The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), under Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, released a surprising bulletin on Friday, announcing that states will have greater flexibility in implementing ObamaCare.

The announcement comes on the threshold of the presidential election year, when President Obama must defend his signature legislation both to the Supreme Court, which will take up the constitutionality of the law in the spring, and the American people, the majority of whom want the law repealed. The administration likely hopes that the new flexibility offered to states will help to minimize the perception that the federal government is “taking over” healthcare.

Regarding the announcement, Secretary Sebelius said:

Under the Affordable Care Act, consumers and small businesses can be confident that the insurance plans they choose and purchase will cover a comprehensive and affordable set of health services. Our approach will protect consumers and give states the flexibility to design coverage options that meet their unique needs.

(more…)

There is a lot of talk, during these pre-presidential election days, of whether Republicans should stick to fiscal policy issues or include social issues as well in their platforms. Liberals are attacking fiscal/social conservatives, and some “establishment” Republicans are also criticizing their socially conservative colleagues, fearful that Independents will be turned off by the thought that Republicans are appearing rigid, strict, and hard.

Political strategy aside, however, what often strikes me about these debates, which always seem centered on how conservative Republicans are trying to force their social views on the nation, is that liberals do it all the time and are successful at it. Their belief that the government should take care of everyone, from birth till death, has permeated our national policies and slowly destroyed our economic stability.

Nowhere, in this most liberal of all administrations, is the forcing of liberal social ideology on the nation more clearly visible than in Obamacare, and in the person of Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), who will be the most powerful woman in the United States if Barack Obama is re-elected in 2012.

As many of us heard earlier in the month, the Obama administration has approved a recommendation from the Institute of Medicine that the new healthcare law guarantee full health insurance coverage for birth control, including the “morning after” pill. Beginning August 1, 2012, health insurance plans will be required to provide full coverage- without co-payment, co-insurance, or deductible- not only for contraception, but also for breast-feeding support and other services. Ms. Sebelius said, “I want to thank the Institute of Medicine for providing this important report recommending additional preventive services for women’s health and well-being. This report is historic.”

According to Ms. Sebelius:

(more…)

The Senate is debating the future of American health care, yet one very important issue has yet to get a full and fair debate.  Is the individual mandate that forces citizens to purchase health care insurance a constitutional power of the federal government?  When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) was asked this question, she answered with the non sequitur “are you serious?”  Conservatives who respect the idea that the constitution maps out a federal government with limited powers would answer with a loud — “Hell No.”

The Heritage Foundation and the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) recently released legal analysis calling into serious question the constitutionality of the Congress’s plan to force all citizens to purchase health insurance.  These conservative institutions argue that the unprecedented idea, a mandate that all Americans be forced into a contractual agreement with a private party for health insurance, is not a constitutionally permissible activity by the federal government.  My sources tell me that this issue will be raised during the Senate debate on ObamaCare very soon and may open another front in the war against ObamaCare.  (more…)

Just after 11pm EST, the House of Representatives passed the 2,000+ page Pelosi Health Care bill by a vote of 220-215. 39 Democrats were given the opportunity to vote no, in what will go down in history as the most ’structured’ roll call of all time. (1 GOP member, Rep. Cao from New Orleans voted with the Democrats.) The Senate is unlikely to take up any health care reform legislation this year. With unemployment expected to stay above 10% through at least the early part of next year, it isn’t certain the Senate will ever take it up.

(more…)

Congress is moving closer to enacting a law requiring all Americans to purchase health insurance. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says that this is “like paying taxes.”

He’s right about that. But Hoyer made this statement as part of an effort to justify the health-care mandate on constitutional grounds. Here he indicates that he doesn’t understand the Constitution that he took an oath to support.

When asked what power the Constitution gives to Congress to enact this legislation, Hoyer claimed that it came from the Constitution’s “general welfare” clause.

Article One, section eight says that Congress can “lay and collect taxes… to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.”

But what defines the “general welfare”?

(more…)

As the Senate Finance Committee completed its work on a bill that would greatly expand the government’s role in health care – requiring nearly everyone to buy insurance, and designing that insurance through subsidies and mandates – President Obama is trying to rally doctors to his side. At an event last week at the Rose Garden, phalanxed by doctors wearing their white coats (as well as some that White House staffers had handed out), Obama declared, “nobody has more credibility with the American people on this issue than you do.”

Dr. Benjamin Carson receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom

Yet one of the nation’s top surgeons, with credibility and acclaim the world over for the pioneering surgeries he has and his personal story of overcoming hardship, recently ripped the dominant health care legislation before Congress in a critique similar to that of conservatives and libertarians. Benjamin Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, Md., and recipient of numerous awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, criticized in a recent interview the approach of the current bills for their mandate, creation of a “public option,” and lack of malpractice liability reform. 

“My biggest problem is I feel it’s going in the wrong direction,” Carson told reporters at TV station WLOS in Asheville, N.C. (Video here.)“It’s giving us more government and less autonomy. And I think we should be going in exactly the opposite direction. We should be having more autonomy and less government. And that is the kind of thing that brings the prices down.”  (more…)