, says that rather than physical pain, most requests for euthanasia are motivated by "a loss of autonomy, a loss of dignity, a loss of quality of life and an ability to engage in what makes people's lives meaningful."  Euthanasia proponents define meaningful lives too narrowly.

AMA Considers Endorsing Killing Patients in Assisted Suicide.  The American Medical Association (AMA) will debate whether to reverse its stance on assisted suicide this month at its next interim meeting.  A set of resolutions, proposed by AMA's Resident and Fellow section, suggest the AMA should abandon its opposition to assisted suicide, adopting instead a neutral stance on the practice.  The resolutions also propose changing the official language from "assisted suicide" to "medical aid in dying" (MAID) at the meeting, which will take place on November 10-14.  These proposals, if adopted, fundamentally change the AMA's position on assisted suicide.The AMA determined in its last policy deliberations that assisted suicide is "fundamentally incompatible with the physician's role as healer."

Canadian Death Cult.  Canadians call it Medical Assistance in Dying now, or "MAID" for short.  It began with a 2015 decision by the Supreme Court striking down the nation's euthanasia ban and discovering a right to assisted suicide in Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which asserts a universal right to "life, liberty, and security of the person, and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice."  Canada's highest court determined that assisted suicide would be ethical only "with respect to voluntary adults who are competent, informed, grievously and irremediably ill," and only when it would be "clearly consistent with the patient's wishes and best interests, and [provided] in order to relieve suffering."  The judges agreed with a lower court's finding that a system with "properly designed and administered safeguards was capable of protecting vulnerable people from abuse and error."  In 2016, Parliament began passing and amending laws allowing euthanasia.  When critics argued that the ruling would result in euthanasia being offered to the mentally ill, the depressed, those with disabilities, or other vulnerable persons, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dismissed such concerns, saying, "this simply isn't something that ends up happening."  He was wrong.

State-facilitated suicides jumped 31% in 2022, accounting for over 4% of all deaths in Canada.  Canada's Trudeau government recently released its fourth annual report on the northern nation's assisted-suicide regime, providing startling insights into the staggering number of lives that have been snuffed out by the state in recent years.  Last year, 4.1% of all deaths across the country were the result of state-facilitated suicide, up almost one point over 2021.  Hundreds of victims weren't moribund at the time of their executions.  Previous reports have also cast doubt on whether all of these victims were voluntary or eligible.

Canada to make more people eligible for extermination via 'assisted suicide'.  It appears that Canada will soon be updating — and broadening — its medical assistance in dying (MAID) law.  The law, first put into effect in 2016, "allows" people to be euthanized if they have a "grievous and irremediable medical condition," such as a serious illness or disability, that has put them in an advanced state of irreversible decline.  There has been much talk in recent years in The Great White North of making those with mental illness "eligible" for MAID.  But, come March, the law will apparently be expanded to include not just the simply mentally ill, but those who are addicted to drugs.  That's right:  according to the aptly named VICE, substance abusers will soon have access to medically assisted dying in Trudeau's utopia!  In the U.S., we only give them free crack pipes and syringes.  Makes sense, though.  While we're embarking on a new Holocaust, let's exterminate all the alcoholics, too!  I mean, if you've already okayed offing the mentally ill (who makes that decision?) and the physically infirm, why not get rid of the druggies, too?  There has also been much discussion about extending the MAID offer to the chronically depressed.  And, while we're at it, why not ixnay those with birth defects or insufficiently blonde hair?

Doctors Change Brain Death Guidelines.  The new guideline is a consensus statement from a panel of experts.  These experts were drawn from multiple medical societies and "specifically screened to exclude those individuals ... whose profession and intellectual bias would diminish the credibility of the guideline in the eyes of intended users."  It seems that doctors with a different viewpoint were explicitly excluded from the panel.  In addition, "[b]ecause of the lack of high-quality evidence on the subject, a novel, evidence-informed formal consensus process was used."  Strangely, after more than fifty years of diagnosing people "brain dead," doctors still have no high-quality evidence for it!  The panel wrote the guideline using their experience; expertise; and, yes, shared biases using "a modified Delphi process," consisting of three rounds of anonymous voting.  Whatever happened to the scientific method?  The Delphi process has weaknesses, as the linked article points out:  "If the individuals in a group are misinformed about a topic, the use of Delphi will, like a traditional group meeting, add only confidence to their ignorance."  By excluding dissenting voices and using the Delphi process, the brain death panel's opinions reflect the consensus of a single point of view.

Hospice patients are being quietly killed as Medicare incentivizes 'stealth euthanasia'.  A bombshell report was released this year evidencing a scandal that ranks among the worst in its evil: the euthanization of patients for the sake of profit.  It made enough of a splash to spur new industry protocols but apparently not enough to stop the entrenched practice of hastening the death of hospice patients.  The November 2022 report, written by Ava Kofman for ProPublica, shows how hospice conditions create what seems to be an irresistible — and ultimately lethal — opportunity for corruption:  The industry rakes in massive funds from Medicare, which delivers a flat daily cash benefit, but hospice groups must repay those funds if the average length of stay of all patients exceeds six months.  An investigation cited by Kofman's article found that half of hospice patients in a random sample were ineligible for some or all of the care they received, a problem consistent with the testimony of hospice whistleblower Marsha Farmer.  She told Kofman how her supervisor set "ungodly" quotas for hospice enrollment, and then threatened to fire employees if they didn't meet those quotas.

In England, the death panel of socialized medicine appears again.  A British court has held that Britain's National Health Service, which has long been the gold standard of socialized medicine, can stop treating a 19-year-old woman who is conscious and wants to live.  This is the natural endpoint of the rationing that is inherent in socialized medicine.  Ostensibly, socialized medicine promises to give top-quality healthcare to everyone.  And if you're a national treasure like Stephen Hawking, you will get that type of care, because it looks really bad if the government lets a renowned physicist with a degenerative disease die because treating him sucks up too many government resources.  However, the reality of socialized medicine is that it revolves around rationing.  The government has "X" dollars available for medical care, and it will allocate that money according to a political calculation that doesn't necessarily involve actual healthcare.

British Court Rules that Competent and Conscious Patient Can Be Denied Life-Sustaining Treatment Against Her Will.  British doctors are seeking to take a 19-year-old critically ill female patient off the intensive care despite her objections and those of her parents.  Unlike most such cases, the woman known only as "ST" is conscious and communicative.  Yet, the doctors argue that she is not being realistic about her chances of survival from a rare disorder.  Now a British court has agreed and ordered that she can be placed on end-of-life care against her will.  ST is suffering from a rare genetic mitochondrial disease that is progressively degenerative.  The case has similarities to that of Charlie Gard, an infant who was removed from life support at the insistence of doctors despite objections from the parents.  The Gard family was seeking to take Charlie to the United States for experimental treatment.  ST has been in the ICU for the past year, requiring a ventilator and a feeding tube.

Using People with 'Brain Death' as Lab Rats.  Doctors at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the NYU Langone Transplant Institute in New York City reported successfully implanting genetically modified pig kidneys into two "brain dead" men this month.  The New York patient, a 57-year-old man, has demonstrated continuous kidney function for over a month, the longest time that a gene-edited pig kidney has functioned successfully in a human.  The team plans to observe the patient's kidney functioning until mid-September, during which time he is being provided with cardiopulmonary support in a critical care setting.  In Alabama, a 52-year-old man with both "brain death" and renal failure underwent removal of his native kidneys and was implanted with a pig kidney that had received ten genetic modifications.  In contrast to last year's results (in which the xenograft kidney placed into the "brain dead" person failed to function properly), Dr. Jayme E. Locke and her team reported that this time, the xenograft kidney functioned well for the full seven-day study period, which included daily kidney biopsies.

Oregon health clinic denies medical care to breast cancer patient after she objects to trans pride flag.  A woman who is a current breast cancer patient was banned from her hospital over alleged "hurtful remarks" it claims she said about the "LGBTQ community."  [Tweet]  The patient, Marlene Barbera, was set to receive a mastectomy later this month.  Barbera explained that the drama first began after she made a comment about being opposed to a trans pride flag that she spotted hanging in the waiting room of Richmond Family Medicine Clinic in Portland, Oregon.  Since then, she has asked online if anyone is able to refer her to an attorney.

In Canada, the youngsters are being indoctrinated into euthanasia doctrine by the state.  In Canada, physician-assisted suicide is so normalized there are now memes about it. [...] Any person of faith or morals who opposes this is shut out from the debate here. [...] The only value presented in medically assisted suicide is that of self-direction and control of one's own destiny as if everyone is his own autonomous god and is taking the bull by the horns in seeking medical suicide in order to die with dignity, instead of what is really going on, which is being put down like an ailing farm animal by the vet, which is no dignity at all.

Canada's assisted dying horror story.  Lovely, liberal Canada actually legalised 'assisted death' in 2016, but only for people with terminal illness.  As long-term readers will know, this is a slope that I have worried about for some time, for there is a slipperiness to it.  Sure enough, two years ago Canada expanded the law to encompass people who had non-terminal conditions.  As of next year the criteria will expand again, this time to take in people whose sole underlying condition is mental illness.  You could see this coming.  After all, we live in an era which — rightly or wrongly — sees mental illness as being on a par with physical illness.  Politicians, celebrities and even royals have spent recent years doing their level best to raise awareness of mental illness and stress how debilitating it can be.  All of which may be true.  But that ground starts to move awfully fast once a state has said that incurable physical ailments are enough to send you to the knacker's yard.

Kirby: Military Has 'Foundational Sacred Obligation' to Provide Troops with Abortion Access.  White House spokesman John Kirby on Tuesday argued it is a "foundational sacred obligation" for military leaders to provide troops and their family members with access to abortion.  During a White House briefing on Tuesday, a reporter asked Kirby if the Biden administration's policy of paying for troops and their family members to travel out of state for abortion is "critical" for military readiness.  Kirby responded that since the U.S. military comprised of volunteers, it was a "foundational, sacred obligation" to provide them and their family members with paid travel and time off to get abortions if they were based in states where it is restricted.

Welcome To Canada — The Doctor Won't See You Now, But The Undertaker Will.  Earlier this month, Boy Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asked Taylor Swift to take her tour to Canada, where she so far has no concert dates.  "We hope to see you soon," he tweeted.  If she does, she'd better hope none of her crew becomes ill.  A person could expire while waiting to see a doctor in Canada.  The Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, which has long documented Canada's miserable government-run health care system, estimates the cost of waiting for care "for patients who were in the queue in 2022 was almost $3.6 billion ... an average of about $2,925 for each of the estimated 1,228,047 Canadians waiting for treatment."  The real toll is actually worse than that.  Fraser's "conservative estimate" does not place an "intrinsic value on the time individuals spend waiting in a reduced capacity outside of the work week."

Government resorting "to racial or ethnic classifications to ration medical treatment".  You may recall that I was the named plaintiff in a lawsuit filed in January 2022 in the Nothern District of New York against the NY State Health Commissioner over state health guidelines that prioritized non-whites for receipt of oral Covid therapeutics, which at the time were in short supply: [...] There was another case filed in the Eastern District of New York asserting similar claims (the "Roberts Case").  Both cases were dismissed for lack of standing by separate judges, which rulings were affirmed by the Second Circuit.  That standing decision required a plaintiff to contract Covid, be medically eligible, and be in a position to seek the medicine, before suit.  Legally and substantively it's an idiotic standard because the medication was only effective if taken within five days of symptoms.  So the courts set up a standing requirement that almost no one could meet as a practical matter because of the tight time frame to seek judicial relief.  The courts gave health officials almost unbridled authority to engage in racist conduct as to emergency medical treatments.

Netherlands doctors are euthanizing people with autism, intellectual disabilities: study.  Several Dutch citizens who had autism or other intellectual disabilities have died by physician-assisted suicide in recent years after doctors determined their afflictions were untreatable obstacles to a normal life, researchers found.  Nearly 40 people who identified as autistic or intellectually disabled were legally euthanized in the Netherlands between 2012 and 2021, according to a Kingston University investigation of Dutch euthanasia cases.  Five people younger than 30 who were killed at their own request cited autism as the sole or a major reason for their decision to end their lives, the UK study found.

Cancer drug shortage is forcing doctors to decide which patients get treatment.  Just six weeks ago, Greg DeStefano began a new chemotherapy combination.  The 50-year-old, from Northbrook, Illinois, had recently been diagnosed with his fourth round of cancer and doctors were hopeful the medication would treat the tumors growing in his neck.  DeStefano was responding well, but then, in late May, he got a call from his doctor and was told one of the three drugs he was receiving — carboplatin — was under a global shortage and because of the way the hospital had to prioritize treatments, he wouldn't be qualified to receive it anymore.

Social Media Influencer In Canada Promotes State Run Euthanasia.  The Post Millenial-On Sunday, TikTok influencer Ali Tate Cutler, who has 30,700 followers on the platform and describes herself as a "Self Love Coach, Model, Mother, Aesthetic Avatar" posted a video with her grandmother who said she was "looking forward" to the euthanasia she signed up for.  [Video clip]

1 In 4 Canadians Agree With Euthanizing The Poor.  Leftist policies start out seemingly reasonable and compassionate before they become totally monstrous.  Initially, there are sympathetic test cases, they started out with arguing that raped 12-year-olds should be able to get an abortion, and then before you know, it's partial-birth abortion for bored celebrities.  Euthanasia was supposed to help those with fatal illnesses suffering a great deal of pain.  And then, in typical fashion, it morphed into killing teenagers and the depressed.  Where to in the Great North?  How about killing the homeless and the poor?

Terminally Ill Woman Deprived of Life-Saving Transplant — She Isn't Vaxxed.  A terminally ill 58-year-old in Alberta, Canada, named Sheila Annette Lewis, was denied a life-saving organ transplant.  The reason is she refused to take the COVID-19 vaccine.  On March 28, Lewis provided her doctors in the Alberta transplant program with a privately-funded medical report, which established that she has strong natural immunity to COVID-19 and had overcome previous COVID-19 infections, the The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) said in a press release on April 18.

Doctors Sound Alarm Over Proposed Changes to Definition of Death in Federal Guidance.  Amid all the other changes to biological classification we have been treated to under the Biden administration, one is proposed involving the definition of death that is now drawing concern.  The Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) has been in guidance in place since 1981.  The UDDA states:  ["]An individual who has sustained either irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions or irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brainstem, is dead.  A determination of death must be made in accordance with accepted medical standards."  Late last year, a group of lawyers and "experts" met to discuss revisions to the UDDA. [...] We have been treated to three years of disastrous consequences when scientific "experts" and their legal supporters decided to implement policy without proper vetting of what they propose.  Let's take a look at the new definition to see if there is reason to worry.

Comatose People to be Declared Dead for Use as Organ Donors.  The law that redefined death in 1981, referred to as the Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA), is being revised.  The UDDA states that death by neurologic criteria must consist of "irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brainstem."  However, in actual practice, doctors examine only the brainstem.  The result is that people are being declared dead even though some still have detectable brainwaves, and others still have a part of the brain that functions, the hypothalamus.  Lawyers have caught on, pointing out in lawsuits that the whole brain standard was not met for their clients.  As a result, the Uniform Law Commission (ULC) is working on updates to the UDDA based on proposals from the American Academy of Neurology (AAN).  In the interest of preventing lawsuits, the AAN is asking that the neurologic criteria of death be loosened even further and standardized across the United States.

Obamacare: Still Killing People 13 Years In.  Before the ACA, average maximum wait time to see a primary care physician was a unconscionable: 92 days.  With ACA expansion of government-provided, no-charge Medicaid insurance, maximum wait times increased to 120 days and produced death-by-queue.  Death by queue is a phrase coined in the United Kingdom, meaning dying while waiting in line for care that is technically possible but unavailable in time to save lives.  Death by queue has long been a feature of the vaunted British National Health Service (NHS) and has now become noticeable in the U.S.  In Illinois over three years, 752 Medicaid enrollees died waiting for desperately needed medical treatment.  An internal Veterans' Affairs Department audit concluded that "47,000 veterans may have died" waiting in line for care that was technically possible but unavailable.  Veterans are covered by federal Tricare insurance.  An accurate estimate of death by queue in the U.S. is not available.  In Great Britain, at least "117,000 die[d] on waiting lists for NHS" in 2020 and 2021.

What's Next for Wokeism?  Created as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Great Reset is an initiative by the World Economic Forum to, "urgently build the foundations of our economic and social system for a fairer, sustainable, and more resilient post-COVID future."  The problem is that the WEF sees overpopulation as a problem, particularly when individuals are unproductive.  Davos's ante chambers and side rooms discuss population control, and have discovered that manipulating health care is a viable way forward.  If you are 65 and older in the U.S., you already know about denied services like colonoscopies beyond a certain age — remember Obamacare was infamously panned for its Death Panel association?  Routine denial of needed procedures, especially for the elderly today, seems to validate the assertion.  The reasons have more to do with economics than medicine, as many women have discovered when seeking lifesaving mammographies past 40, or even 80.

'Disturbing': Experts troubled by Canada's euthanasia laws.  Alan Nichols had a history of depression and other medical issues, but none were life-threatening.  When the 61-year-old Canadian was hospitalized in June 2019 over fears he might be suicidal, he asked his brother to "bust him out" as soon as possible.  Within a month, Nichols submitted a request to be euthanized and he was killed, despite concerns raised by his family and a nurse practitioner.  His application for euthanasia listed only one health condition as the reason for his request to die:  hearing loss.

This envelope gets pushed every week!
Canadian Parliamentary Committee Recommends Euthanasia for Minors without Parental Consent.  Euthanasia advocates tend to advance their cause by requesting that panels of "experts" or lawmakers conduct oh, so careful studies to recommend policies that, invariably, would legalize assisted suicide or expand it where already allowed.  These are stacked decks; activities choreographed to reach a particular conclusion.  Such a bit of theater was just performed in Canada, where a report was just published by the Canadian Parliament's Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (AMAD).  Surprise!  It calls for even further expansion of the already permissive law that allows terminally ill and chronically ill adults, people with disabilities, and the frail elderly to opt to be killed by doctors or nurse practitioners.  The mentally ill are scheduled to be included in this dismal list next month under existing law, but that may be put off for a year because of domestic and international agitation around the issue.  But, mark my words, they too will eventually become eligible for the lethal jab.  The committee has now recommended that "mature minors" whose deaths are "reasonably foreseeable" be allowed to access death — perhaps even without parental consent.

Encouraging the Voluntary Suicide of the Elderly Is the Last Stop Before Mandatory Euthanasia.  The idea of killing the weak, the infirm, the helpless, and the powerless is about as old as socialism/Marxism.  While modern leftists in the West have shied away from openly proposing firing squads and gas chambers, they have been actively medicalizing the slaughter of the helpless. [...] Euthanasia has seamlessly transitioned from the bizarre "death with dignity" slogan to state action to rid itself of someone it doesn't consider useful.  A Canadian veteran who requested assistance in having a chairlift installed to make her home wheelchair accessible was informed the government would not pay for the chairlift.  Instead, it would happily pay for what the Canadians charmingly call MAID, for "medical assistance in dying." Several Canadian veterans requested treatment for PTSD and were told they looked like candidates for MAID instead of expensive, open-ended psychiatric care.  The subtext was unmistakable:  your value to society is zero; please kill yourself.  In Oregon, Medicaid refused to pay for a woman's cancer drugs, but they helpfully sent her a brochure on physician-assisted suicide.  In France, a woman was drugged and restrained by her doctor and then euthanized after she refused to assent to being murdered.  A French court acquitted the doctor.  Belgium has sanctioned what, in my view, amounts to the involuntary euthanasia of prisoners.  Unsurprisingly, euthanasia is frequently accompanied by organ harvesting.

Politicization of Medicine Is Merely a Symptom of Our Culture's Disease.  [Scroll down] The federal government isn't alone when it comes to politicizing medicine.  In New Mexico and California, doctors now face civil, administrative, and professional liability, including risking losing their medical licenses, if they decline to participate in assisted suicide.  The laws require physicians to inform patients about assisted suicide, be part of the process for obtaining suicide drugs, or refer patients to physicians and organizations who will participate in ending their lives.  Alliance Defending Freedom is challenging New Mexico's and California's laws; the cases are Lacy v. Torrez and Christian Medical and Dental Associations v. Bonta, respectively.

Canada to expand assisted suicide, Democrats aim for unfettered abortion.  Mark Meincke, a Canadian Army veteran who served with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, [...] has testified before the Committee on Veterans Affairs in Ottawa about Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying program, or MAID, and the current apparent push for assisted suicide in the military.  A soldier returns from fighting — and risking his life — for his country and, depressed, reaches out to the very government agency supposedly set up to help veterans deal with PTSD and other trauma...and is promptly offered euthanasia — instead of help — by the government agent who took his call.  "Thank you for your service.  Would you like us to kill you now?"  That couldn't ever happen, could it?  Yes, it can.  An investigation by Veterans Affairs Canada itself verified that this very thing indeed happened, and may have occurred repeatedly over the last several years... though VAC claimed that it was the result of just one misguided agent.  Canada's "Medical Assistance in Dying" program is set to expand from offering assisted suicide to the terminally (physically) ill to offering it to the mentally ill as well starting in March.

Is Canada proud of this?  [Tweet]  Yeah, so they're talking about pulling organs from assisted suicide patients and providing them to otherwise healthy people who need them.  Canada leads the world in this.  And it seems like they're proud of it. [...] Think about it, they're killing the unfit and then using their healthy organs to keep the desirables alive.  This is what free "healthcare" looks like, people!

Canada wrestles with euthanasia for the mentally ill.  Since 2016, Canada's medical assistance in dying programme — known by its acronym 'Maid' — has been available for adults with terminal illness.  In 2021, the law was changed to include those with serious and chronic physical conditions, even if that condition was non-life threatening.  This year, it is expected to change again to include some Canadians with mental illness.  That planned expansion has ignited controversy over the assisted death programme as a whole and raised concerns that it may be too easy for the vulnerable to die in Canada.  Those fears have been stoked by a recent string of reports suggesting that for some, death has been used as a stopgap for a broken social safety net.

Universal Health Care Ends With The Government Telling You To Kill Yourself.  Soon after the announcement that Canada would expand its medically assisted suicide program to include those with mental illness, the popular Canadian department store chain Simons issued a new advertisement celebrating the policy.  The video features a woman saying, "Last breaths are sacred; you just have to be brave enough to see it," over a montage of her being wheeled to places of natural wonder.  The department store's logo is featured prominently at the end of the commercial.  Amid global outrage over the video and the policy, the Canadian government has announced it will delay the program's expansion, but the battle is far from over, as the underlying issues driving the policy remain unchanged.  Having produced a fantasy health care system that ultimately deprives Canadians of basic physical and mental health services, the Canadian left now offers medically assisted suicide as the compassionate and fiscally responsible solution to their failure.

Canadian gov't releases children's coloring book about assisted suicide.  Around the world, Canada is increasingly becoming known for one thing: the coldblooded brutality of our euthanasia regime.  From impoverished people opting for suicide because they can't find a home and the disabled asking for lethal injections due to lack of support to veterans being actively offered MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) when they request services, Canada's stories have made front pages across the globe.  In response, Justin Trudeau's Liberal government has put a (temporary) delay on expanding assisted suicide to those with mental illness, and has begun lying about some of these stories to blunt the damage, with the Veteran Minister of Affairs claiming that veterans had not been offered MAiD despite the fact that this fact is a matter of public record.  [Tweet]

Hospice care needs saving.  Hospice in America is gravely ill.  An extensive investigation jointly published by The New Yorker and ProPublica documented outright fraud, predatory practices, and flagrant mistreatment by specific publicly traded and private equity-owned hospice companies.  As a palliative care physician who has contributed to hospice care and kept my finger on its pulse for more than four decades, I have been dismayed to witness the increasing frequency and severity in lapses in this type of care.  I applaud the media for calling attention to deficiencies that can harm people during the most vulnerable times in their lives.  I am hopeful that the article will spark a long-overdue internal reckoning by the field — my field — and the industry we gave rise to.

Canadian government prepares to 'expand care' and euthanize more of its citizens.  Last year, Canada's euthanasia program took the lives of more than 10,000 people.  As we all know, communism is a philosophy of "despotic inroads," and its adherents (Justin Trudeau and his government comrades) have an insatiable appetite for death and murder.  They're only just getting started.

Stick a fork in Canada.  Christine Gauthier is a retired Canadian army corporal and former Paralympian, who has been restricted to a wheelchair since surviving an accident when she was in the service.  Gauthier recently testified that she has been waiting years for a wheelchair lift for her home.  She also testified that when she expressed her frustration to a Veteran Army of Canada (VAC) caseworker, she was promptly offered the option of being euthanized.  According to a report in PJ Media, the caseworker allegedly said, "Madam, if you are really so desperate, we can give you medical assistance in dying now."  Gauthier was understandably stunned at the "offer."  At least four other Canadian vets have come forward with similar allegations, and all dealt with the same caseworker.

Canada's Euthanasia 'Slippery Slope' Is Real and Horrifying.  Advocates of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia often frame their position as driven by compassion and dignity.  As the broad-strokes argument goes, people with terrible terminal illnesses — living in pain, with no cure available — should not be denied the choice to end their own life, at a time of their own choosing, on their own terms, with the help of a medical practitioner.  From a human perspective, though suicide is rightfully an upsetting and disturbing cultural taboo, it is hard not to at least be somewhat sympathetic to these sorts of appeals.  There is a moral and ethical case against sanctioning the taking of one's own life, even under the most dire and difficult circumstances.  But the more potent argument, in my view, may be warnings against a 'slippery slope' on the matter, which has repeatedly been confirmed as creepy and quite real.

Selling suicide.  La Maison Simons, a fashion house in Canada, has produced an infomercial promoting euthanasia.  The advert presents an assisted death as 'the most beautiful exit'.  'Dying in a hospital is not what's natural.  That's not what's soft.  In these kinds of moments, you need softness', the narrator says.

Canadian Veteran Complains About Wait Time for a Chairlift, Trudeau's Goverment Offers to Kill Her.  Retired Canadian Army Corporal and former Paralympian Christine Gauthier is restricted to a wheelchair after surviving an accident when she was in the service.  She testified last week that she has been waiting for a wheelchair lift for her home for years, and when she expressed frustration to a Veteran Army of Canada (VAC) caseworker she was promptly offered the option of being euthanized.  "Madam, if you are really so desperate, we can give you medical assistance in dying now," the caseworker allegedly told Gauthier in 2019.

Feds look to expand assisted suicide eligibility to infants and the mentally ill.  A recent video clip posted by the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) indicates the eligibility could expand for medically assisted suicide to include babies with disabilities. [...] "Kids born with disabilities are now being considered for assisted suicide up to a year after their birth," tweeted Lewis, who shared the clip.  "Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) was never meant for those who can't give consent.  Why aren't the Liberals, Bloc and NDP condemning this unethical agenda?" she asked.  The clip highlights a Parliamentary Committee for the Canada Disability Benefit Act, or Bill C-22, that was held two weeks ago.

The Collapse of Consent in Canada.  Amir Farsoud is going to be murdered.  The 54-year-old Canadian, whose story went viral online this week, is in the last stages of approval for "medical assistance in dying" (MAID), the neat bureaucratic euphemism for our northern neighbor's rapidly advancing euthanasia program.  In 2016, the country authorized physicians to kill their patients in cases of terminal illness or "reasonably foreseeable" death; Farsoud is being euthanized for back pain.  At least, that is the medical justification being given.  In reality, he is struggling financially and about to lose his home.  As Farsoud sees it, he has run out of options.  He told Toronto's CityNews: "I don't want to die.  But I don't want to be homeless more than I don't want to die."

Bill Gates Tells G20 World Leaders That 'Death Panels' Will Soon Be Required.  Unelected world health czar Bill Gates has used his appearance at the G20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia to raise a discussion about "death panels."  According to Gates, death panels will be necessary in the near future in order to end the lives of sick and unwell people due to "very, very high medical costs".  Gates went on to explain that "a lack of willingness to say, you know, is spending a million dollars on that last three months of life for that patient, would it be better not to lay off those ten teachers and to make that trade-off in medical costs."

The Editor says...
[#1] When was the last time you heard of ten teachers being laid off?  Why are unionized teachers the foremost consideration?  [#2] Trillions of dollars are being squandered in a futile battle against "climate change" and unproven "global warming."  A shortage of money isn't an obstacle to a government doesn't hesitate to print money for "stimulus" payments, ethanol subsidies, football stadiums, luxury housing for illegal aliens, pointless exploration of Mars, high-speed rail, public broadcasting, and other pet projects.  [#3] It would be far less costly to have the government pick the 10 worst cases every year and just pay off their medical bills; that is, find the ten chronically-ill citizens with the highest medical bills — presumably without insurance coverage — and cover their costs.  It might turn out to be a public relations bonanza.

Would you kill yourself because you ran out of Tylenol?
Doctors Advised to Suggest Suicide to Patients as Canada Runs Out of Basic Painkillers.  The Canadian healthcare system is experiencing an acute shortage of basic painkillers, particularly acetaminophen and ibuprofen, which are commonly used to relieve pain and fever in children during flu season.  Canada's Association of Medical Assistance in Dying Assessors and Providers (CAMAP) chose this perhaps awkward moment to roll out a webinar for healthcare professionals that advised them to offer assisted suicide to their suffering patients.

Mother Horrified to Learn Son's Death Is Scheduled in Two Weeks After Skimming Through His Email.  A mother in Canada was horrified when she discovered that her son had made an appointment to kill himself with the help of a doctor.  The incident shines a light on how Canada's assisted suicide program has spun entirely out of control.  On Sept. 7, Toronto resident Margaret Marsilla logged in to her 23-year-old son's email account and discovered that he had applied for permission from the Canadian government to be killed.  A doctor had approved the request and scheduled the murder for Sept. 22, Common Sense reported.

Woman, 23, who survived 2016 Brussels airport ISIS bomb but could not live with the trauma is 'euthanised' in Belgium.  A woman who survived the Brussels airport terror attack has died after choosing to be euthanised due to severe depression and PTSD she suffered following the incident.  Shanti De Corte, 23, was walking through the departures lounge of the Belgian airport in Zaventem on March 22, 2016[,] with her school classmates ahead of a trip to Italy when Islamic State terrorists detonated a bomb.  The then 17-year-old escaped the explosion, which together with two other detonations claimed 32 lives and injured more than 300, without suffering any physical wounds.  But the psychological effects of the ordeal left her wracked by constant panic attacks and bouts of dark depression from which she never managed to emerge.

The Editor says...
Predictably, the envelope is being pushed in order to offer assisted suicide to anybody who wants it.  It's no longer just the very old and terminally ill who participate.  I predict we will someday see advertisements on TV for assisted suicide centers, especially if there's Medicare coverage for it.

Canadian veterans offered assisted suicide to cope with combat traumas.  For a profession that purports to believe in a principle of "do no harm," the modern medical community seems to perpetually undermine legitimate healthcare.  Physicians under the sway of Hegelian ethics — whatever solves a problem on a practical level must be moral, as no action on its own is right or wrong — propose harmful (or lethal) remedies to accomplish a desired end.  We see surgeons suggesting (and even performing) the mutilation of sexual organs on minors, there are serial baby-killers on the loose because they're euphemized as a "doctor", and more and more, we see assisted suicide touted as a legitimate panacea.  Just the other day, news emerged from Canada that a 61-year-old man had been hospitalized for concerns he may be suicidal, and was promptly put to death.  Now, Canada is at it again.

Canada is ground zero for Nuremberg 3.0.  Under the leadership of Justin Trudeau and his cabinet of Klaus Schwab pupils, Canadian "health" officials appear to be euthanizing slightly disabled, but otherwise healthy adults.  As detailed in a recent report by The Washington Post, 61-year-old Alan Nichols was put to death by medical "professionals" after he was hospitalized for fears he may be "suicidal."  Nichols' family cried foul, arguing the application for assisted suicide lacked any serious justification, as the sole reason on the request was "hearing loss." [...] Medical professionals willingly collaborated with the pro-death policies of Hitler's regime, and that same sin is echoing through the ages and being perpetrated by government leaders today.  Stories of coerced euthanasia should come as no surprise though — disregarding the sanctity of life is a slippery slope.  In a culture that not only tolerates, but brazenly promotes a grotesque practice like abortion, it's only a matter of time before it devolves into the genocide of born populations.

Canada's 'expert' panel recommends the mentally ill be candidates for euthanasia.  Canada's medical assistance in dying (MAiD) law is already the most permissive euthanasia and assisted-suicide legislation in the world.  Understandably controversial in itself, there are many horror stories surrounding its implementation. [...] To some degree, mental illness is in the eye of the beholder.  It can be quite subjective and has historically been used as a tool to advance totalitarian political agendas.  Hence, the gulags and "re-education camps."  Don't believe in global warming?  Are you an anti-vaxxer?  Trump supporter?!  Didn't vote for  Xi jinping  Justin Trudeau?  Driving an 18-wheeler in a "Freedom Convoy?"  Then you are, sadly, mentally ill.

Canada: new kids book teaches it's ok to kill grandma.  Bill Richardson's book "Last Week" is all about making life easier for the family — eager to assuage their own pain of "uncertainty" and despair in the face of death — by killing Grandma speedily.  In this view, Grandma is now dispensable in proportion to the difficulty she poses.  She is not deemed to be a valuable human being to comfort and care for in her suffering, endowed with the gift and sanctity of life.  Although Richardson's story tells of Grandma consciously and lovingly choosing death, in reality, many elderly people who suffer at the latter stages of their life due to illness, decline or immobility, are made to feel like a burden, so some choose death to "help" their children.  Many children, meanwhile, are eager to see them die to get on with their lives, and also to get their hands on their parent's will.

Patients losing government aid after 'living too long'.  The BBC is reporting that more than 1,300 patients each year in England are losing their palliative care funding from the National Health Service (NHS) because they are living longer than the government expected — creating an environment ripe for coerced assisted suicide or euthanasia.  NHS is the UK's government-funded health care program.  The fast-track continuing health care scheme covers the full costs of a person's palliative care needs, and is not dependent on income.  Individuals qualify based on evidence of a rapidly-deteriorating condition that is considered to be terminal or entering a terminal phase.  When a patient outlives their prognosis, their funding is often removed.  According to the BBC analysis, between 2018 and 2021, 9,037 terminally ill or rapidly declining-in-health individuals had their palliative care funding reviewed.  Nearly half of them lost that funding because they had survived for too long.

Doctors sue California for threatening to punish them for not facilitating assisted suicide.  California doctors who object to assisted suicide are fighting an amended state law that implicates them in their patients' intentional deaths.  They are suing California officials, including Attorney General Rob Bonta, Department of Public Health Director Tomas Aragon, and Medical Board members to block SB 380, which made it easier for patients to commit suicide under the End of Life Options Act that took effect in 2016.  The original law issued a broad exemption for healthcare providers, granting them a liability shield for "refusing to inform" patients about their right to physician-assisted suicide and "not referring" patients to physicians who will assist in their suicides.  The amended law removed it, leaving providers vulnerable to "civil, criminal, administrative, disciplinary, employment, credentialing, professional discipline, contractual liability, or medical staff action, sanction, or penalty or other liability."

Biden Administration Takes Control of Monoclonal Antibody Drugs in Order to Block Treatments in Red States and Ration Equitable Treatment.  When Joe Biden's Health and Human Services made the announcement earlier this month that they were taking full control over Monoclonal Antibody drugs (mAb) in order to begin rationing the highly effective treatment for COVID-19 infection, several people sounded alarm bells as there was the potential for rationing of COVID treatment based on political ideology.  Representative Chip Roy of Texas was one of the first to raise concerns.  The change in HHS approach followed republican governor Ron DeSantis of Florida promoting the use of mAb and opening up dozens of treatment centers throughout his state.  Other governors quickly took notice of the effective action plan of DeSantis in Florida and started to follow that path.  As soon as HHS noticed the red state governors were working on a effective treatment alternative to the vaccine approach, HHS appears to have moved in to block it — thereby restricting the treatment pathway in order to enhance the vaccine approach.

Here's an example of a "death panel":
UW Medicine pulls heart transplant patient from list after refusing COVID vaccine.  The University of Washington Medical Center denied organ transplants to patients who refuse a COVID vaccine as early as June 2021.  And hospital officials refuse to answer basic questions about their policy.  In fact, they won't even directly acknowledge they have a policy.  The Jason Rantz Show on KTTH has learned that UW Medicine removed a 64-year-old patient from the transplant waitlist.  He says he was on the list for two and a half years.  The hospital made the decision after they learned the patient refused to be vaccinated against COVID.  They said they would consider adding him back to the waitlist should he satisfy their "compliance concerns."

The Biden Regime Has Made Us All Enemies of the State.  There's no way to go halfsies on totalitarianism.  Once the government decides it may declare who has rights and who has none, it is a short walk for the government to decide who has life and who has none.  Over 63 million babies have been killed since Roe v Wade, after all, and once you teach a population that a baby is only as alive as a woman chooses, it's not difficult to teach those same people that political opponents are not worthy of life at all.  When individual liberty and private ownership are ridiculed in the name of the "common good," taking life for the "greater good" is never far behind.

California Senate moves to make assisted death law permanent.  The California Senate moved Friday [5/28/2021] to make the state's assisted death law permanent and significantly shorten the time a terminally ill patient must wait for a fatal dose of medication.  The state Department of Public Health reported that 337 terminally ill people took drugs to end their lives in 2019, the most recent figures available, and 452 people received prescriptions that year under the law.

Top doctor's chilling claim:  The NHS kills off 130,000 elderly patients every year.  NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds, a senior consultant claimed yesterday [6/18/2012].  Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors had turned the use of a controversial 'death pathway' into the equivalent of euthanasia of the elderly.  He claimed there was often a lack of clear evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway, a method of looking after terminally ill patients that is used in hospitals across the country.  It is designed to come into force when doctors believe it is impossible for a patient to recover and death is imminent.

Canada won't execute a murderer, but they will do this:
Canada Poised to Legalize Euthanasia for Disabled and Mentally Ill.  The expansion will eventually continue to allowing people diagnosed with dementia to order themselves killed in an advance directive when they become mentally incompetent and to pediatric euthanasia of "mature minors" — both among the subjects likely to be "studied" by a committee of "experts" over the next two years, meaning they are coming next.  Disability-rights activists fought back furiously and backed a filibuster over the bill that succeeded for a time.  But it was eventually broken by the ruling minority Liberals and Bloc Québécois.  The despair of people with disabilities on Twitter after the vote was visceral, with some noting that Canada does not guarantee life with dignity — with say, independent living services — but will guarantee "death with dignity" when the paucity of services leads to a suicidal desire.  They feel, rationally, like targets rather than beneficiaries.

"Pro-Life Democrats" Joe Manchin and Bob Casey Betray Pro-Life Americans, Vote for Abortion Funding.  Two pro-life Democrat senators voted yes on the COVID-19 relief bill over the weekend even though it will force taxpayers to pay for the killing of unborn babies in abortions.  U.S. Sens. Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, and Bob Casey Jr., of Pennsylvania, did join Republicans in voting in favor of an amendment to prohibit taxpayer funding for abortions in the $1.9 trillion spending bill.  But the amendment failed, and both Democrats ultimately voted with their party to pass the overall spending package.  Both Manchin and Casey describe themselves as pro-life Democrats, but they have mixed voting records on the issue.  According to the National Right to Life Committee, Manchin's pro-life voting record is 63 percent while Casey's is 39 percent.  After the bill passed Saturday [3/6/2021], Casey celebrated the news on Twitter, writing:  "The American Rescue Plan wouldn't have passed without a Democratic Majority in the Senate.  Always vote like your life depends on it."

COVID-19 Relief Bill Provides Billions to Bail Out Abortion Industry.  As the Senate prepares to debate the COVID-19 Relief bill, Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) observed the bill provides $400 billion that contains no protections for ensuring it will not be used to fund elective abortion.  Daines tweeted a video of his review of some of the features of the measure, which passed the House Friday, referring to it as the "liberal wish list" of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY):  [Tweet]  "Here's one that will get your blood pressure up," said Daines, who heads the Senate Pro-Life Caucus.  "$400 billion that has no protections to ensure we don't have taxpayer dollars spent for abortions."  He explained Democrats removed the language of the Hyde Amendment that has prohibited taxpayer funding of abortions in appropriation bills.  "$400 billion that could be used to fund abortions paid for by United States taxpayers," the senator emphasized.

Liberals Still Think Obama Was the 'Best President Ever,' Here Are 14 Reasons Why That's Ridiculous.  [#11] Health care costs skyrocketed.  Even if you liked your health plan or your doctor you couldn't keep them, but at least health care got more expensive.  The Affordable Care Act could not have been more inaccurately named.  Thanks to Obamacare we saw insurance premiums skyrocket and deductibles go through the roof, as coverage got worse.  If you didn't want to pay for insurance, no problem!  You just had to pay a fine for not wanting this amazing new health insurance!

Joe Biden's Dr. Death.  Does Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel believe Joe Biden would be better off dead?  That would be a peculiar position for Biden's chief adviser on medical issues and a member of the candidate's Public Health Advisory Committee to take.  But if we accept the reasoning behind Emanuel's infamous 2014 essay, Biden is nothing more than a resource-sucking shell of himself who should stop trying to prolong his life.  I suspect that if one of Trump's advisers on coronavirus had once taken to the august pages of The Atlantic to reason that men who reach the age of 75 are useless to society, the press would be vigorously exploring and amplifying his position.  Reporters have rarely bothered to bring it up with Emanuel, who is constantly on TV — or with Biden, who is now "sheltered in place" and trying to prolong his life.

Massachusetts Issues Guidelines To "Prioritize" Who Will Be Saved.  Bracing for the worst, the state government announced that it was developing and issuing new guidelines as to how scarce resources will be prioritized.  Described as a "gut-wrenching" decision, hospitals that run short of ventilators and other critical care equipment and supplies will need to assign a score to each patient based on how likely they are to survive.  The people with the best scores will get the best care while others may be left to... you get the picture.

We didn't have to have ventilator shortage — leaders chose not to prep for pandemic.  [Scroll down]  They could have chosen to buy more ventilators to back up the supplies hospitals maintain.  Instead, the health commissioner, Howard Zucker, assembled a task force for rationing the ventilators they already had.  In 2015, that task force came up with rules that will be imposed when ventilators run short.  Patients assigned a red code will have highest access, and other patients will be assigned green, yellow or blue (the worst), depending on a "triage officer's" decision.  In truth, a death officer.  Let's not sugar-coat it.  It won't be up to your own doctor.  In 2015, the state could have purchased the additional 16,000 needed ventilators for $36,000 apiece, or a total of $576 million.  It's a lot of money, but in hindsight, spending half a percent of the budget to prepare for pandemic was the right thing to do.  To be fair, governments everywhere stockpiled too little.  Washington didn't do much better:  The federal Strategic National Stockpile is undersupplied to meet the coronavirus emergency.  Now the pandemic is actually here.  New York's grim-reaper rules will be applied.

A doctor and medical ethicist argues life after 75 is not worth living.  In October 2014, Ezekiel Emanuel published an essay in the Atlantic called "Why I Hope to Die at 75."  Because Emanuel is a medical doctor and chair of the University of Pennsylvania's department of medical ethics and health policy, as well as a chief architect of Obamacare, the article stirred enormous controversy.  Emanuel vowed to refuse not only heroic medical interventions once he turned 75, but also antibiotics and vaccinations.  His argument:  older Americans live too long in a diminished state, raising the question of, as he put it, "whether our consumption is worth our contribution."

Bloomberg Explains How Healthcare will Bankrupt Us Unless We Deny Care to the Elderly.  A new video posted on Sunday shows former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg explaining how healthcare will "bankrupt us," unless we deny care to the elderly.  [Video clip]

The Editor says...
One could easily surmise that Mr. Bloomberg will insist on the finest medical care for himself, should the need arise, even though he's nearly 80 already.

Why legal euthanasia results in sick, elderly being pressured to die.  [Scroll down]  In Benelux (Belgium/Netherlands/Luxembrug), a beacon of euthanasic progress, there are more and more people who ask for and obtain death to avoid simple emotional disorders, or to prevent future suffering (for example, people who are diagnosed with cancer or Alzheimer's disease but are still in the early stages).  In our aging societies, the number of elderly people facing physical and mental decline, depression, and loneliness will grow rapidly:  the generation that started during the family-sexual revolution in the '60s is reaching old age, with its sequelae of divorces and low birth rates.  Many Baby-Boomers have had no children, or have had very few:  a very sad old age awaits them in hospices or empty homes.  The burden they represent to the economic and health care systems is grave, indeed.  Let's say it bluntly:  there is a definite risk, more or less subtle, that more and more of the elderly will be pushed toward euthanasia.

Pressuring a Hospice to Kill.  After the Supreme Court of Canada conjured a right for anyone diagnosed with a serious medical condition that causes "irremediable suffering" to receive lethal-injection euthanasia, British Columbia passed a law requiring all medical facilities that receive at least 50 percent of their funding from the government to participate in what north of the 46th parallel is known euphemistically as "medical assistance in dying" (MAiD).

Euthanasia Activist Won't Go to Prison for Killing a Disabled Man.  Reuters news reported that a Milan court acquitted Italian assisted suicide activist, Marco Cappato, today in the assisted suicide death of Fabiano Antoniani (known as DJ Fabo), in February 2017.  This decision is sad but not surprising considering Italy's constitutional court decision in September 2019, that opened the door to assisted suicide.  The outcome of the constitutional court decision is not clear.

Improper Medicaid payments top $75B: More than entire food stamp program.  $75 billion.  That is not the cost of Medicaid.  That is merely the cost of improper payments from the Medicaid program, accounting for roughly 20 percent of the total program tab, according Brian Blaze and Aaron Yelowitz writing in the Wall Street Journal.  Prior to the Obamacare expansion of Medicaid incentivizing states to flood their rolls with Medicaid recipients, the improper payments accounted for roughly six percent.  Now, just the official fraud and waste of Medicaid amount to more than the entire cost of the food stamp program!  In many ways, the entire Medicaid program is one big fraud perpetrated on the American taxpayer, designed to serve as a cash cow for the insurance cartel and major hospital and health care administrator networks.

Targeting People With Mental Illness and Dementia for Euthanasia.  A few years ago, a Dutch doctor attended her elderly Alzheimer's disease patient at a nursing home.  The doctor's purpose wasn't to examine the patient or prescribe new medicines.  Rather, she was there to kill.  While competent, the patient asked to be euthanized when incapacitated, but she also instructed that she be allowed to say when.  But before she did that, the doctor and her family decided that her time had come.  The doctor drugged the woman's coffee and, once she was asleep, began the lethal injection procedure.  But the patient awakened unexpectedly and fought against being killed.  Rather than stopping, the doctor instructed the family to hold the struggling woman down while she completed the homicide.  This would seem to be a clear-cut case of murder.  But a judge recently exonerated and praised the doctor for acting in the "best interests" of the patient by merely executing the woman's previously stated wishes.

41-Year-Old Disabled Man Euthanized After Government Health Officials Decide to Cut Funding for In-Home Care.  A 41-year-old disabled man was put to death after government officials cut funding for his in-home care.  Sean Tagert was euthanized on August 6th in Canada.  Sean had ALS or Lou Gehrig's Disease.

Canadian Health Care Refused to Pay for Disabled Father's Care, but Happily Paid for His Assisted Suicide.  It would be easy to judge Sean Tagert, who was diagnosed with ALS six years ago.  Do I believe he made the wrong choice?  Sure.  But I wasn't the one who was struggling to pay for my health care after losing my ability to breath on my own or feed myself.  I'm not the one living under Canada's health care system that was more than happy to pay for my suicide but not the care I needed.  So, yes, I disagree with Tagert's "choice" and mourn the loss of his life, but I blame Canada and their "touted" socialized medicine.

Where the Democrats are Trying to Take Us.  The common mindset of all those determined to seize power in perpetuity, either by force of arms or the ballot box, is a profound contempt for the dignity and sanctity of human life.  This is a philosophical necessity in order to view the bulk of the populace as inferior and therefore servants and wards of the state to be exploited or restrained for political or economic ends.  Over time, this mentality inevitably and rapidly descends into the abyss of malevolence and the indiscriminate taking of life.  The first irreversible step in the evolution of this mindset is unfettered abortion at any stage of gestation or immediately after birth as well as the acceptance and promotion of unrestrained government sponsored euthanasia.

21st Century Question:  When Is Assisting Suicide Acceptable?  You may have missed it, what with all the media attention focused on the president's important tweets.  But Maine has just become the eighth state to legalize voluntary assisted suicide of the terminally ill.  Nearly a dozen more are considering it.  Assisted suicide remains an emotional subject, of course, at least among healthy people who are not living with the constant pain and doomed future of a fatal illness.  Though we end the terminal suffering of beloved family pets when all is lost, many believe a dying patient's wishes to stop the pain run against ethical and religious beliefs since science can now prolong life, often beyond the will to live it.

American Medical Association:  Call It 'Physician-Assisted Suicide,' Not 'Aid-in-Dying'.  Advocates of assisted suicide are dismayed that the largest association of physicians in the U.S. has decided to continue using the term "physician-assisted suicide" rather than euphemisms such as "medical aid-in-dying."  Meeting in Chicago on Monday [6/10/2019], the American Medical Association, by a vote of 360-190, adopted a report by its Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs (CEJA) recommending that the term "physician-assisted suicide" continue to be used.  Significantly, the AMA also voted to reaffirm its Code of Medical Ethics' current policy on assisted suicide — the view that allowing doctors to help patients to die "is fundamentally incompatible with the physician's role as healer."  That vote was 392-162.

Canada Conjoins Euthanasia and Organ Harvesting.  How do you convince society to embrace euthanasia as a means of attaining utilitarian benefit — while also convincing yourselves that your culture remains both moral and compassionate?  Once you get past the squeamishness of allowing doctors to kill patients, it isn't that difficult:  First, legalize euthanasia of the seriously ill and disabled.  Once the community becomes comfortable with doctors committing homicide as a means of eliminating suffering, you next allow those who want to be killed to donate their organs.  After all, they won't need their livers anymore, so why not let others have them?

Canada Medical Doctors Kill Thousands in 2018.  Canadian doctors committed thousands of homicides in 2018. According to an interim report published by the government, in the first ten months of last year, doctors lethally injected 2,613 patients (with one assisted suicide) — and that doesn't include the homicides committed by doctors in Quebec, Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut.  This means well over 3,000 people are killed by their doctors each year in Canada, which — if my math is correct — is more than 250 a month, more than 58 a week, and more than eight per day.

Canada's version of Medicare for All executes thousands of patients a year.  When governments take charge of medical care and expenditures on prolonging life come out of the same pool of money used for the military, road-building, schools and all the other functions of government, the bureaucrats who are the decision-makers have every incentive to encourage a rapid death, if not insist upon it.  Our northern neighbor Canada offers an example of the slippery slope.

Nevada Bill to Push Patients Off Wanted Life Support.  The point of futile care is not to protect doctors from forced provision of treatment that isn't working — sometimes called physiological futility.  Rather, it is to enable doctors to stop treatment even though it is accomplishing what the patient wants, i.e., maintaining life.

A Scourge of Death Doctors.  [Scroll down]  Giving people poison to drink isn't practicing medicine.  Death doctors don't need to be good physicians.  They don't need to be specially trained in treating a patient's underlying medical condition.  They don't need experience in spotting depression, signs of coercion, or mental illness.  They don't even have to be caring human beings.  They just need a license to prescribe lethal drugs and/or be otherwise willing to help suicidal people take their own lives.  What a disgrace to a venerable profession.

Death on demand: has euthanasia gone too far?  Everyone in the Netherlands seems to have known someone who has been euthanised, and the kind of choreographed farewell that [Bert] Keizer describes is far from unusual.  Certainly, the idea that we humans have a variety of deaths to choose from is more familiar in the Netherlands than anywhere else.  But the long-term consequences of this idea are only just becoming discernible.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [and] other Dems want you to embrace a socialist agenda.  [#1] Government-run, single-payer health care:  A single-payer program in line with Sen. [Bernie] Sanders' "Medicare for All" proposal would cost $32 trillion in its first 10 years, according to an analysis by the Mercatus Center — an amount so high Mercatus estimates that doubling existing individual and corporate taxes wouldn't be enough to cover the costs.  Not only would putting the government in charge of health care cost trillions of dollars, but it would also force Americans to endure many of the same problems plaguing government-run health care models around the world, including long wait times for patients and rationing of care.  The Fraser Institute reports that patients in Canada, which has a single-payer health care model, who require "medically necessary elective orthopedic surgery" wait on average 41.7 weeks — about 10 months — before receiving treatment.  Patients requiring elective neurosurgery, including many patients who have brain tumors, wait 32.9 weeks.

Death Panels?  Study Suggests One Obamacare Provision Killed People.  An Affordable Care Act program that penalized hospitals for readmitting Medicare patients within a month of being discharged may have led to increased mortality rates among adults who experienced pneumonia and heart failure, according to a study published Tuesday [12/25/2018].  The program was changed in September so that hospitals serving lower-income, older adults were not hit as hard by the penalties, but the study in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that damage may have already been done, and not just to hospitals' bottom lines.  The Affordable Care Act of 2010, also known as Obamacare, included a program that imposed financial penalties on hospitals with too-high readmission rates for patients with heart failure, heart attacks or pneumonia starting in 2012.  It was supposed to encourage better care.  But the program was not popular, wrote Reason managing editor Peter Suderman:  Hospital groups have argued that these payments are punitive and unfair, particularly to so-called safety net hospitals that serve the poorest, sickest patients.  These patients tend to have higher readmissions rates, and the hospitals that treat them were more likely to be hit with payment reductions.

'Wallet biopsy': Organ transplant often depends on patient's finances.  Virtually all of the nation's more than 250 transplant centers, which refer patients to a single national registry, require patients to verify how they will cover bills that can total $400,000 for a kidney transplant or $1.3 million for a heart, plus monthly costs that average $2,500 for anti-rejection drugs that must be taken for life, Caplan said.  Coverage for the drugs is more scattershot than for the operation itself, even though transplanted organs will not last without the medicine.

New Mexico woman sues hospital for resuscitating her.  A New Mexico woman who was brought back to life is suing the hospital for violating her rights.

Gavin Newsom Helped Mother's Assisted Suicide.  A recent article in the New Yorker extolling the (probable) next Governor of California reveals that Gavin Newsom helped his mother commit assisted suicide. [...] When I first read the piece, I assumed she didn't die in California because assisted suicide was a felony there in 2002, and Newsom was a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors sworn to uphold the law.  Wrong.  She died in San Francisco.

The Ugly Culture Legalizing Physician-Assisted Suicide Would Create.  Physician-assisted suicide is antithetical to a culture of life for a whole host of reasons.  For one, physician-assisted suicide sets up arbitrary guidelines about who receives suicide prevention and who receives suicide assistance.  Patients of a certain age or with a certain qualifying condition are told to end their lives with professional help, whereas others receive support in order to keep living.  These circumstances are completely arbitrary and subject to change on a whim.  Ultimately, physician-assisted suicide guidelines communicate that some lives are simply more valuable than others.  A mentality that privileges some lives over others infects culture on multiple levels.

They Wouldn't Pay For Her Cancer Treatment But They'd Pay for Her Assisted Suicide.  In select states where assisted suicide is legal, physicians and medical practices now are allowed to prescribe lethal drugs to their patients to end their lives, The Daily Signal reported.  Although many of these patients have treatable ailments, it is less costly for them to die.  Assisted suicide is an alarming trend that many say is pressuring patients to end their own lives prematurely.  Opponents of assisted suicide point out how it is cheaper than many medical treatments for the terminally ill and disabled.

Why has U.S. life expectancy declined now two years in a row?  Just when some of us start getting really old, they begin lowering the life expectancy.  How does that work?  Who in Washington is to blame for this?  For decades the average life expectancy, a general measure of a population's health and well-being, has been going up and up and up in the United States.  And in other developed countries around the world.

And They Wonder Why We're Angry.  President Obama substantially changed the American health care system against the wishes of the American people.  After an initial straight-line partisan vote, the Affordable Care Act was adopted as legislation.  After sufficient interpretation, the legislation was affirmed as constitutional by the Roberts Court, and even Senator McCain came to see the legislation as vital.  Every American was now required to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty.  Once the legislation came into full effect by 2013, something remarkable happened:  American life expectancy began to decline dramatically.  For 2015 and 2016, American life expectancy declined for two years in a row — the first such occasion of decline in more than 50 years.

Organized Death in the Netherlands.  Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are becoming legalized — and normalized — in more and more jurisdictions around the world.  While originally intended to allow a swift and painless death for patients with terminal illnesses, they're increasingly being used to end the lives of people who are perfectly healthy.

Woman Holds Euthanasia Party Before Killing Herself in an Assisted Suicide.  A woman in California held a euthanasia party celebrating her decision to take her own life before becoming one of the first people under California's assisted suicide law to kill herself with a lethal cocktail.  The party is upsetting to pro-life advocates who see it as a celebrating of death as a solution for those who are considered by society to be too old or too ill.

Is Legalized Murder of the Elderly and the Mentally Ill Coming Soon to the United States?  In the Netherlands, euthanasia has been legal since 2002, and there have been a whole slew of problems ever since.  In one recent case in the Netherlands involving an elderly woman who had dementia — she realized that the doctor was trying to kill her, so she put up such a fight that the family forcibly held her down, and then the doctor proceeded to kill her with a lethal injection.  This writer was incensed when reading that article, how dare anyone decide that a particular person needs to be killed?  Lets get something straight here; this was murder — pure plain and simple, disguised as doing the patient a favor.  If the patient wanted death, then why did she fight back so strongly?

'Socialism or death' gets creepily literal in Canada with patients pressured into euthanasia.  Under socialized medicine, it doesn't take long to go from suicide as a "choice" to suicide as a pushed "product" to suicide as a murder for bureaucratic "convenience."  Over in Canada, it's gotten to stage two.

Baby Oliver, Single-Payer, and the Media.  The story of Oliver Cameron, born with a deadly heart condition and saved by surgeons at Boston Children's Hospital (BCH), is an inspiring testament to the refusal of two parents to accept anything less than state-of-the-art medical treatment for their baby.  Yet, if you want to know the details of his amazing recovery, you won't find them in any major U.S. news outlet.  Why not?  Oliver's story highlights the abject failure of socialized medicine and the spectacular success of the best health care system on the planet.  In other words, it belies an ongoing propaganda campaign conducted by the media.

Google is training machines to predict when a patient will die.  [Scroll down]  The harrowing account of the unidentified woman's death was published by Google in May in research highlighting the healthcare potential of neural networks, a form of artificial intelligence software that is particularly good at using data to automatically learn and improve.  Google had created a tool that could forecast a host of patient outcomes, including how long people may stay in hospitals, their odds of readmission and chances they will soon die.  What impressed medical experts most was Google's ability to sift through data previously out of reach:  notes buried in PDFs or scribbled on old charts.  The neural net gobbled up all this unruly information then spat out predictions.  And it did so far faster and more accurately than existing techniques.

Court reinstates California law allowing terminally ill people to end their lives.  The law allows adults to obtain a prescription for life-ending drugs if a doctor has determined that they have six months or less to live.

The Editor says...
The writers of this law apparently assume that doctors know everything, which they don't, and that doctors' diagnoses are always right, which they aren't.

California's Rationing Plan for Obamacare Patients.  California has found a novel way to save money on Obamacare patients — punish hospitals that provide too much care.  How much is too much?  That's up to the bureaucrats.  They have decreed, for example, that hospitals whose percentage of C-sections exceeds 23.9 percent for "low-risk" births will be purged from the provider network.  WBUR quotes an official from the state's Obamacare exchange as follows:  "We've told health plans that by the end of 2019, we want networks to only include hospitals that have achieved that target."  Similarly arbitrary goals have been set for X-rays, MRIs, and CTs involving back pain.

California assisted death law overturned in court.  A judge in Riverside County on Tuesday overturned California's controversial assisted death law nearly two years after it took effect, ruling that the Legislature improperly passed the measure during a special session on health care funding.

Alfie Evans and Our Moral Crossroads.  Physicians have many ways of influencing medical decisions made by the parents of children in their care.  Certain studies can be cited in support of what the physician desires, and studies pointing in a different direction can be ignored.  Directive, emotive, and exaggerated language can be used to manipulate, especially when the likely outcomes of various options are under discussion.  Numbers can be used in a similar way:  Should a consult focus on the two-thirds of patients who have poor outcomes — or on the one-third who have good ones?  These forms of manipulation are a persistent concern in clinical ethics, and they present themselves in dramatic fashion when medical teams discuss disability.  Sometimes the desire of a physician to achieve the outcome he wants is so strong that he will engage in deceptive practices called "slow coding" or "show coding."  The physician agrees with the parents that everything possible will be done for their child ("full code") — but in reality the physician and medical team will not engage in aggressive treatment.  This practice is defended by some ethicists today, and is often justified by the physician's personal judgment that the life of a particular child is not worth saving.

They Laughed at Us When We Raised Hell Over Obamacare's Death Panels.  During the great Obamacare debates, then-Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin referred to IPAB as a 'death panel.'  IPAB, if triggered, would've granted Medicare cutting authority to 15 unelected bureaucrats if spending exceeding certain thresholds. [...] Republicans were mocked and accused of concocting a nefarious 'death panel' to fear monger their way into an electoral win.  But then you look at what's happening in the U.K., first with Charlie Guard and now with Alfie Evans.  In both cases, a court, not a doctor and caretaker, decided it was in the best interest of the baby to pull the plug.

Euthanasia Aloha:  Death Laws Come to Hawaii.  Like so much of the past five years, the legalization of murder in Hawaii played out like an episode from a paranoid Christian novel from the 1990s.  You know, the kind that angry believers self-published and sold at gun shows, warning of the worst?  If you found one, you'd read the first couple of pages then lay it sadly aside.  Maybe with a prayer for the author's sanity.  We owe such authors a collective apology.  Things have gotten so much worse so much more quickly than anyone imagined.  Anyone, that is, except for them.

Do Not Sign A DNR Before You Read This.  Patients, beware.  When you're admitted to a hospital, you're routinely encouraged to sign a Do Not Resuscitate order, also known as a DNR.  Don't assume it will be applied only in extreme circumstances.  New research shows having those three letters on your chart could put you on course to getting less medical and nursing care throughout your stay.  Fewer MRIs and CT scans, fewer medications or even fewer bedside visits from doctors.  A DNR could cost you your life.  Having a DNR means that if your heart stops or you can't breathe, medical staff will let you die naturally, instead of rushing to give you cardiopulmonary resuscitation.  Correctly interpreted, a DNR bars just that one procedure — resuscitation.  But researchers are discovering that many doctors and nurses take DNR to mean you want end-of-life care only.  They misconstrue DNR as Dying, Not Recovering.

Palin Vindicated: GOP Sends IPAB to the Death Panel.  Despite what we keep reading in the "news" media about the failure of the GOP to repeal Obamacare, congressional Republicans and President Trump are steadily dismembering the justly reviled healthcare law, limb by pernicious limb.  The latest appendage to be lopped off was among its most dangerous — the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).  IPAB was designed by the law's authors as a rationing board composed of unelected bureaucrats vested with the power to "recommend" reductions in Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals.  This would have inevitably reduced access to care for the elderly.  That dangerous Obamacare provision was repealed this morning [2/9/2018].

On the bright side of Senate's terrible budget deal, Obamacare's 'death panel' is gone.  The new budget deal just signed by President Trump lifts spending caps and increases military spending but it also removes a controversial component of Obamacare.  The $400 billion bill repealed the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB, which the Affordable Care Act created back in 2010, The Wall Street Journal reported.

'Dead people don't move': Doctor pronounced a living man dead, says family.  He was legally dead but dead men don't breathe.  Or follow you with their eyes.  Or squeeze their wives's hands.  But for two hours and 40 minutes after Michael Cleveland was pronounced deceased at a hospital in suburban Buffalo, New York, on Oct. 10, 2014, his grieving family members watched signs of life flicker over the 46-year-old's body, according to newly filed documents in the family's lawsuit.  His tongue tried to push out the endotracheal tube snaked down his throat.  His chest continued to rise with air.  His knees bent and straightened on the gurney.

Doctors Refused to Help This Baby With Trisomy 18.  The medical doctrine of biological superiority can be seen crystal clear in prenatal tests that search out the disabled for the primary purpose and devastating result of destroying them.  Exactly how developments and innovations in the field of medicine are to be developed with various disabilities when the patients are routinely terminated is an awful dilemma.  Armed with only the knowledge of how to single out the weak, but not how to treat them has turned medicine into a bizarre pseudoscience that destroys those they cannot understand and do not wish to treat.  Really — when did the disabled become too risky for society to tolerate?  Certainly, tyrants, the violent, liars, thieves, even the self-righteous are bigger threats to society than these vulnerable individuals.

Elderly Woman Resists Being Euthanized When She Sees the Needle, So Her Family Held Her Down.  The Washington Post published an excellent article on January 24, 2018 by Charles Lane.  Lane, a respected editorial columnist who asks:  How many botched cases would it take to end euthanasia for the mentally ill and cognitively impaired?  In his article, Lane examines several documented cases of euthanasia of incompetent or mentally ill people.  The first case Lane refers to is the shocking story of a woman with dementia in the Netherlands who resisted dying by euthanasia.

Doctors are Refusing to Kill Patients in Assisted Suicides at Higher Rates Than Expected.  The December 2017 issue of the Canadian medical journal Le Specialiste contains a fascinating but disturbing English language article "First Results from a Unique Study" on pages 36-40.  2015 was the year when the MAID (medical aid in dying, aka physician assisted suicide and even lethal injections in Quebec) Act took effect.  The article is about physicians and MAID in the city of Laval in Quebec, Canada that has a population of about 435,000.  The study made news when it reported that after 18 months, conscientious objections from physicians against providing MAID were far more frequent than anticipated.  Prior to the law, 48% of doctors said they would participate, 30% with conditions and only 28% said they would never participate.  Afterwards, 77% of the physicians getting MAID requests refused to actively participate, all of them using the conscientious objection clause, even though the study claimed the majority (72%) were in favor of MAID with only 13% of the doctors neutral or ambivalent.

Assisted Suicide Bill Would Show Disabled the Door, Opponents Say.  Legalizing assisted suicide in Massachusetts would put pressure on the poor and the disabled to die, opponents say.  The Massachusetts Legislature is considering a measure that would allow physician-assisted suicide, but skeptics held a briefing last week foreseeing sad consequences if it passes.

Assisted suicide laws will pressure poor, elderly, depressed to die.  When assisted suicide becomes accepted public policy it threatens the lives of everyone, especially the poor, elderly, mentally ill, disabled, and terminally ill.  Why?  Well, for starters, abuse is unavoidable and doctors are fallible.  Assisted suicide policy also injects government insurers and private insurance companies with financial incentives into every single person's end of life decisions.  One supposed "safeguard" built into assisted suicide laws is that a patient be given a prognosis of six months or less to live to qualify.  But people with serious or terminal illnesses outlive their prognoses every day.

111 terminally ill end lives under new California law.  California health officials reported Tuesday that 111 terminally ill people took drugs to end their lives in the first six months after a 2016 law made the option legal in the nation's most populous state.  The data was part of the California Department of Public Health's first report on the law since it went into effect June 9, 2016.  According to the data generated from forms doctors were required to submit between June 9 and Dec. 31, 2016, a total of 191 people received life-ending drugs after being diagnosed with having less than six months to live and 111 people took them and died.

Insurance companies are refusing to pay for treatment... but offering to pay for suicide.  A Nevada doctor has said that insurance companies in states where assisted suicide is legal have refused to cover expensive lifesaving treatments for patients — but have offered to pay to end their lives.  Dr. Brian Callister, associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Nevada, told the Washington Times that two separate insurance companies refused his request to transfer patients to California and Oregon for procedures not performed at his hospital.  "And in both cases, the insurance medical director said to me, 'Brian, we're not going to cover that procedure or the transfer, but would you consider assisted suicide?'" Dr. Callister said.  Neither patient was terminal, and he had said nothing to prompt the suggestion.

Nevada physician:  Insurance companies nixing cancer treatment, promoting assisted suicide.  In 2015, I blogged that California had passed an assisted suicide law.  A year later, I noted that one young mother said her insurance company denied her coverage for chemotherapy treatment after originally agreeing to provide the fiscal support for it, but indicated it would be willing to pay for assisted suicide instead.  Now, the state of Nevada is considering its own version of assisted suicide legislation (SB261).  In an effort to stop this measure, Patients' Rights Action Fund (PRAF) releasing a video in which a Nevada physician discusses his personal experience with insurance companies refusing to reimburse life-saving treatments for seriously ill patients he wants treated at facilities in which assisted suicide has become legal.  However, they seem willing to pay for less expensive lethal prescription for ending the patients' lives.

Assisted suicide movement gains newer ground.  Supporters of physician-assisted suicide say their efforts compare favorably with movements for same-sex marriage, medical marijuana and other social issues that scored major political victories in short order.  And that trend will continue to accelerate as more states take up the issue, says Kim Callinan, chief program officer for Compassion & Choices, which has spearheaded aid-in-dying legislation at the local level.

Oregon's Euthanasia Bill Is Intentionally Ambiguous.  Oregon, which in 1997 became the first state in the U.S. to legalize assisted suicide, is considering tweaking the laws surrounding advance directives, the legal documents by means of which a person can dictate ahead of time his desires for end-of-life care.  The innocuous-seeming changes that Senate Bill 494 proposes would permit the state to starve certain patients to death.  Under current state law, "artificially administered nutrition and hydration" — intravenous feeding by tubes — does not include food administered normally:  "by cup, hand, bottle, drinking straw or eating utensil."  The latter category, unlike the former, is considered part of the basic provision of care required for the sick, and required by law as long as the patient is mentally incompetent to say otherwise.

Democrats get deadly with their Obamacare repeal rhetoric.  Back in 2009, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) was rebuked — including by some fellow Democrats — for saying that the Republicans' health-care plan was for people who got sick to "die quickly."  And Republicans including Sarah Palin drew criticism for accusing Democrats of instituting "death panels."  Such accusations, it seemed, were taboo during our country's big health-care debate.  Flash forward to today, and death is a big part of the debate over Obamacare, thanks in large part to Democrats.  In recent days, the specter of death and illness has permeated the debate over Republicans' plans to repeal Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act.

Why Medicare isn't actually going bankrupt.  As the new Congress convenes, budget cutters are eyeing Medicare, citing forecasts the program for seniors is running out of money.  But federal bean counters have erroneously predicted Medicare's bankruptcy for decades.  One reason:  They don't consider medical breakthroughs.  Another problem is medical ethicists like Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, who insist the elderly are a burden and that resources would be better spent on the young.  The facts prove otherwise.  New medical findings give plenty of reason for optimism about the cost of caring for the elderly.  Medicare spending on end-of-life care is dropping rapidly, down from 19 percent to 13 percent of the Medicare budget since 2000.  Living to a ripe old age shouldn't be treated like it's a problem.  It's a bargain.  Someone who lives to 97 consumes only about half as much end-of-life care as someone who dies at 68.

Death Panels:  Obamacare IPAB Repeal Can't Wait Three Years.  You have to ask yourself, if Republicans couldn't agree over the last eight years of the Obama administration on a replacement bill, what do they think three more years is going to accomplish?  It's not like there's an easy solution, it's just nobody had time to deal with it yet because there were more pressing matters.  Many Republicans spent many hours diligently working on a health care bill, but every effort fell apart in acrimony.  The big problem with waiting for three years is the law has plenty of terrible things in store before then.  For example, the law's rationing mechanism — officially called "Independent Payment Advisory Board" or, colloquially, the Obamacare "death panels" — is still in place and threatens to cause major damage to the health care system.

Colorado to Allow Doctors to Help People Commit Suicide.  In a largely underreported story during the elections, Colorado voters cast their vote to legalize doctor assisted suicide of terminally ill adults.  Proposition 106 by two-thirds of the vote!  If you think the idea of the murder of the unborn has not had an impact in a state where they can't even determine whether or not it's murder when a woman stabbed a mother and literally cut a baby out of her womb and the baby dies as a result, then you are not thinking clearly.

DC City Council Votes to Allow Physician-Assisted Suicide.  That'll Change Us All, for the Worse.  Too many people view physician-assisted suicide as a purely private matter between an autonomous adult who desires to die, and another autonomous adult who can provide medical assistance in death.  But no man is an island.  Allowing doctors to prescribe deadly drugs to assist in the suicides of their patients is not simply a one-off interaction between two consenting adults.  Changing the laws that govern how doctors operate will change the entire ecosystem of medicine.  It'll change how doctors relate to their patients and how much patients can trust their doctors.

Terminally Ill Woman's Insurance Company Will Pay for Her Assisted Suicide, But Not for Chemo.  The Washington Times reported that the California Assisted-suicide law prompted an insurance company to deny coverage to a terminally ill California woman.  Bradford Richardson, from the Washington Times reported that Stephanie Packer, a wife and mother of four who was diagnosed with a terminal form of scleroderma, said that her insurance company initially indicated it would pay for her to switch to a different chemotherapy drug based on the recommendation of her doctors but shortly after the California assisted suicide law went into effect, her insurance company denied her treatment.

What 'Me Before You' gets wrong.  "Me Before You" is Jojo Moyes's much-anticipated movie adaptation of her 2012 novel by the same name.  I'm not really a fan of romance novels.  I read the book and saw the film because of their larger agenda:  the escalating debate over euthanasia.  The movie's euthanasia theme resonates particularly strongly with me today, as California's law legalizing physician-assisted suicide took effect yesterday [6/9/2016].  Furthermore, Canada's prime minister recently introduced legislation to legalize euthanasia in his country.

The fast lane to rationed care.  When the Obama administration first proposed its massive overhaul of the nation's healthcare system, opponents raised concerns that government officials would be making decisions about healthcare not on the basis of a patient's needs, but based on bureaucratic spending limits and one-size-fits all political decrees.  Critics were especially alarmed over a provision in the Affordable Care Act that creates an agency called the Independent Payment Advisory Board and charges it with limiting the growth of Medicare spending.  The board will set the payment rates healthcare providers will receive for treatments and services of Medicaid patients.

Stopping Justin Trudeau's Culture of Death.  "Me Before You" is the latest Hollywood blockbuster to grossly misrepresent the lived experience of the majority of disabled people.  In the film, a young man becomes disabled, falls in love with his 'carer' and they have an incredible 6 months together.  Despite her opposition, however, our hero does the "honorable" thing by killing himself at the Swiss assisted suicide clinic Dignitas — so she can move on and he is no longer a burden to her.  Based on the best-selling novel of the same name, "Me Before You" is little more than a disability snuff film, giving audiences the message that if you're a disabled person, you're better off dead.

Canadian medical schools preparing to add doctor-assisted death to curriculum.  With physician-assisted death soon to forever alter the face of medicine, Canada's medical schools are under pressure to decide at what point in the curriculum future doctors should be introduced to this paradigm shift — and what that teaching needs to entail.  Starting on June 7, patients with a "grievous and irremediable" condition will be able to request a doctor's help to end their lives, following the Supreme Court of Canada decision last year that struck down the law banning assisted suicide and euthanasia.

California to Pay $5400 to Make Poor Sick People Dead.  California Medical — its version of Medicaid — will pay $5400 for the drugs to make the suicidal terminally ill poor, dead.  Worse, Medical recipients don't have access to good cancer treatment and doesn't pay well for palliative care.

'Death panels' resurrected under new Medicare rules.  You probably remember the controversy over Sarah Palin's charge six years ago that the Affordable Health Care Act would include "death panels" that would ration health care, effectively deciding in some cases who lives and who dies. [...] But lawmakers crafting Obamacare did propose panels that would decide whether or not a health-care procedure was worth paying for.  And now, as the Associated Press reports, changes for Medicare in 2016 include "coverage for end-of-life counseling."

A War on Men.  If you're at risk of prostate cancer — in other words, if you're male — the best place to be is the United States, where survival rates are highest in the world.  But not for long, if the Obama administration gets its way by curtailing a test that flags prostate cancer before it spreads.

California to become the fifth state to allow terminally ill patients to legally end their lives.  California will become the fifth state to allow terminally ill patients to legally end their lives using doctor-prescribed drugs after Gov. Jerry Brown announced Monday [10/5/2015] he had signed one of the most emotionally charged bills of the year.

The Editor says...
Assisted suicide will pave the way for involuntary termination of the elderly, just as same-sex marriage will set the stage for polygamy and other things much worse.  Incremental changes never stop.

Planned Parenthood Video Is Game-Changer.  Abortion critics have long warned that the problem is not only the obvious — what abortion does to the fetus — but also what it does to us.  It's the same kind of desensitization that has occurred in the Netherlands with another mass exercise in life termination:  assisted suicide.  That began as a way to prevent the suffering of the terminally ill.  It has now become so widespread and wanton that one-fifth of all Dutch assisted-suicide patients are euthanized without their explicit consent.

How Uncle Sam plans to cheat Granny out of health care.  For a half-century, Medicare has enabled seniors to get that care.  But now the Obama administration is pressuring hospitals to skimp.  Last week, the administration announced the largest-ever change in how Medicare pays for care.  It's called "bundled payments," and it's the latest trick to squeeze care from seniors.  Bundling will make it financially risky for hospitals in New York and many other areas of the country to do hip and knee replacements.  These two procedures have transformed the experience of aging, allowing seniors to stay active.

Obama administration revives plan once criticized as 'death panels'.  Six years after end-of-life planning nearly derailed development of the Affordable Care Act amid charges of "death panels," the Obama administration has revived a proposal to reimburse physicians for talking with their Medicare patients about how patients want to be cared for as they near death.  The proposal, contained in a large set of Medicare regulations unveiled Wednesday [7/8/2015], comes amid growing public discussion about the need for medical care that better reflects patients' wishes as they get older.

'Death with dignity' is often coerced by those with financial interests.  Earlier this year, legislation was introduced to the D.C. Council that would legalize physician-assisted suicide in our nation's capital for an adult patient diagnosed with a terminal condition and less than six months to live.  Although this initiative has been introduced in 24 states this year (not passing in any so far), its passage in the District of Columbia this year risks setting a dangerous precedent for the rest of the nation.  Self-determination and pain relief are the primary arguments by proponents of physician-assisted suicide.  These principles of autonomy and beneficence are clearly important in discussions at the end of life.  But can this specific piece of legislation protect those who need it the most, such as those with mental illness, and those easily subject to coercion, such as seniors?  As a practicing physician for the past 25 years and based on the experience of similar practices around the world, I have serious concerns with this bill.

A prostate surgeon's warning: Federal guidelines for PSA test put men in danger.  The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends against PSA (prostate specific antigen) screening for prostate cancer.  The task force currently gives PSA screening a grade D, meaning that there is moderate or high certainty that the PSA test has no benefit or that the harms outweigh the benefits.  This recommendation was first issued in 2011.

House votes to repeal Obamacare's 'death panel'.  The House voted Tuesday [6/23/2015] to repeal another piece of Obamacare, this time a Medicare cost-cutting board that opponents have decried as a "death panel" that could ration care.  Majority Republicans led the charge to repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), 244 votes to 154, and were joined by 11 Democrats who ignored President Obama's veto threat.  The Affordable Care Act of 2010 created the board to recommend savings within Medicare if the program exceeded a target growth rate.

Wait Lists Grow as Many More Veterans Seek Care and Funding Falls Far Short.  One year after outrage about long waiting lists for health care shook the Department of Veterans Affairs, the agency is facing a new crisis:  The number of veterans on waiting lists of one month or more is now 50 percent higher than it was during the height of last year's problems, department officials say.  The department is also facing a nearly $3 billion budget shortfall, which could affect care for many veterans.  The agency is considering furloughs, hiring freezes and other significant moves to reduce the gap.  A proposal to address a shortage of funds for one drug — a new, more effective but more costly hepatitis C treatment — by possibly rationing new treatments among veterans and excluding certain patients who have advanced terminal diseases or suffer from a "persistent vegetative state or advanced dementia" is stirring bitter debate inside the department.

Also posted under VA hospitals.

Assisted Suicide Bill Passes in California Senate.  A highly controversial California State Senate bill that would allow doctors to provide lethal, life-ending drugs to terminally ill patients with less than six months to live passed in a 23-14 vote on Thursday [6/4/2015].  The right-to-die legislation, SB 128 authored by Sens. Lois Wok (D-Davis) and Bill Monning (D-Carmel), passed despite major objections from nine Republicans who believe it devalues life and puts the elderly and those with high medical expenses at risk for early death.

U.S. Supreme Court rejects Obamacare 'death panel' challenge.  The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday [3/30/2015] declined to hear a new challenge to President Barack Obama's healthcare law that took aim at a bureaucratic board labeled by some Republicans as a "death panel" because it was designed to cut Medicare costs.

Euthanasia on the Horizon?  [Scroll down]  With the continuing cancellations of health insurance policies as a direct result of ObamaCare, people are dying. Limited choice of doctors and hospitals is resulting in less than quality care.  And with the massive "unresolved discrepancies, rules violations and technology problems" ObamaCare is decreasing medical care and innovation.  And, of course, it was Harry Reid who unequivocally stated that ObamaCare is absolutely a step toward a single payer system.  It is not the choice of American doctors to curtail medical care to their patients.  But as Dr. Alexander warned, when a government becomes totalitarian in nature, as is occurring under Obama, then that "[s]cience under dictatorship becomes subordinated to the guiding philosophy of the dictatorship."

Tailored medical treatments sounds a lot like rationing.
Obama to Unveil Research Initiative to Develop Tailored Medical Treatments.  Saying that "the possibilities are boundless," President Obama on Friday [1/30/2015] announced a major biomedical research initiative, including plans to collect genetic data on one million Americans so scientists could develop drugs and treatments tailored to the characteristics of individual patients.  Dr. Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, said the studies would help doctors decide which treatments would work best for which patients.

Death Panels — Alive and Well.  Both here and across the pond in the UK, government agencies ration healthcare.  In the UK, the rationing board is ironically called NICE, or National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.  Under ObamaCare, the comparable agency is IPAB, the Independent Payment Advisory Board.  Rationing boards evaluate "cost effectiveness" of treatments and medications, deciding which ones to pay for, or not.  If the rationing board decides to not pay for a particular treatment or drug, patients are out of luck.  If the denied treatment is lifesaving, guess what follows?  Hence the characterization of these rationing boards as "death panels."

Skip Your Annual Physical.  We all make resolutions and promises to live healthier and better lives, to make the world a better place.  Not having my annual physical is one small way I can help reduce health care costs — and save myself time, worry and a worthless exam.  Around 45 million Americans are likely to have a routine physical this year — just as they have for many years running.

The Editor says...
An annual checkup wasn't called a waste of time by anyone, especially the nanny-state government, until Obamacare made rationing inevitable.  The writer of the article immediately above is one of the principal authors of Obamacare, and he knows the whole house of cards will quickly collapse if everybody in the country actually uses it to pay for routine checkups.

Ezekiel Emanuel: Go Ration Yourself.  One reason your insurance premiums have skyrocketed during the past year is that Obamacare requires all health plans to provide "free" annual wellness visits and 15 associated preventive services for which they cannot charge the patient a copayment.  According to a key architect of PPACA, however, "the annual physical exam is basically worthless."  Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, last heard from claiming that he wants to die at 75 in order to avoid becoming a burden on society, writes in the New York Times that "screening healthy people who have no complaints is a pretty ineffective way to improve people's health."

Gruber: Seniors Should Be Limited to Three Lowest Cost Medicare Part D Plans.  In a 2009 paper, "Choice Inconsistencies Among the Elderly:  Evidence from Plan Choice in the Medicare Part D Program," Obamacare advisor Jonathan Gruber argued that there were too many Medicare Part D plans for seniors to choose from, which led them to make bad decisions when enrolling in a plan.

Four Times Obamacare Advocates Admitted It Will Kill Old People.  [Scroll down]  In other words, yes, Obamacare redistributes healthcare.  Yes, Obamacare will endanger people who cannot afford healthcare because they are young and healthy, all in order to pay for government benefits for those who are sick.  And yes, in order to control the resulting costs, care will have to be cut for the elderly.

The Death Panels are Coming.  Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber quite correctly attributed the passage of Obamcare to "lack of transparency" and the "stupidity of the American voter" — because it turns out that Obamacare will ration care, and that the most well-respected bodies in terms of health rationing have already recommended cutting off services.

The Seven Sacraments of Liberalism.  [#7] Physician-Assisted Suicide:  If you were not fortunate enough to be aborted, then later on you may take advantage of physician-assisted suicide.  You will make room for others by not consuming scarce resources.

Emanuel disagrees with brother who wants to die at 75.  Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Friday playfully disagreed with his older brother's provocative suggestion that it's best to die at 75 to avoid the vexing issues of declining performance and worsening health.  Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a bio-ethicist and influential health adviser to President Barack Obama, stirred the pot in an article in the October issue of, "The Atlantic" under the headline, "Why I Hope to Die at 75."

Obamacare Architect Thinks 75 Is Old Enough.  Ezekiel Emanuel only wants to live to 75 years, he claimed in a recent interview. Let's see what he says when he gets there.  What should alarm us about this is that Ezekiel Emanuel, author of the Complete Lives System, is also the architect of Obamacare.  The government, thanks to Obamacare, now has the final decision over whether we live or die.  Because of Obamacare, Zeke's philosophy is our philosophy, our doctor's philosophy, and our hospital's philosophy whether we like it or not.  Zeke made this admission in an interview with the Atlantic on September 17th which I first read on Political Outcast.  For people who say the ideology behind Obamacare won't determine our life span, they should read this interview.

Justice Ginsburg advocates aborting the poor.  Yesterday I posted on a recent essay by Obamacare architect, Ezekiel Emanuel, who claimed that he only intended to live until he was 75.  He made a point of saying that he didn't wish to inflict his vision on anyone else, but the metrics he laid out for continuing life are sadly widespread in a medical profession that has ceased to see its role as one of healing the sick and injured and rather one of deciding what is best for people and society.

Should We Hope to Die at 75?  Normally, no one would care that in a recent Atlantic essay — "Why I Hope to Die at 75" — 57-year-old Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel argued that living to be 75 years old was long enough for anyone.  After 75, Emanuel suggests, "We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic."  But Emanuel is no garden-variety crackpot.  Nor is he a wannabe science-fiction writer dreaming of a centrally planned planet of robust youthful humanoids.  Unfortunately, he was one of the chief architects of the troubled Affordable Care Act and a key medical advisor to the Obama administration.

Obamacare Architect Finds Cure for Old Age.  Last week the Atlantic published an essay by Emanuel titled, "Why I Hope to Die at 75," wherein he avers that "families — and you — will be better off if nature takes its course swiftly and promptly."  Note the words "you" and "families."  Its title notwithstanding, Emanuel's article isn't really about himself.  It is actually a none-too-subtle attempt to make us feel guilty for burdening our families, and society in general, by clinging to life past what he considers the optimum age to die.  In other words, it is you whom he hopes will go gentle into that good night after three-quarters of a century.

Obamacare Architect Thinks We Should Die by 75.  Ezekiel Emanuel, former White House Special Adviser on Obamacare and current Director of Clinical Bioethics at NIH, has decided the optimal age for death:  Seventy-five.

Obamacare Creator: Die At 75!  Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the masterminds behind Obamacare, has now explained that he wishes to die at age 75.  In an article in The Atlantic, Emanuel writes, "Seventy-five.  That's how long I want to live:  75 years."  He explains that his daughters disagree; so do his brothers and his friends.  But, he says, "I am sure of my position... here is a simple truth that many of us seem to resist:  living too long is also a loss.  It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived."

The 15 Most Shocking Statements in Obamacare Architect's 'Die at 75' Article.  Last week, esteemed doctor and one of our ObamaCare Architect Overlords penned a column for the Atlantic that should win a Pulitzer Prize for passive-aggressive shaming.  Although Emanuel claims that he doesn't want to live past the age of 75, the article itself could have been a listicle titled, "Top 15 Reasons No One Over 75 Should Receive Healthcare."  Emanuel even includes a monstrous but brightly colored graph that is meant to tell anyone over 75 that their "last contribution" to society likely occurred more than a decade ago.

Bureaucrats Have Revived End-Of-Life Counseling.  Remember the controversial provision of Obamacare that would have paid physicians extra money to provide "end-of-life counseling" to seniors whose conditions required expensive medical care?  That feature of "reform" caused such a public outcry that the Democrats had to drop it from the final legislation.  But the government apparatchiks didn't give up.  On Christmas Day, 2010, it came to light that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) planned to implement the program anyway.  Within a week, however, vehement objections by clinicians and citizens alike forced the CMS bureaucrats to back off once more.  Well, they're at it again.

Feds May Reimburse Medicare 'End- of-Life Discussions' After Mocking Palin's 'Death Panels'.  Years after former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was mocked for being concerned about "death panels," the federal government may reimburse Medicare doctors for end-of-life consultations that critics say would only encourage sick patients to reject costly treatments to prolong life.

Bedside rationing is coming with Obamacare but doctors can stop it.  National uproar over the Veterans Affairs scandal should refocus the nation's attention to the issue of health care rationing.  Under VA care, 40 patients died while waiting for treatment at a Phoenix, Ariz., facility.  Not only is that the tip of the iceberg in terms of what government-run health care means for patients, it should also sound the alarm about the newest tactic for rationing care, bedside rationing.

More about the VA hospital scandal, which paints a pretty clear picture of Obamacare's future.

Obamacare's Dangers for Seniors.  Nationwide, readmissions rates are dropping because Section 3025 of Obamacare punishes hospitals if a senior returns within 30 days.  What happens to the senior treated for a heart attack who rushes back to the hospital a week later feeling faint, possibly because of arrhythmia?  To dodge the penalty, hospitals put the patient under "observation."  It's just a word on the chart.  The patient may get the same tests and be put in the same room as if he'd been admitted.  But unless he stays at least two nights, the hospital won't bill Medicare for a stay, and the patient gets clobbered with the cost.  Many seniors don't even know they were under observation until they get the bill.

Campfield regrets comparing Obamacare to Nazi train ride.  [Tennessee] State Sen. Stacey Campfield says he regrets that "some people have missed the point" of a blog post he made earlier today that compared Obamacare signups to Nazi "train rides".  In a statement released this afternoon, Campfield stood by the analogy, saying that the Affordable Care Act would open the door to "bureaucrats deciding who should be given life saving medications and who should be denied" and government funding for abortion.  But he said that point had been lost amid the reference to the Holocaust.

This is slightly off-topic -- I hope.
Swiss group to allow assisted dying for elderly who are not terminally ill.  A Swiss organisation that helps people take their own lives has voted to extend its services to elderly people who are not terminally ill.  Exit added "suicide due to old age" to their statutes at an annual general meeting held over the weekend, allowing people suffering from psychological or physical problems associated with old age the choice to end their life.  Assisted dying is legal in Switzerland and technically even a healthy young person could use such services. However, organisations involved in this work set their own internal requirements, which differ from group to group.

The Other Stealthy ObamaCare Menace.  The Affordable Care Act's Independent Payment Advisory Board has been so heavily criticized for being an unaccountable body with the power to effectively ration Medicare services that many congressional Democrats no longer support it.  IPAB's bureaucratic cousin — the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation — deserves the same treatment.  Both institutions are in place to preserve rather than reform Medicare's traditional, and broken, fee-for-service Medicare program.  They both also embrace the ObamaCare technocratic mind-set.

Ezekiel Emmanuel's Reaper Curve.  Ezekiel Emanuel has written extensively, before and after he helped draft ObamaCare, about who should get medical care, who should decide, and whose life is worth saving.  Emanuel is part of a school of thought that redefines a physician's duty, insisting that it includes working for the greater good of society instead of focusing only on a patient's needs.  Many physicians find that view dangerous, and most Americans are likely to agree.

My Wife's Last Days — And the Coming ObamaCare Death Panel.  We have been so absorbed by the cavalcade of government incompetence and individual hurt produced by the rollout of ObamaCare that it is easy to forget the tragedy-in-waiting should this federal healthcare takeover stay in place:  the death panel, also known as the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).  This is the group of political appointees designed to allow the federal government to use a combination of medical and social criteria to determine the healthcare an individual receives.  Or, to put it as bluntly as Sarah Palin did, to determine who lives and who dies.

Revealed: Obama's 'attack' on Medicare Part D.  The Obama administration is launching an "attack" on the Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D programs as part of Obamacare that will result in higher costs and fewer health care options for seniors, according to a U.S. House subcommittee.  The administration is quietly introducing "policies that would undermine the integrity and success of the Medicare Part D program" according to the subcommittee.  President Bush signed Medicare Part D into law in 2003 to subsidize prescription drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries.

What Belgium's child euthanasia law means for America and the Constitution.  Belgium has just passed a law allowing euthanasia for children.  The Low Countries allow for suicide and doctor-assisted suicide, but Brussels is the first to open to door to dealing death to children of any age.  If the prospect of youngsters being helped to off themselves seems horrifying, do not worry — the law has "safeguards" to ensure all the killing will be purely voluntary:  a psychologist has to certify that the child has "capacity or discernment" to understand what they are doing.

Drug Rationing for Seniors Begins.  Buried beneath the avalanche of recent news reports about the latest Obamacare-mandated funding cuts to the Medicare Advantage (MA) program is a related but far more disturbing story — the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has taken a major step toward rationing medications to the elderly.  Since passage of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, seniors enrolled in the Medicare prescription drug program have been guaranteed access to "all or substantially all" of the drugs in several classes of pharmaceuticals.  President Obama's health care bureaucrats, however, have proposed removing three of these classes from the "protected" list.

'Aid in Dying' Movement Takes Hold in Some States.  Helping the terminally ill end their lives, condemned for decades as immoral, is gaining traction.  Banned everywhere but Oregon until 2008, it is now legal in five states.  Its advocates, who have learned to shun the term "assisted suicide," believe that as baby boomers watch frail parents suffer, support for what they call the "aid in dying" movement will grow further.  In January, a district court in New Mexico authorized doctors to provide lethal prescriptions and declared a constitutional right for "a competent, terminally ill patient to choose aid in dying."

Palin appearing more and more the Prophet as older UK cancer patients are increasingly shunned.  Former Alaska Governor and Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin caused quite the stir in 2009 when, in challenging the drafting of the Affordable Care Act, she stated that the bill would create a "death panel" of bureaucrats who would decide whether Americans — such as her elderly parents or children with certain disabilities were "worthy of medical care."  But critics like Palin had already viewed Britain's National Health Service (NHS) and its cost-effectiveness analysis to determine whether new treatments and drugs should be available to those covered by under the NHS.

More information -- none of it favorable -- about the NHS.

Obama Dooms Seniors to Ravages of Aging.  On Oct. 1, 2012 the Obama administration started awarding bonus points to hospitals that spend the least on elderly patients.  It will result in fewer knee replacements, hip replacements, angioplasty, bypass surgery and cataract operations.  These are the five procedures that have transformed aging for older Americans.  They used to languish in wheelchairs and nursing homes due to arthritis, cataracts and heart disease.  Now they lead active lives.  But the Obama administration is undoing that progress.  By cutting $716 billion from future Medicare funding over the next decade and rewarding the hospitals that spend the least on seniors, the Obama health law will make these procedures hard to get and less safe.

The Death of Little Nell.  In the real world, most cancellations up to this point have been of "bad apple" policies that fell short of Barrycare's lofty moral standards for acceptable coverage, including maternity benefits for menopausal women.  But on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and similar precincts, the problem is the opposite.  Their policies are plenty generous, but they have to die so as not to "siphon off" the healthy folks whose participation in the exchanges is vital to keeping the absurd scheme solvent.

Sebelius the Grim Reaper? Obama's HHS head control's Medicare payouts.  Is Kathleen Sebelius trading her tailored suit for flowing black robes of death?  The Independent Payment Advisory Board, or the Obamacare Death Panels, are the reason that Kathleen Sebelius, current secretary of Health and Human Services cannot be fired for the absolute disaster of the Obamacare roll out.  Under Obamacare, the decision on what Medicare will, and won't, pay for rests with the Head of Health and Human Services, and note it is 'Health and Human' not 'Health and Humane' Services.  As head of HHS, she can, without oversight, make what ever decision she wants over your health care benefits.  What will and won't be paid for.  And how much they will pay the doctors and hosptials.

Liberal Semantics and the Redefining of Death Panels.  Ever since the idea of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was introduced, and certainly since it was signed into law, realists like Sarah Palin have forewarned that a government teetering on bankruptcy would eventually have no choice but to ration health care.  Eschewing semantics, right from the start Palin pegged the ACA's Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) for what it is: a "death panel."  Made up of 15 unelected bureaucrats, the IPAB was established expressly for the purpose of determining whether doctor-recommended treatment will be paid for or not.

President Obama is the nominal leader for permanent bureaucracy.
The Front Man.  [Scroll down]  Consider his hallmark achievement, the Affordable Care Act, the centerpiece of which is the appointment of a committee, the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), the mission of which is to achieve targeted savings in Medicare without reducing the scope or quality of care.  How that is to be achieved was contemplated in detail neither by the lawmakers who wrote the health-care bill nor by the president himself.  But they did pay a great deal of attention to the processes touching IPAB:  For example, if that committee of experts fails to achieve the demanded savings, then the ball is passed to ... a new committee of experts, this one under the guidance of the secretary of health and human services.  IPAB's powers are nearly plenipotentiary:  Its proposals, like a presidential veto, require a supermajority of Congress to be overridden.

A Death Panel Toldja So.  My pal Steve Malzberg, now hosting a show on Newsmax TV, scored big this week with an interview with leftist journalist Mark Halperin — co-author of Game Change, and the former ABC News political director who once sent a memo directing reporters to be biased in their coverage of the Bush-Kerry election.  Halperin admitted that Obamacare includes death panels — committees of bureaucrats who will decide when your life is no longer of value to the state.

Time's Mark Halperin: Death Panels Are 'Built Into' ObamaCare.  When former Alaska governor Sarah Palin famously said years ago that ObamaCare included death panels, the liberal media went nuts declaring her a kook while defending the law.  On Monday [11/25/2013], Time magazine's senior political analyst Mark Halperin, appearing on Newsmax TV's Steve Malzberg Show, agreed that this was the case saying, "It's built into the plan.  It's not like a guess or like a judgment.  That's going to be part of how costs are controlled".

Democrats' Senate Nuke Allows Obama to Pack the Obamacare 'Death Panel'.  The Independent Payment Advisory Board is the 15-member unelected board that the Obamacare law creates.  Its voting members are nominated by the president, and confirmed by the Senate.  Prior to the breaking of the filibuster, President Obama would have had an extremely difficult time getting a single member appointed and confirmed.  Dubbed the "death panel" by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the IPAB is charged with essentially rationing health care.  The IPAB is so controversial that the American Medical Association has taken the unusual step of publicly supporting its abolition.

Obamacare and Liberal Cruelty.  No one has the right to sacrifice your life to save someone else's life.  No one has the right to harm your family to help someone else's family.  That's a bedrock principle in America.  Until Obamacare. [...] Obamacare privileges the poor over the rich, the middle aged over the young, women over men, and everyone else over the elderly on Medicare.  In order to extend more government control over private insurers, doctors and hospitals, Democrats have chosen to sacrifice the financial well-being and even the lives of other Americans.  They justify it because they want to offer government subsidized insurance to those they deem needier.

The Architect Speaks.  Ezekiel Emanuel, ObamaCare architect, Ph.D, bioethicist, Harvard M.D., a brilliant man who displays his intelligence by continuing to defend ObamaCare.  He is the president's top healthcare adviser.  He is famous for promoting the idea that medical resources should be primarily directed in support of adolescents and young adults.  The elderly and infants should take a back seat, especially if medical resources become scarce. [...] Basically, young lives are valued highly as productive useful lives, so if you save one adolescent, it is equivalent to saving 20 or so old folks.  Therefore, guess who gets the short end of the hypodermic needle.  This system is already in place in Great Britain.

Dem Senator: Kill the 'Death Panel'.  Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) said on C-SPAN Wednesday morning that the Independent Payments Advisory Board (IPAB) — the so-called "death panel" of Obamacare, which will cut Medicare costs by restricting care — should be "revisited."  His comments came as more Democrats are joining calls to amend Obamacare, in particular by supporting the Keep Your Health Plan Act, proposed by Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), which would fulfill President Barack Obama's oft-repeated promise that patients could keep their existing health insurance.

Oregon Tightens Duty to Die on Cancer Patients.  As I have discussed here previously, the first state to explicitly ration Medicaid — an integral feature of all single payer systems — tightened the screws against terminal cancer patients a few months ago.  Now, the issues is gaining wider discussion in Oregon.

Sarah Palin knew a death panel when she saw one.  Under Obamacare, the sick and weak and old would stand before death panels of bureaucrats to be granted life or death.  Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was laughed out of town for making four years ago what we now know is a prescient prediction.  Perhaps she is one of the few who actually read the health care bill before it passed.  "And who will suffer the most when they ration care?  The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course," she wrote on her Facebook page in 2009.

Fox News' Megyn Kelly Grills Slippery 'Architect' of ObamaCare.  Fox News' Megyn Kelly hosted Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel on her show Friday night and called him an "interesting guy." [...] At the heart of ObamaCare is Emanuel's 'complete lives' system proposal — i.e. reduce costs by cutting health services to individuals who are prevented from "being or becoming participating citizens."  According to the doctor, the Hippocratic Oath is way overrated.  A utilitarian-minded government panel takes the place of the doctor-patient relationship and decides who's a financial drain and who's not.  On his list of those who need care, but shouldn't necessarily receive it, are newborns, toddlers, the disabled, those with genetic disorders, late-stage cancer, Alzheimer's, dementia, and senior citizens who have already consumed maximum resources.

Death Panels Alive And Well In Canada And Coming Here.  Lost in the discussion of defunding ObamaCare and the failed effort in Congress is the fact that failure means the government's ability to defund your life through the ObamaCare's Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) remains.  IPAB is regarded by many, starting with former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, as a death panel whose decisions based on cost effectiveness would result in health care rationing.  A glimpse of this brave new world can be had by casting a glance at our neighbor to the north.

What Democrats Really Care About.  Obama's primary objective in his first term was a massive government takeover of the health care system.  Once the government controls your health care, it will have a very real life-and-death lever — support liberals, or the death panels will decide you're too fat or have too many kids or don't eat right to get the medical care you need.

Obamacare Doctor Rationing Begins in California.  The latest bad news for the Affordable Care Act comes from California, a state that the Obama administration has consistently pointed to as an important indicator of the law's success.  President Barack Obama even traveled to the Golden State in June to tout the health-care law's success at "pushing down costs" for consumers.  Unfortunately, several analyses have recently revealed that because of Obamacare individual health insurance premiums are headed anywhere but down for California residents.

Sarah Palin Was Right — More Dems Ditch Death Panels.  Some Democrats are signing on to bills repealing the powers of the Independent Payment Advisory Board to effectively ration health care for seniors.  So Sarah Palin was right about those death panels after all?

ObamaCare 'death panel' faces growing opposition from Democrats.  ObamaCare's cost-cutting board — memorably called a "death panel" by Sarah Palin — is facing growing opposition from Democrats who say it will harm people on Medicare.  Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean drew attention to the board designed to limit Medicare cost growth when he called for its repeal in an op-ed late last month.

Obamacare's Death Panels Will be Implemented in Two Years.  [IPAB] has been derisively referred to as a death panel because so many have called for it to have health care rationing powers and because its decisions could result in cost-cutting measures that deny lifesaving medical treatment.  The Independent Payment Advisory Board was one of the most controversial parts of the Obamacare legislation — mainly because it puts 15 unelected strangers in charge of health decisions for most Americans.

IPAB: An ObamaCare Board Answerable to No One.  Signs of ObamaCare's failings mount daily, including soaring insurance costs, looming provider shortages and inadequate insurance exchanges.  Yet the law's most disturbing feature may be the Independent Payment Advisory Board.  The IPAB, sometimes called a "death panel," threatens both the Medicare program and the Constitution's separation of powers.  At a time when many Americans have been unsettled by abuses at the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department, the introduction of a powerful and largely unaccountable board into health care merits special scrutiny.

Sebelius Waivers Are For Union Pals, Not Dying Child.  Kathleen Sebelius' claim she can't waive a rule to save a 10-year-old's life is rich, given she was last seen doling out ObamaCare waivers like candy to union groups.  Welcome to the world of politicized health care.

GAO: HHS Already Rationing Enrollment in Obamacare's Pre-Existing Condition Plan.  A pre-existing condition health insurance program established by Obamacare is already straining its own budget and, to control costs, the administration's Health and Human Services Department (HHS) has stopped enrolling any new people in the program, according to an audit by the General Accountability Office (GAO).  In addition, to further control spending, HHS has directed the program to shift more of the costs onto the current enrollees, thus raising the out-of-pocket health care expenses for the people with pre-existing conditions.

ObamaCare Board Ought to Walk the Plank.  One of the linchpins of ObamaCare looks more and more as if it's coming loose.  The ObamaCare monstrosity (officially misnamed the Affordable Care Act) is already heading for a "train wreck," and a large majority of senators are on record for repealing one of its most hideous taxes.  But that medical device tax, important as it is, is a minor sideshow in comparison to something called the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), which is a central element of ObamaCare's (supposed) cost-control scheme.

Republicans refuse appointments to Obamacare rationing board.  The IPAB is the signature health care cost-control device of Obamacare.  If Medicare spending grows faster than specific targets set by the law, IPAB is empowered to reduce payments to health care providers or eliminate coverage for specific treatments and procedures entirely.  Congress would need a three-fifths majority to overturn IPAB's cost-control measures.  The members of the IPAB are all appointed by the President and subject to Senate confirmation.

Scared of Obamacare's IPAB? Meet the USPSTF!  Another nasty ingredient in the alphabet soup of Obamacare is the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF).  This is "an independent group of national experts in prevention and evidence-based medicine."  Formerly a sleepy quasi-governmental body charged with making recommendations about public health screening, under Obamacare the USPSTF will determine whether your doctor will be able to diagnose you with diseases.

President Obama has set in motion forces that he can't handle.  [Scroll down]  Obamacare may help to reduce healthcare costs, but when evidence mounts that those "death panels" that we have heard so much about are real and that we are saving money by medicating patients and allowing them to pass away peacefully rather than treating their maladies, people will be hopping mad.  Many of them will take to the streets to vent their anger.  If you think that it can't happen here, you haven't been paying attention.

Adolf Hitler — Progressive Pioneer.  [Scroll down]  The Nazis were also quite open about the need to ration healthcare when it came to what they called 'useless mouths', This included the mentally ill, the disabled and handicapped, and in many cases people whom were simply terminally ill.  Almost 300,000 people — that we know about — were killed by lethal injection in this way, not in concentration camps but in German medical facilities.  Horrific as this may seem to some, this bears remembering when we look at the conversations about healthcare in our own time and examine the views of some of President Obama's healthcare appointees.

Krugman: 'Death Panels and Sales Taxes is How We Do This'.  Years of accumulating debt and expanding government programs only moves us down the "road to serfdom."  As Krugman surmised, the consequence is government confiscation of wealth and government control over health care.  Rarely are Leftists so candid in articulating their hopes.

The Logic of the Progressive Healthcare Death Cult.  Whether ObamaCare's Independent Payment Advisory Board should correctly be described as a "death panel" or a "cost-reduction system" is actually a stale semantics debate, given that when they are not acting outraged, leftists explain their real intentions quite clearly.  Cutting to the chase, the proper question to ask is, "Why are progressives willing to condemn the old and infirm to death?"

This can happen here:
Half of those on Liverpool Care Pathway never told.  Almost half of dying patients placed on the controversial Liverpool Care Pathway are never told that life-saving treatment has been withdrawn, a national audit has found.  The study suggests that in total, around 57,000 patients a year are dying in NHS hospitals without being told that efforts to keep them alive have been stopped.

Or this:
Top Japanese Official Urges Elderly to 'Hurry Up and Die'.  Taro Aso has never been one to hold his tongue.  But Japan's 72 year-old deputy prime minister may have outdone himself with his latest gaffe.  At a government panel to discuss social security reforms, the former prime minister called the elderly who are unable to feed themselves "tube people," then proceeded to say the elderly should be allowed to "hurry up and die" to reduce the burden on a country tasked to pay for their medical expenses.

From Healthcare to Holocaust.  [Scroll down]  Of course, such sacrifices are often couched in the language of compassion.  Hitler called his euthanasia program "mercy killing."  In 2012 Great Britain, it's called the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP).  Originally created to help cancer sufferers during their last days, the LCP, which withholds lifesaving care from heavily sedated patients, has been expanded well beyond its inventors' intentions.  According to British neurologist Dr. Patrick Pullicino, today 130,000 National Health Service (NHS) patients, many of whom are far from death, are shown to an early grave each year via the LCP; 29 percent of all deaths under NHS care can be attributed to euthanasia.  Likewise, the Netherlands, with its ObamaCare-style short-term care and Bismarck-style long-term care systems, has some of the most liberal abortion and euthanasia laws on the planet, including one allowing physicians to euthanize "suffering" infants with their parents' consent.

This Is Your Life under Obamacare.  [Scroll down]  Yes, supposedly to save costs, a panel of bureaucrats will decide, for example, that a 60-year-old cancer patient will not get chemotherapy.  It's too costly, and younger patients need it.  Elderly, go home and take a pill.  If you believe the Independent Payment Advisory Board's cost-cutting measures won't ration medical care, which will involve life and death decisions at the end of the bureaucratic process, you still believe in the tooth fairy.

'End-of-life counselling': Death panels are back.  Look out, Grandma: Medicare said on Wednesday [7/8/2015] it wants to start paying for end-of-life counseling.  It's being sold as "death with dignity," but it's more like dying for dollars.  Seniors are nudged to forego life-sustaining procedures and hospital care to go into hospice.  That enriches the booming hospice industry and also frees up dollars for the left's favored social causes.  Why is the government meddling with how we cope with death? The Institute of Medicine doesn't mince words.  Scrimping on seniors will free up money "to fund highly targeted and carefully tailored social services for both children and adults."  Just like ObamaCare.  Robbing Grandma to spread the wealth.

This is an original compilation, Copyright © 2024 by Andrew K. Dart

Texas AG Ken Paxton sues city of Austin for using taxpayer money to fund abortions out of state.  Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced last week that he is suing the city of Austin after the city allocated $400,000 in an abortion travel fund to help its residents kill their preborn children out of state.  Texas law currently protects nearly all preborn children from abortion.  The city's recently approved budget included the money in a Reproductive Health Grant, which would "support Austinites traveling to access abortion ... including support for airfare, gas reimbursements, hotel stays, ride reimbursements, childcare stipends, companion travel, and food."  Paxton said this allocation is unconstitutional.

It's Official:  Democrats Want to Use Your Tax Dollars to Pay for Abortions.  The 2024 Democratic Party Platform is here.  Predictably, Democrats are laser-focused on moving ahead to repeal any kind of protections for unborn life, including forcing taxpayers to fund abortions.  In the Democrats' platform, it explicitly states, "We will repeal the Hyde Amendment" in the upcoming presidential term[.] [...] The Hyde Amendment is a provision that bars the use of federal funds to pay for most abortion.  It has been a fixture for nearly 50 years.  In addition, left-wing organizations like Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) have stated that the Hyde Amendment hinders low-income women from accessing abortion[.]

Biden Tries to Make Taxpayers Fund Abortions for Fourth Year in a Row.  The Biden administration is trying to make U.S. taxpayers fund abortions by leaving out the Hyde Amendment from the Fiscal Year 2025 budget released this week.  The move marks the fourth year in a row President Joe Biden's Office of Management and Budget has purposefully left out the Hyde Amendment, a provision that has been part of federal appropriations for decades and prevents direct taxpayer funding of abortion through programs like Medicaid.  Republicans have foiled past attempts to remove the Hyde Amendment from the budget.

Feds Sent Nearly $2 Billion To Planned Parenthood And Other Pro-Abortion Groups, Gov't Report Finds.  Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocacy organizations received nearly $2 billion in federal funding over a three year span, according to a new government report.  The Government Accountability Office disclosed in a Tuesday report that $1.89 billion in federal dollars was allocated to multiple different pro-abortion organizations, including those that perform abortion, over the three year period from 2019 to 2021.  Planned Parenthood received the overwhelming bulk of the sum, a whopping $1.78 billion, during the three-year period, all while it performed 1.11 million abortions.

Republicans Introduce Bills to Stop Joe Biden From Funding Abortions.  Rep. Josh Brecheen, R-OK, introduced a pair of bills that would restrict the federal government's ability to use taxpayer money to fund abortions.  The first of Brecheen's twin bills is dubbed the "No Abortion Coverage for Medicaid Act."  "The Hyde Amendment was first enacted in 1976 and has prevented taxpayer funds for abortions," the bill states.  Despite this, the bill notes that in August 2022, the Biden administration's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sent a letter "inviting States to use Medicaid funding under the demonstration authority under section 1115 of the Social Security Act to expand access to elective abortions."  Brecheen's legislation claims that contrary to the text of the HHS letter, "The Hyde Amendment applies to all Medicaid funds and cannot be superseded by a waiver under section 1115 of the Social Security Act."

88 Babies Have Been Killed in Abortions at VA Clinics Under New Biden Policy.  One year since it began performing abortions, the Department of Veterans Affairs released annualized data to the House Veterans' Affairs Committee under threat of a subpoena.  The VA disclosed to Congress that it had provided 88 abortions through the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30 — of which 64 were said to have been performed under circumstances of threats to the mother's health.  According to the VA report, the agency conducted nine abortions in pregnancies that threatened the mother's life, and 15 in pregnancies resulting from rape.  The report did not define what circumstances represented a threat to the mother's "health," leading the pro-life Republican who chairs the committee to demand more detailed information.  "Whether it's one abortion or 100 abortions, one innocent life lost to the actions of humans and not God is one too many," Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, told The Daily Signal in an emailed statement Tuesday.

Heritage Foundation Sues Pentagon to Learn How Many Abortions It Has Paid For.  The Heritage Foundation is suing the Defense Department for access to information regarding the Pentagon's funding of abortions.  Heritage on Thursday [6/22/2023] filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon to gain access to records regarding the number of abortions it has paid for.  "It's hard to [imagine] the Biden administration being more extreme on abortion than they already are," Roman Jankowski, senior investigative counsel for Heritage's Oversight Project, told The Daily Signal.  "Lately, they've been trying to circumvent the Hyde Amendment [which prevents the federal funding of abortions], through using DOD funds to pay for abortions," Jankowski said, adding, "We're searching for data to prove this is all a scam."

Joe Biden is Illegally Funding Abortions Up to Birth for Any Reason at VA Clinics.  Since 1992, the VA has been statutorily prohibited from using taxpayer dollars for abortion.  On September 9, 2022, the Biden Administration Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) disregarded this longstanding statutory prohibition on taxpayer funding for abortion at the VA and issued a new rule that includes funding abortion for "health" reasons.  The undefined reference to health means, as in Doe v.  Bolton (the companion case to Roe v. Wade), that abortions can now be done at the VA for virtually any reason.  The High Court held in Doe that, "medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors — physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age — relevant to the wellbeing of the patient.  All these factors may relate to health."  For the past 30 years, abortion has been allowed in the rare cases where the mother was faced with an emergency situation or life-threatening complication.  Because there is nothing in the Interim Final Rule which defines health, the health exception is not limited in any way.  This means the VA is now providing abortion on demand, with no limits.

Pentagon to Pay Travel Expenses for Service Members' Abortions.  The Department of Defense announced Thursday that it will subsidize the transportation expenses for female soldiers and their dependents to receive abortions.  It will allocate money for "travel and transportation allowances for Service members and their dependents, as appropriate and consistent with applicable federal law and operational requirements, and as necessary amend any applicable travel regulations, to facilitate official travel to access non covered reproductive health care that is unavailable within the local area of a Service member's permanent duty station," a Pentagon memo obtained by the Daily Signal reads.

Biden Reveals Support for Federal Abortion Fund.  President Biden revealed in a recent interview that he supports the establishment of a federal fund to cover costs associated with abortion, including time off work, travel, and childcare.  Biden expressed support for the radical idea for the first time during a roundtable panel discussion with NowThis that was recorded on Tuesday and is slated to air over the weekend.  The answer was delivered in response to a question from 26-year-old medical student, Danielle Mathisen, who pointed to growing commitments across the corporate world to support women procuring abortions and suggested the federal government should follow suit.

Joe Biden signs a blatantly illegal executive order to fund abortion.  On Wednesday [8/3/2022], Joe Biden signed an executive order that would see Medicaid pay for women to cross state lines to get abortions.  While the money ostensibly funds travel, the fact that money is fungible and funnels directly to abortion should mean that this executive order is stricken for violating the Hyde Amendment.  In today's political environment, though, it's hard to imagine anyone with power and legal standing making the point that the order must be stricken.  The Hyde Amendment is very simple:  It says that federal money — which really means taxpayer money — cannot be used to fund abortions.  Of course, the Hyde Amendment is violated just about every day in America and has been for decades because of the billions of taxpayer dollars sent to Planned Parenthood via Title X grants and Medicaid reimbursements.

Biden Admin Flies Illegal Alien Minors out of Texas for Abortions.  Per the far-left Reuters, the pure evil that is the Biden Administration has "been flying or driving minors from Texas shelters to other states for abortions." [...] Now that the moral and legal atrocity known as Roe v. Wade has finally been overturned, the corporate media have and will continue to look for stories that show how awful the not-killing-of-innocent-babies is.  So Reuters came up with this beauty about the terrible plight of illegal aliens who will now have trouble accessing a clinic that will kill their innocent baby.  Why?  Because Texas has outlawed abortion, and to try and turn the Lone Star state blue, Biden has opened the border in Texas.  So most illegals end up in Texas, where they can't get an abortion.

Gavin Newsom:  California Taxpayers to Subsidize Abortion Tourism.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced plans Wednesday to spend an additional $57 million on abortions for uninsured, out-of-state residents who travel to the state to have abortions because of restrictions on abortion in their own states.  The announcement brings Newsom's proposed spending on out-of-state abortion tourism to $125 million, over and above what he proposed in January.  The new spending comes ahead of an anticipated decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the controversial 1973 ruling that established a "right" to abortion.  A leaked majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization would return authority over abortion to the separate states.

11 Notable Topics in Senate Vote-a-Rama on Spending $3.5 Trillion.  [#3]  Senators narrowly approved a proposal to continue the existing policy preventing tax dollars from funding abortions.  In a 50-49 vote, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., joined all Republicans to back it.  Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., offered the amendment to protect the Hyde Amendment, which long has blocked federal tax dollars from paying directly for abortion.  The policy previously had broad bipartisan support, even among pro-choice lawmakers.  "The Hyde Amendment reflects a decadeslong consensus that millions of Americans who are profoundly opposed to abortion should not be forced to pay for the taking of human lives of children or incentivize it with their taxpayer dollars," Lankford said.  Lankford's proposal also preserves the Weldon Amendment, which protects conscience rights so that health care providers can't be forced to perform abortions or refer patients for abortions.  "Just because they are smaller people doesn't mean they should be any less protected by law," Lankford said of unborn children.

Biden caught trying to hide funding for abortions.  President Biden has been caught trying to hide insurance premiums for abortion — a move that could have Americans "unknowingly fund" the procedures, inside of premiums for legitimate health insurance, according to a new report from the Family Research Council.  The organization has submitted a public comment to the Department of Health and Human Services on the Democrat Party's agenda to change the payment procedures for health insurance.

House Democrats Make History by Striking the Hyde Amendment.  For the first time in 45 years, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a spending bill funding Medicaid without the Hyde Amendment, a measure that protects taxpayers from being forced to pay for abortion.  The spending bill will face a tough hurdle in the Senate, but the bill still sets a terrifying precedent for pro-life taxpayers.  The bill, which includes seven of the twelve annual appropriations bills to fund the government for the next fiscal year, which begins on October 1, passed the House 219-208 along party lines.  Republicans opposed the bill because Democrats had removed two essential abortion-related provisions: the Hyde Amendment and the Weldon Amendment, which prohibits agencies receiving federal funding from discriminating against entities because they refuse to provide or pay for abortions.

Nancy Pelosi and Democrats Deny a Vote Six Times on Bill to Ban Tax-Funded Abortions.  Six times in one day, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democrats rejected calls for a vote on a bill that would permanently ban taxpayer-funded abortions in Medicaid and other federal programs.  On Thursday [6/24/2021], Republicans asked for a unanimous consent request on the House floor to demand a vote on the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act (House Resolution 18), sponsored by U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, R-New Jersey.  However, Democrats who control the House rejected their requests.  The bill would make the Hyde Amendment permanent law and protect taxpayers from being forced to fund the killing of unborn babies in abortions.  The Hyde Amendment, which has strong public support, prohibits taxpayer funding for elective abortions in Medicaid and other federal programs.  Since 1976, it has saved an estimated 2.4 million babies' lives, including about 60,000 each year, according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute.

Biden Budget Proposes to Force Taxpayers to Pay for Abortions.  President Joe Biden released his Fiscal Year 2022 budget Friday, one that would eliminate the longstanding Hyde Amendment and force American taxpayers to fund abortions.  The Hyde Amendment has enjoyed tremendous bipartisan support for decades, including from Biden himself.  In April 1994, then-Sen. Biden wrote to a constituent, "Those of us who are opposed to abortion should not be compelled to pay for them."

We're One Step Closer to Paying for Abortions with Our Tax Dollars, Thanks to Democrats.  While Americans have been protected from paying for elective abortions with their federal tax dollars since 1976, that decades-old reprieve could soon be coming to an end.  Democrats in Congress on Thursday reintroduced legislation to end the Hyde Amendment with the Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance Act of 2021, also known as the EACH Act for short.  Part of the bill reads that "A person's income level, wealth, or type of insurance should not prevent them from having access to a full range of pregnancy-related health care, including abortion services."  Democratic Reps.  Barbara Lee (CA), Ayanna Pressley (MA), Diane DeGette (CO), and Jan Schakowsky (IL) introduced the legislation in the House.  The lawmakers also introduced legislation earlier this month that would allow for federal funds to go towards abortions overseas by repealing the Helms Amendment.

Montana Sen. Steve Daines: 'Shameful' Senate Dems Allow Billions of Tax Dollars to Fund Abortions.  Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), chair of the Senate Pro-Life Caucus, rebuked Democrats Saturday after they voted to pass President Joe Biden's COVID relief bill allowing billions of American taxpayer dollars to be used to fund abortion on demand.  The bill allocates $400 billion which can be used to fund elective abortions.

Biden Signs Executive Order Allowing the U.S. to Fund Global Abortions.  President Biden signed an executive order Thursday afternoon reversing the Mexico City policy, permitting U.S. aid money once again to fund groups that provide or promote abortion around the globe.  The policy was first put in place by President Ronald Reagan in an effort to ensure that taxpayers were not required to indirectly fund abortion procedures performed in other countries.  The policy has been undone via executive order by every subsequent Democratic administration and reinstated by each Republican one.

8 Things You Must Know About Deeply Flawed COVID-19 Package.  [#4] It Opens the Door for Taxpayer-Funded Abortions:  While previous COVID-19 legislation contained standard provisions that prevent federal funding for abortions, those provisions are missing from the new legislation.  This means "family planning" money for Planned Parenthood, subsidies for health plans that cover abortions, and even international funding without pro-life protections.  It should be unconscionable that legislation supposedly justified as a way to preserve human life would do the opposite, but this is where we are.

These Are Some of the Garbage Items House Dems Added to Their New COVID Relief Bill.  House Democrats late Friday released the text of their $1.9 trillion Wuhan coronavirus relief bill.  While some of the bill addresses actual challenges Americans face, there are a handful of items that are, arguably, not related to the pandemic. [...] If passed and signed into law, the federal minimum wage — which currently sits at $7.25-an-hour — would increase to $15-an-hour over the next five years.  Democrats set aside $50 million for "family planning." As of now, the Hyde Amendment is in place, which bars taxpayer funds from being used for abortion.

Press Sec Refuses to Answer Question About CoVID 'Relief' Funds Going to Abortions.  White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki refused to comment on whether aspects of the President's CoVID relief package can go towards funding abortions; saying he's "shared his views" on the subject.  "Regarding the American Rescue Plan... Pro-life groups are very concerned that taxpayer dollars will go to the abortion industry.  With that being said, can this administration guarantee that no taxpayer dollars will go to the abortion industry?" asked one reporter.  "Which component are you referring to?  The President believes that community health centers are a key part of addressing the pandemic.  People have access to vaccines and treatments, to make sure that they're healthy," said the Press Secretary.

Biden's policies and actions are all about putting Americans last.  President Biden was very busy his first week in office:  eliminating jobs, angering a friendly border nation, appeasing enemies, threatening any and all domestic opposition, reattaching his nation to a ridiculous "climate accord," ensuring men can play women's sports and use their locker rooms and bathrooms, and otherwise attempting to inflict as much harm on the nation he leads as humanly possible in such a short time span.  Biden let Dr. Anthony Fauci make the announcement that his administration is ending the Trump administration's Mexico City policy agreement and will thereby once again commit the U.S. to begin using federal tax dollars, more commonly known as American taxpayer's money, to pay for abortions in foreign countries.

Biden to Overturn Policy Banning US Funding for Abortions in Foreign Nations.  Joe Biden is expected to overturn Donald Trump's policy on banning US funding from going to foreign abortionists this week.  In remarks from Anthony Fauci released by the White House this week, the controversial figure told the World Health Organization's executive board that Biden will soon revoke the Mexico City Policy "as part of his broader commitment to protect women's health and advance gender equality at home and around the world."

Report: Joe Biden to Issue Order for U.S. Funding of Abortion Abroad.  Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday [1/21/2021] President Joe Biden "will be revoking the Mexico City Policy," which the Trump administration expanded to prohibit organizations overseas that receive U.S. health assistance funding from promoting or performing abortions.  As Breitbart News reported, Fauci announced Biden had signed a letter reversing former President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from and stop funding the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) — a supporter of global abortion rights.

Millions of Americans with Obamacare — including men — will get a separate bill for abortion coverage.  Millions of Americans — including men — covered by Obamacare are now set to receive a separate bill for abortion coverage alongside the rest of their health insurance.  The new rule, which was finalized by the Department of Health and Human Services last week, will come into effect on June 27, 2020.  It will mean that the three million Americans who purchased health insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) state exchange will receive two separate bills through the door each month.

Appeals court allows Trump abortion referral ban to take effect.  The Trump administration's plan to ban federally funded family planning clinics from giving abortion referrals will be allowed to go into effect nationwide, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday [6/20/2019].  The ruling means the administration can implement a rule issued earlier this year that bans abortion providers from participating in the Title X family planning program, removes a requirement that clinics provide abortion counseling, and bars providers from referring women for abortions.  The rule was supposed to take effect May 3, but three lower courts issued injunctions, each of which the administration appealed.

Taxpayer-funded abortions make as much sense as taxpayer-funded guns for all.  Former Vice President Joe Biden's gyrations on the Hyde Amendment confirm how deeply even a shopworn politician like him must bow to today's Democratic orthodoxy on abortion.  As Biden learned, it's not enough simply to favor abortion.  This epic baby-killing now must be financed by federal taxpayers.  The late Congressman Henry Hyde's legislation has been a "settled amendment" in every federal budget since 1976.  The Illinois Republican's measure prohibited the use of federal taxpayer dollars to finance abortions, except in cases of rape, incest, or life-threatening pregnancies.

New York City's Shocking Abortion Plan.  No wonder New York City's latest move in respect of abortion was advanced "under the radar," as the New York Times put it.  The plan being hatched to start allocating taxpayer funds for abortions for poor women who travel here from other states may not, at least at the moment, involve a lot of money.  It is, though, a shocking escalation in the population wars.  The plan, according to the Times, which broke the story, is for the city to allocate $250,000 for abortions.  The idea, the headline suggests, is to challenge conservative states that have been moving to curb abortions.  The allocation from taxpayer funds would go to a charity, the New York Abortion Access Fund, that cuts checks directly to clinics to cover abortions for women who cannot pay.

Pompeo expands ban on US aid for abortion, related services.  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday [3/26/2019] expanded the Trump administration's ban on U.S. aid to groups that promote or provide abortions to include organizations that comply with the rules but give money to others that don't.

Medicare for All Would Mandate Coverage for All Abortions.  Late last month, House Democrats unveiled the text of their Medicare for All proposal, which in addition to being grotesquely expensive and fiscally irresponsible, would mandate government coverage of abortions.  "Individuals enrolled for benefits under this Act are entitled to have payment made by the Secretary to an eligible provider for ... comprehensive reproductive, maternity, and newborn care," the bill, sponsored by Representative Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.), states.  In plain language, the bill would guarantee "free" abortions for all women — or at least, as "free" as every other type of health care ostensibly would be under their implausible regime, which is to say abortion would be underwritten, along with everything else, by taxpayers.

Trump Administration Officially Rolls Back Obama Birth Control Rule.  The Trump administration announced Wednesday [11/7/2018] that it has officially rolled back an Obama administration "birth control mandate" requiring, under penalty from the Health and Human Services Department, that all employers provide birth control free of charge to employees through their selected health plans.  The new rule will take effect in 60 days and will exempt employers who object to birth control on religious grounds from being forced to pay for birth control for any employees who choose to purchase it, the Washington Examiner reports.

Court: Obama Admin Dodged State Laws To Get Illegal Minors Abortions.  Last week, a federal judge in California dismissed a lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union had filed in 2016 challenging the government's award of grants to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to provide services to unaccompanied minor illegal aliens and trafficking victims.  In the lawsuit, the ACLU argued the grants violated the Establishment Clause because the Department of Health and Human Services allowed the Catholic organization (and its sub-grantees) to deny girls and women in their care contraceptives and abortion.  The court rejected the ACLU's Establishment Clause claim in a methodical 34-page opinion, explaining that the federal funds were not used to endorse or advance religion.  Further, as the San Francisco-based federal judge stressed, the government would transfer minors to other facilities if there were a conflict between the services sought and the religious tenets of the organization running the shelter.

Feds: Illegal immigrant girls should go home rather than demand abortions in U.S..  Pregnant immigrants caught trying to cross the border illegally can leave the U.S. rather than force the federal government to facilitate an abortion, the Trump administration argued to a federal appeals court Wednesday [9/26/2018].  But the American Civil Liberties Union, and at least one of the three judges on the panel hearing the cases, seemed skeptical, saying immigrants appear to have a right to abortion, and it's unfair to give them a choice of either continuing their pregnancy against their wishes or accepting deportation.

Supremes Lift Decision Ordering Trump Administration To Facilitate Abortions For Alien Minors.  In a partial victory for the Trump administration, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated a lower court ruling requiring the government to facilitate an abortion for an undocumented minor in federal custody.  The unsigned five-page opinion did not issue a judgement as to the merits of the dispute but approved the administration's request to vacate the ruling under a legal rule called Munsingwear vacatur.  There was no noted dissent.

Stop Government-Supported Abortion, Family Planning.  New proposed changes in regulations from the Department of Health and Human Services will close the door on using funds from its Title X family planning program for abortion.  HHS's Office of Population Affairs, which administers this program, is a poster child for ill-conceived government policy.  How is it, in our nation that cherishes the ideals of human freedom and dignity, that we're funding government bureaucrats to advise low-income citizens — almost a quarter of these "clients" are black — about how many children they should bring into this world and when?  Despite explicit language in the legislation that created the Title X family program in 1970 prohibiting funding "programs in which abortion is a method of family planning," this directive has been effectively ignored.  HHS reports that 4 million individuals are getting services through this program.  However, 1.6 million of them, 40 percent, according to the Guttmacher Institute, are receiving these services at Planned Parenthood clinics.

Trump administration set to resurrect ban on abortion counseling at federally-funded clinics.  Following pressure from pro-life Republicans in Congress ahead of the midterm elections, the Trump administration is planning to resurrect a Reagan-era rule banning federally-funded family planning clinics from discussing abortion with women.  The rule would also prohibit the clinics from sharing space with abortion providers, a senior White House official told the Associated Press Thursday.  That practice, known as "co-location," was specifically decried by more than 150 House members and more than 40 senators earlier this month in letters to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar.

Abortion Ruling Grants Right To Pregnant Illegals.  An Obama-appointed federal judge made a ruling on Friday [3/30/2018] that declares abortion a constitutional right for illegal immigrants in custody, even if they are underage.  Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. claimed that her ruling is the response to the Trump administration having "too many hurdles in the path of teen girls," and by this, she means such young women who have immigrated to the United States illegally.  There is an obvious danger in allowing such a practice.  By permitting pregnant women to have their babies aborted in the United States, it will encourage illegal immigration even further.  This is a threat to national security, the sanctity of life, and the financial health of the country's economy.

Washington state passes law to require insurance coverage of abortion.  Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill into law that would require all health insurers to cover abortion if they also cover maternity care.  The law, the Reproductive Parity Act, had been considered for more than six years.  It also would mandate coverage for every form of birth control, including emergency contraception, without any out-of-pocket costs.  The bill makes a few changes to provisions that are already available under federal laws and regulations.  Under Obamacare, all health insurance plans across the country are required to cover maternity care but not abortions.  In October, the Trump administration scaled back rules on contraception, saying that employers could refuse to cover it if they had religious or moral objections.  The Washington law eclipses that exemption.

Illegal immigrant minor suggests she faced pressure to get abortion on federal dime.  The Trump administration is trying to keep another illegal immigrant minor from using federal dollars to get an abortion.  But this time, the woman in federal custody doesn't even seem to want to terminate her pregnancy.  According to court documents filed this week by the Justice Department, the woman said her guardians, Rochelle Garza and Myles Garza, assisted her on Feb. 6 by giving her documents to seek an abortion.  The Garzas have represented other illegal immigrant minors seeking abortions.

The Texas chain-migration abortion.  Abortion advocates were dancing with glee when a federal judge ruled that a pregnant teenage illegal immigant in a Texas detention center could go get the abortion she wanted at taxpayer expense.  The federal government had been discouraging the facilitation of the act and the shelter at which she was staying did not want to 'facilitate the killing by so much as driving her to the abortion mill.  She didn't want the anchor baby.  And given her apparent militancy (though, to be fair, we are only hearing from her from the word of the activists), it looks as though she doesn't particularly want to stay here, being willing to throw out that 'advantage.'  More likely, knowing she was pregnant, she seems to have made the decision to come to the U.S. for a free abortion, if for nothing else, the presence of leftwing lawyers who would ensure it would happen.  Abortion is not available, at least legally, in the Central American country of her citizenship.  Now her victory in court for her right to kill her 16-week old unborn baby opens the gate for the U.S. to become a sanctuary state for any illegal who wants a free abortion.  It's appalling.  The anti-abortion forces who fought it said it opens the gate for a constitutionally guaranteed right to abortion for all illegals, at our expense, making the U.S. a magnet for abortions from abroad, no legal entrance required.  Given that babies born on U.S. soil are U.S. citizens, like it or not, it also gives foreigners the right to kill these U.S. citizens on U.S. soil which isn't quite what the founders had in mind.

Court blocks illegal immigrant teen from demanding abortion services from feds while in custody after she crossed the border pregnant.  An appeals court has blocked a teenage illegal immigrant from demanding abortion services from the federal government while being held in custody.  The Friday [10/20/2017] ruling does allow the girl, a 17-year-old being held in Texas, to seek a private sponsor who could help her obtain the procedure without the government's assistance.

California Sues Trump For Granting Employer 'Choice' on Obama Birth Control Mandate.  California wasted no time filing a lawsuit against the Trump Administration, claiming it discriminated against women when it rescinded the Obama-era mandate that requires employers to pay for birth control in their healthcare plans.

Trump administration deals major blow to Obamacare birth control mandate.  In a blow to Obamacare's controversial contraceptive mandate, employers may now have more leeway to withhold birth control coverage on religious grounds, according to new rules issued by the US Department of Health and Human Services on Friday [10/6/2017].  The new rules continue the undermining of the Obamacare mandate that requires birth control be covered with no co-pay as a preventive service.  This could impact many of the millions of women who now receive contraceptives at no cost under this provision.

Seven Ways Trump Is Taking Back America's Culture.  [#4] The president signed a resolution in April that overturned Obama's rule — enacted during his last days as president — that forced states to provide family planning grants under Title X to Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers.  The House approved H.J. Res. 43, introduced by Rep. Diane Black (R-TN), in February.  The resolution used the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to rescind the Obama administration rule, enacted during the last days of the former president's term.  Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) sponsored the measure in the Senate.  Vice President Mike Pence cast a tie-breaking vote at the end of March to enable approval in that chamber after Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted against it.

DOJ Lawyers Still Battling Christians Over Obamacare Contraception Mandate.  Six months into President Trump's administration, Department of Justice attorneys are still battling Christian organizations in court over Obamacare's contraception mandate.  DOJ lawyers have continued to keep alive a slew of cases appealing a 2014 district court ruling that granted an injunction from the mandate to several Catholic organizations.  The Supreme Court vacated an appeals court ruling against The Little Sisters of the Poor and similar organizations in 2016, sending the cases back to the lower courts.  Many religious freedom advocates expected that the Trump administration, which has vowed to protect The Little Sisters and other organizations burdened by the contraceptive mandate, would drop the legal campaign against the religious organizations.  But more than six months into the Trump era, the legal fights are still alive.

Oregon Gov. Expected To Sign Bill Forcing Insurers To Cover Free Abortions.  House Bill 3391 which would force all Oregon insurers to cover abortions for free regardless of income, insurance type, citizenship status or gender identity, and it is awaiting the signature of Democratic Gov. Kate Brown.  The on-demand abortion bill will cost Oregon taxpayers a whopping $10 million.  It also prohibits insurers from shifting costs to patients in the form of higher deductibles or copayments.  With this in mind, private insurance companies are faced with a dilemma:  either pay up and cover the difference out of their own pockets or distribute these costs among their customers through higher premiums.  If the private insurance companies wish to stay in business, the latter is most likely to occur.

As Democrats seek to repair national image, party passes law in Oregon requiring insurers to cover abortion at no cost.  Just as Democrats are kicking up their efforts to prove the party can be a comfortable home for centrist voters, leftists in Oregon passed a law making that pitch even more laughable than it already was.  The state legislature passed a bill last week that would require insurance companies offering plans in Oregon "to cover abortions and other reproductive services at no cost to the patient regardless of income, citizenship status or gender identity," as ABC News explained.  Note that the legislation also applies to noncitizens.

Free abortions for everyone including illegals; Oregon's Dem governor about to sign bill into law.  Elections have consequences.  Achieving a long sought after goal of the left, a woman's right to free and unfettered abortions, Oregon's Democratic Gov. Kate Brown will sign legislation accomplishing just that.  The bill represents a sweeping, unprecedented change in state law that will require insurers to provide free abortions to all residents, to include illegal immigrants, The Washington Times reported.  No Republicans voted for the bill.

Oregon Close To Requiring Insurers To Pay For Abortions.  The Oregon Senate voted Wednesday to require insurance companies to cover abortion and other reproductive health services at no cost to patients.  The bill, already passed by the House, now goes to Gov. Kate Brown for her signature.  Oregon would become the second state, after California, to require private insurers to cover all abortions.  New York also requires insurers to cover abortions deemed by a doctor to be medically necessary.  In Oregon, the Democrat-backed measure passed 17-13 along party lines, after a lengthy and at times emotional debate on the Senate floor.

Mandating pro-death 'healthcare'.  Real Alternatives — a non-profit, non-religious, pro-life organization — provides "life-affirming pregnancy and parenting support services."  It hires like-minded people and even requires subcontractors to agree to promote the protection of the unborn over killing them.  Real Alternatives doesn't want to offer its employees health insurance coverage that includes drugs and devices that could induce abortions.  The organization argued in federal district court last December for a moral exemption to the Obamacare contraceptive and abortifacient mandate, but the court rejected the request.  Real Alternatives appealed, and the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments last week.

Hillary, Soros and the political genocide of Christianity.  Hillary Clinton seems to have a problem with religious liberty when it conflicts with her progressive goals.  During an April 2015 speech to the Women in the World Conference she said, "Deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed" for the sake of giving women access to "reproductive health care and safe childbirth."  Translated, that means that Clinton, who believes that reproductive rights are a "fundamental human right", would, through repeal of the Hyde Amendment, force all taxpayers to fund all abortions, even partial birth, that is, "day of birth" abortions regardless of our religious convictions.  Clinton is also willing to impose federal penalties, including denying tax-exempt status, in order to, as Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito wrote, "stamp out every vestige of dissent" to a far-left agenda.

Obama Wants to Force States to Fund Planned Parenthood Abortion Biz.  If only the Obama administration would defend the nation as boldly as it defends Planned Parenthood.  The White House has just proposed new mandate that would prevent states from blocking Title X funding for "family planning services" (aka pro-abortion companies).  Judging by the bill's language, Planned Parenthood is set to be one of the rule's biggest benefactors.  "Title X serves women, men, and adolescents to enable individuals to freely determine the number and spacing of children," the rule reads.  "By law, services are provided to low-income individuals at no or reduced cost.  Services provided through Title X-funded health centers assist in preventing unintended pregnancies and achieving pregnancies that result in positive birth outcomes."

New Obama Rule Would Ban States From Defunding Planned Parenthood.  The Obama administration is seeking to ban states from defunding Planned Parenthood by quietly implementing a new Title X rule that would limit states' ability to direct federal funds.  The proposed Health and Human Services rule would ban states from using criteria not based on ability to provide services when determining which family planning centers get federal funding.  Several states stripped Planned Parenthood of these federal funds in the last year after a series of undercover videos exposed the non-profit's trade in aborted fetus parts, and 13 states have now stripped the funds since 2011.

Hillary Clinton:  You Must Pay For Abortions Or Else.  Ever since the Democratic National Convention concluded, and especially since Hillary Clinton chose Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine for vice president, the federal abortion funding limit called the Hyde Amendment has been much in the news.  That is because the amendment, which restricts federal funding for abortion to instances of rape and incest or where the life of the mother would be endangered if the baby were carried to term, has been a fixture of national policy since 1976.  Now Democrats want to change that.  In past years, the Democratic platform vaguely referenced public funding, saying access to abortion should be legally permitted without regard to a woman's "ability to pay." The new platform approved last month in Philadelphia, however, is explicit:  "We will continue to oppose — and seek to overturn — federal and state laws and policies that impede a woman's access to abortion, including by repealing the Hyde Amendment."

How Democrats Came to Embrace Taxpayer-Funded Abortions.  President Barack Obama signed an executive order in 2010 applying the Hyde Amendment, which bans taxpayer funding of most abortions, to Obamacare.  Five years later, the White House referred to the Hyde Amendment while defending taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood.  Now, the Democrats' party platform is calling for repeal of the measure.  According to a new poll, Americans are solidly opposed to public funding of abortion, including nearly half of voters who support abortion rights, and at least four out of 10 Democrats.

Pro-Abortion Leader Admits:  Our Next Goal is Forcing Americans to Pay for Abortions.  NARAL President Ilyse Hogue could not have been more clear about the pro-abortion movement's future goals in her most recent interview with The Prospect.  Hogue, president of the radical pro-abortion group, said she wants to expand abortions for women all across the U.S.  To achieve this, she hopes to force taxpayers to fund abortions, force pregnancy resource centers to advertise abortions and overturn common-sense restrictions on abortions.  "Importantly, we're really moving to a position where we will not just fight anti-choice lies and deception, but where we can actively push for legislation that expands access to abortion," Hogue said.

Armed Services Committee Rejects Amendment to Allow Abortions at Military Facilities.  The House Armed Services Committee voted down an amendment Wednesday evening [4/27/2016] that would have allowed "service members and their dependents to receive abortion services at defense medical facilities (MTFs) if they personally provide funding."  At a committee markup, Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) argued strongly against the amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, one of several proposed by Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.).  It was ultimately voted down 25-37.  "We want to make bases of our military abortion clinics, and I think it dishonors those who gave everything they had for this country and what it stands for," Franks argued.  "I think it's time for all of us to ask the real question as hard as it is and that is, does abortion really take the life of a baby?"

California's violation of federal civil rights laws.  In August 2014, the California Department of Managed Health Care, suddenly and without prior notice, issued a mandate to private market healthcare plans in California requiring them to cover all abortions as a "basic health care service" — including late-term and gender selective abortions.  (Prior to this mandate, California limited coverage to medically necessary abortions.)  The new mandate violates a longstanding federal civil rights law — the Weldon Amendment.  Congress first enacted Weldon in 2002 to protect healthcare providers and insurers from governmental discrimination on the basis that they choose not to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.  The victims of this type of governmental discrimination have only one recourse:  file a complaint with the Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights (OCR).  This has proven entirely futile.

House Dems want Medicaid to cover abortion.  House Democrats are renewing their attack on the Hyde Amendment, the controversial budget provision that bars federal funds from paying for abortions.  Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Diana DeGette (D-Col.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) introduced a bill Wednesday [7/8/2015] that would require Medicaid to cover abortion services — currently banned under the Hyde Amendment.

Obamacare Is Here to Prey.  [Scroll down]  Last fall, a GAO report found that 1,036 health plans sold through Obamacare exchanges "cover non-excepted abortion services."  This brazenly flouts the will of the electorate.  A majority of the public objects to abortion, according to a number of recent surveys, including a CNN poll conducted last year showing that 56 percent of the taxpayers don't want their money used to pay for them.

Obama Recalls His Work for Catholic Church: 'Every Human Being, Made in the Image of God, Deserves to Live in Dignity'.  Speaking at the Catholic Health Association Conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday [6/9/2015], President Barack Obama recalled that his first job in Chicago was with the Catholic Church and that in this job he saw that "every human being, made in the image of God, deserves to live in dignity." [...] Obmacare provides taxpayer subsidies to health insurance plans that cover surgical abortions.  Through a "preventive services" regulation the administration issued under the ACA, it also mandates that most health insurance plans must cover contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs and IUDs.

Obamacare Abortion Drug Accommodation: A Bit of Paperwork or Complicity in Sin?  The Obamacare mandate requiring non-profit religious employers to facilitate health care coverage of abortion-inducing drugs and devices for employees may be heading to the Supreme Court soon.  This mandate — which exempts formal houses of worship and their integrated auxiliaries like church-run soup kitchens — requires non-profit religious employers to provide this coverage or notify the Department of Health and Human Services that they have a religious objection.

HHS re-writes Obamacare rules: Orders free birth control for all.  The Obama administration on Monday ordered all insurers to provide IUDs, the contraceptive patch and other birth control free of out-of-pocket charge to all women, rewriting the rules after reports that some insurance carriers were refusing to cover all types of contraceptives.  Insurers must cover at least one brand of contraception in each of 18 different methods outlined by the Food and Drug Administration, such as oral contraceptive pills, the emergency contraceptive morning-after pill and intrauterine devices.

Supreme Court tosses pro-ObamaCare contraception ruling.  The Supreme Court on Monday [4/27/2015] gave new life to a lawsuit challenging ObamaCare's contraception mandate, striking down a previous ruling in favor of the federal government.  The justices asked an appeals court in Cincinnati to reconsider a legal challenge that the Catholic ministries in Michigan and Tennessee filed against an ObamaCare provision that requires employers to cover birth control for all workers.

IRS: Abortions are Eligible for a Tax Deduction, Stillborn Babies are Not.  Did you know that abortions are apparently eligible for a tax deduction?  That appears to be true, so says the IRS.  So what does the IRS say about deducting the cost of killing your child?  "You can include in medical expenses the amount you pay for a legal abortion," it says.

McConnell: No Lynch vote unless Democrats relent on bill.  "This will have an impact on the timing of considering a new attorney general," McConnell told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union."  "I had hoped to turn to her next week, but if we can't finish the trafficking bill, she will be put off again."  Democrats are now holding up the trafficking bill, which glided through the judiciary committee, after they noticed an abortion provision embedded in the bill that would prevent victims of human trafficking from using restitution funds to pay for an abortion.

House passes bill to block abortions from Obamacare.  The House on Thursday passed legislation along partisan lines that would block abortion coverage from plans offered by the federal government's healthcare.gov, one day after Republican leaders pulled a stricter anti-abortion measure from the floor.  Republicans initially had planned to hold a vote on a measure that called for banning abortions past 20 weeks of pregnancy on Thursday [1/22/2015], the same day as the annual March for Life attended by thousands of anti-abortion activists.  But leadership pulled it after a number of female Republican lawmakers incited a last-minute revolt against one part of the measure.

Republican Congress moves to defund Planned Parenthood.  LifeNews reports that 80 members of Congress have reintroduced the "Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act" for consideration in the House of Representatives.  The head sponsor is Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.), a regular leader on pro-life and freedom-of-conscience legislation.  As Black puts it, "[t]his legislation would simply clarify the original intent and spirit of the law to ensure that Title X federal funded grants will no longer be awarded to 'health care' providers that fail to protect life by providing abortions."

Obamacare 2015 Includes Federal Subsidies for Abortion.  It's been open enrollment for ObamaCare for a week now, and it's open season for taxpayer funding of health insurance plans that provide coverage for abortion on demand.  In spite of President Obama's promise that no federal tax dollars be used for abortion under his signature health care law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), over a thousand health insurance plans that provide coverage for abortion on-demand are expected to receive federal subsidies in the 2015 enrollment season.

Rep. Smith: Most Obamacare Plans Violate Hyde Amendment.  At a press conference Thursday [11/20/2014] about a new website to help consumers shop for health insurance that does not pay for abortion, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) said that despite President Barack Obama's promise to the contrary, the majority of policies offered through the Affordable Care Act violate the amendment prohibiting federal funding of abortion.

Broken promise: More states offering Obamacare abortions, violating no-subsidy rule.  The number of Obamacare plans nationwide offering on-demand abortion is skyrocketing despite a rule that bars using healthcare subsidies for the procedure, according to a new investigation.  The probe by two anti-abortion groups comes on the heels of a GAO report that found over 1,000 plans offer elective abortions, not allowed under Obamacare and personally ruled out by the president.

Rep. Smith: Obama Gave $227M to UNFPA Implementing Forced Abortion in China.  Representative Chris Smith (R-N.J.) said at the Heritage Foundation on Thursday that despite his and other congressmens' efforts to hold Communist China accountable for its one-child, forced abortion policy, President Barack Obama and his administration are not only ignoring the policy but are advancing the "brutal program."  "I respectfully submit that not only is the Obama administration turning a blind eye to the atrocities being committed under the one-child policy, but it is even contributing financial support — contrary to U.S. law — to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)," Smith said in a keynote address at the event.

Poll: Fewer Than One Third of Americans View Obama as Friendly to Religion.  The share of Americans that sees the Obama administration as friendly toward religion took a dramatic drop to 30% from 37% in 2009.  The percentage that rates the administration hostile to religion increased from 17% in 2009 to 29% in the latest poll.  These findings come from a new survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted Sept. 2-9 among 2,002 U.S. adults.  Some of this suspicion of Obama seems related to the administration's perceived hostility toward religious liberty, manifested particularly through the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate.

In potential violation of law, all Obamacare plans in 5 states cover abortion.  All of the health plans offered by Obamacare exchanges in five states include coverage for abortions in a potential violation of the law that says at least two plans must be available to consumers who don't want any association with the controversial procedure, according to a government audit released late Monday [9/15/2014].  Altogether, more than 1,000 Obamacare plans offer abortion coverage in 28 states that don't prohibit it, the Government Accountability Office said, including 95 percent of the plans in California and all of the plans in Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Hawaii and New Jersey.

New questions over abortion coverage in health law.  The Government Accountability Office said in a report released late Monday [9/15/2014] that only 1 of 18 insurers it reviewed was separately itemizing a charge for coverage of elective abortions on enrollees' bills.

How Obamacare Forces You to Subsidize Plans That Cover Elective Abortion.  Throughout debate and final passage of Obamacare, the president and liberal allies in Congress assured the American people that the expansive healthcare law would not fund elective abortions.  "[U]nder our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions,"President Obama declared in 2009.  Today [9/15/2014], the Government Accountability Office (GAO) confirms that's just another broken promise.  Here are three things you need to know about abortion and Obamacare:  [#1] Obamacare sends federal taxpayer dollars to health plans that include coverage of elective abortion.

Five Democrats Join Bus Tour to Repeal Ban on Federal Funding of Abortion.  At least five House Democrats are participating in a nationwide "Be Bold Road Trip" this month in an effort to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which prevents the federal government from directly subsidizing abortions.  Starting August 9 in Los Angeles, the bus tour will run until mid-September and end in Washington, D.C. [...] As part of the bus tour, Representatives Mike Honda (D-Calif.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), and Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) will speak against the Hyde Amendment in their home states, according to the Huffington Post.

College wins U.S. top court temporary exemption on Obamacare birth control.  The U.S. Supreme Court gave a Christian college in Illinois a temporary exemption from birth control coverage required by President Barack Obama's health reform law, days after ruling that for-profit employers can opt out for religious reasons.

ObamaCare vs. religion: Why Media Research Center has filed suit against the government.  In its attempt to broaden the notion of a "right to health care," the Obama administration has shrunk our rights to practice our religion.  In requiring employers to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives, the government has trampled on people who believe artificial contraception to be wrong as a matter of morality and ethics.  The Media Research Center has filed a lawsuit against the federal government, challenging the HHS mandate.  This lawsuit is about religious freedom and the conscience rights of individuals to operate their enterprises free from government coercion, reprisal, or punishment.

Coming next under Obamacare is the abortion mandate.  There's the individual mandate, the employer mandate, and the "contraceptive" mandate in Obamacare.  Now get ready for the full-fledged abortion mandate.  During oral arguments in March, when trying to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to let it force Hobby Lobby to comply with its contraceptive mandate, the Obama administration made a striking admission.  Hobby Lobby and its lawyers from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty had argued that the government's position, if accepted, would allow the government to force people to pay for abortions.

HHS Spending $800K on Studies to Help Family Planning Clinics Survive Obamacare.  Despite the Obama administration's insistence that everyone — the government, insurance companies, doctors, medical providers, and consumers — will reap benefits from Obamacare, a recent grant proposal by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) suggests that the agency does have concerns about the ongoing financial viability of one player in the health care market:  so-called family planning centers.

Planned Parenthood Got $540.6 Million in Government Grants in FY 2013.  Planned Parenthood's net revenue increased 5% to total of $1.21 billion in its organizational fiscal year ending on June 30, 2013, according to its new Annual Report 2012-2013, and about 45% of that revenue — $540.6 million — was provided by taxpayer-funded government health services grants.  In the same report, Planned Parenthood said that in the year that ended on Sept. 30, 2012 it did 327,166 abortions.

Michelle's abortion-boosting 50th.  Days before Michelle Obama's White House birthday celebrations this year, it was revealed that Planned Parenthood got $540.6 million in government grants in 2013 from her husband's administration.  "Planned Parenthood's net revenue increased 5% to a total of $1.2 billion in its organizational fiscal year ending on June 30, 2013, according to its new Annual Report 2012-2013, and about 45% of that revenue — $540.6 million — was provided by taxpayer-funded government health services grants."  (CNSNews.com, Jan. 14, 2014).

Why some Catholics think Obama is master of deception.  Lest people forget, passage of the Affordable Care Act happened in part because Obama struck a deal with a single Catholic holdout:  Bart Stupak, D-Michigan. Stupak agreed to vote for the bill in exchange for an executive order protecting conscience rights and preserving the Hyde Amendment's ban on the use of federal funds for abortion.  Stupak had insisted on an amendment.  Instead, he took the President's word.  The President turned around and stuck in the knife:  He used the ACA to mandate that all employers, regardless of religious objection, pay for and provide what many of us in the anti-abortion movement consider abortion drugs in their health care plans.

Abortion Covered in Obamacare Health Plans for Congress, Staff.  Elective abortion coverage is offered in 103 of 112 ObamaCare insurance plans for members of Congress and their staff.  As reported by the Daily Caller, the availability of elective abortion coverage to members of Congress and their staff may represent a moral and legal violation, since congressional insurance coverage will be subsidized by the federal government under the law.  Essentially, this means American taxpayers are funding abortions.

Taxpayers Will Pay Up to $11,378 to Buy Congressmen Obamacare Plans That Cover Abortions.  Under a regulation issued by the Office of Personnel Management, members of Congress and their staff will be able to use federal subsidies worth up to $11,378 per year to purchase any of the 103 different health insurance plans that expressly cover elective abortions that are now being offered on the Washington, D.C. Obamacare exchange.

Abortion in the Obamacare Exchanges.  December 1 has come and gone with fresh assurances from the Obama administration that the federal exchange website, HealthCare.gov, will work for approximately 80 percent of its visitors.  A review of the website, and the state of the health-care plans offered via the state exchanges, suggests that the problem of absent or incomplete information regarding plans that exclude coverage of elective abortions and abortion-inducing drugs and devices is far from fixed.

Obama's Racial Eugenics Award?  Margaret Sanger longed for a more enlightened time when birth control would be (as she put it) "part of the regular welfare service of the government." [...] Sanger could not have known it, but she was speaking of Barack Obama's America, where birth control is being thrust upon us as a basic "human right" and form of "health care" with no obstacles in its way.  In fact, it's even easier than Sanger could have imagined: Not only do contemporary progressives want no obstacles, but Obama wants all Americans to forcibly pay for birth control.  He is even forcing the religious to do so via his HHS mandate.  He and his progressive cohorts are rolling right over any "legal restrictions" or "religious condemnation."  If you as a religious believer disagree, they will see you in court.  You will be penalized and demonized.  Under Obama, we have arrived at Sanger's new world, where birth control is a regular service of the federal government.

Is Abortion at the Root of the ObamaCare Chaos?  Weeks after the ObamaCare "train wreck" began hurtling off the tracks, the president finally "apologized," albeit halfheartedly, for not doing a "good enough job in terms of how we crafted the law."  Meanwhile, the liberal focus remains steady on the goal to ensure that women are properly outfitted for casual sex and that should the accoutrements fail for whatever reason, the means to deal with the result will be readily available.  Liberals like to portray themselves as empathetic, yet Barack Obama and his posse of progressives remain disproportionately focused on birth control and abortion.

Cardinal O'Malley Backs Bill to Reveal Abortion Surcharges in ObamaCare; Sebelius Dodges Query.  Cardinal Sean Patrick O'Malley urged members of Congress to support the Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act, which would require health plans to disclose if they subsidize abortion coverage.  O'Malley's support comes days after Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius pleaded ignorance on abortion funds.

Report: Every Plan on D.C. Exchange Covers Elective Abortions.  Every insurance plan in the Washington, D.C., health-insurance exchange forces consumers to pay for abortion coverage, despite provisions in the Affordable Care Act requiring that at least one plan without abortion coverage be offered, according to Anna Higgins, director of the Family Research Council's Center for Human Dignity.

Obama administration: Lawmakers, staff can get abortion coverage.  The Office of Personnel Management ruled Monday that members of Congress and their staffs will be able to buy health care plans that pay for abortions, even though the premiums are funded largely by taxpayer money — a move that conservatives say breaks federal law on abortion funding.

Affordable Care Act Could Fund Over 100,000 Abortions.  Although the Hyde Amendment restricts the use of federal funds for abortion, with the exceptions of pregnancies caused by rape and incest, the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of the Susan B. Anthony List, released a paper on Thursday [9/26/2013] that showed how Multi-State Plans created through the Affordable Care Act could result in taxpayers subsidizing up to 111,500 abortions each year.  Multi-State Plans (MSPs) are the Affordable Care Act's version of the "public option" health insurance plan.

How Obamacare Will Subsidize Abortion.  With all the attention focused on Ted Cruz's attempt to defund Obamacare in the continuing resolution, some of the law's parade of horribles are momentarily out of view.  Come October 1, those horribles will resume their onward march as the law's impact on subsidizing elective abortion will begin to become clearer.

Abortion coverage for Congress under Obamacare?  An attempt to fix a problem with the new health care law has created a situation in which members of Congress and their staffers could gain access to abortion coverage, something that currently is denied to federal employees who get health insurance through the government's plan.

DC Obamacare exchange awards $375k grant to Planned Parenthood.  Washington, D.C.'s health insurance exchange has awarded a $375,000 grant to abortion provider Planned Parenthood to help enroll participants in Obamacare, the exchange announced on Tuesday [8/13/2013].

Planned Parenthood Admits that It Uses Taxpayer Money to Fund Abortions.  The abortion debate in Texas has been clarifying.  On one side we've seen people behave peacefully and respectfully, abide by the laws and the rules and sing hymns like "Amazing Grace."  On the other side, we've seen threats, mob tactics and "Hail Satan!" [...] We've also seen Planned Parenthood lie through its teeth, and a couple of members of the the Texas media just called them out on it.

Obamacare demands insurers cover Planned Parenthood clinics.  Most of Planned Parenthood's 750 health and abortion clinics around the nation will be covered under Obamacare, imposing a new demand on insurers who want to participate in the health care exchanges that will provide insurance coverage to millions of Americans.  While insurers currently cover doctors and health facilities in their networks, Obamacare demands that they also cover at least 20 percent of "essential community providers" in their coverage area, including Planned Parenthood, AIDS clinics, pain management centers and even alternative medicine providers.

Planned Parenthood Wants Taxpayers to Fund Illegal Immigrants' Abortions.  In a statement published on May 22nd, Planned Parenthood criticized the adoption of a House amendment that would deny taxpayer funding for the abortions of illegal immigrants.

The Greatest Threat to Peace.  [S]ince 1966, billions of dollars in U.S.-taxpayer money has been laundered through USAID to such groups as the Population Council and the International Planned Parenthood Federation to advise or run horrific campaigns of forced sterilizations or abortions, wrecking the lives of tens of millions of poor people in Asia, Africa, and South America.

Lawmakers ask if taxes fund abortion; Planned Parenthood targeted in inquiry.  A group of 72 lawmakers have revived an effort to ask the government's watchdog agency to scrutinize taxpayer dollars going to Planned Parenthood and five other organizations who provide family-planning services.

Congresswoman Reintroduces Bill To Ban Federal Funds From Abortion Providers, Including Planned Parenthood.  Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) marked the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion nationwide, by announcing at a press conference her reintroduction of legislation to ban all abortion providers from receiving any federal funds, including Planned Parenthood.  "Over the last 40 years, more than 55 million babies have been aborted," Black said on Tuesday [1/22/2013] on Capitol Hill at the conference focused on Roe v. Wade.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn offers bill to defund Planned Parenthood.  "As a woman, I believe America deserves better than abortion," Blackburn said in a statement on her bill.  "America shouldn't celebrate abortion and our taxpayers shouldn't subsidize abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood, who profit from the destruction of human life with taxpayer money.  It's fiscally irresponsible and morally indefensible."

Appeals Court Oral Arguments Signal Trouble for Obamacare HHS Mandate.  After repeated assurances that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would not mandate abortion or people of faith violating their religious beliefs, the Obama administration issued a mandate requiring both, when Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued a rule from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) saying that a vague provision in the ACA requiring employers provide "preventive care" means that employer healthcare policies must cover birth control, abortion-related, and sterilization services.