Just as ObamaCare, on a nationwide basis, forces relatively healthy and/or younger people to buy overly expensive health insurance in order to subsidize less healthy and/or older people, legislation just signed by California Gov. Jerry Brown requires insurance companies to cover fertility treatment for homosexuals.
“Reproductive medicine is for everybody’s benefit. To restrict fertility coverage solely to heterosexual married couples violates California’s non-discrimination laws. I wrote this bill to correct that.” -- Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, an openly homosexual Democrat representing San Francisco
Although the new law defines “infertility” as “the inability to conceive a pregnancy or to carry a pregnancy to a live birth after a year or more of regular sexual relations without contraception,” the language of the law does NOT make clear if two men having anal sex regularly for a year, to no avail, meets this criteria.
The legislation, AB460, clarifies the non-discrimination provision of an existing state law that requires health plans to offer coverage for fertility treatments, except for in vitro fertilization.
Neither Ammiano's office nor advocacy groups that supported the bill could say how many same-sex couples might be denied coverage in a given year in California but said it's a common complaint. Even without in vitro fertilization, fertility treatments are expensive, costing hundreds or thousands of dollars per cycle.
The new law, which takes effect in January, states that insurance plans offering coverage for fertility treatments cannot discriminate on any basis, including "domestic partner status, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, marital status ... sex or sexual orientation."
Most fertility treatments, including some that cost tens of thousands of dollars, are included, such as “diagnosis, diagnostic tests, medication, surgery, and gamete intrafallopian transfer.” Although the law covers artificial insemination, it specifically excludes in vitro fertilization.
"The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recently released updated clinical guidelines on assessment and treatment for people with fertility problems. Included in the guidelines are definitions for when men and women in same-sex relationships not having vaginal intercourse should be eligible for assessment and possible treatment for infertility. Specifically, the clinical guidelines state that “for same-sex couples, failure to conceive after 6 cycles of [artificial insemination] within the 12 past months should be the indication for further assessment,” according to an analysis of the bill by the California Health Benefits Review Program.
The report noted that AB460’s “impact on costs is unknown,” including whether the additional costs of providing fertility treatment to gays and unmarried individuals will shift to other public or private premium payers.
The San Francisco Health Commission has expanded its universal health care covering patients suffering gender identity, but NOT by providing counseling and treatment for their mental illness, but rather by providing hormone and other treatments exacerbating their problems, and now as well as surgery to remove healthy female breasts, male and female genitalia, etc.
The city’s Health Commission voted Tuesday to create a comprehensive program for treating transgender people experiencing mental distress because of the mismatch between their bodies and their gender identities. San Francisco already provides transgender residents with hormones, counseling and routine health services, but has stopped short of offering surgical interventions, Public Health Director Barbara Garcia said Thursday after the vote was announced.
The idea for a new program that included surgeries came out of conversations between public health officials and transgender rights advocates who wanted mastectomies, genital reconstructions and other surgeries that are recommended for some transgender people covered under San Francisco’s 5-year-old universal health care plan.
San Francisco became the first city in the nation to offer universal health care to its citizens through the Healthy SF program, which provides government subsidized health services to uninsured residents. Now, with a unanimous vote of the San Francisco Health Commission, the Healthy SF program will extend to transgender patients.
A report by LGBT [Gay Agenda] advocacy group Human Rights Campaign noted that in 2004, only one percent of Fortune 500 companies offered transgender-inclusive health insurance policies. By 2011, that number had grown to 25 percent.
The San Francisco already offers transgender-inclusive plans to city employees.
Backers say it will help ease the mental anguish of people who feel they are trapped in bodies of the wrong gender, but critics wonder why the taxpayers should foot the bill.
“Taxpayers cannot afford this, as there are unintended costs and unintended consequences unrelated to the actual surgery, such as their longer-term hormone treatment, psychology needs and other longer term health issues,” said Thomas Moyer, a City by the Bay resident and author of “A Conservative Survival Guide to San Francisco.”
“This surgery is not an essential health function, especially when it would be taking money away from those suffering from chronic illnesses like cancer, Aids, and heart disease,” Moyer said. “We are already stretched too thin as San Francisco is facing a budget deficit and won't be able to afford the costs of this.”
"This decision will help get critically needed medical care to countless transgender Americans. More and more medical authorities finally agree: nobody should be denied healthcare simply because of who they are," said Herndon Graddick, president of GLAAD [a Gay Agenda advocacy organization].
In May this year, Argentina approved a law that would give people a right to change their gender and even get required surgeries covered by medical plans.
With the Supreme Court interpretation of ObamaCare as a constitutional tax, the federal taxpayer funding of abortion is transparent, and everyone who promised that Americans wouldn't be forced to pay for abortions, has been proved wrong.
“It’s a tremendous incursion on our freedom of religion, and it’s also abhorrent to those of us who believe that abortion is the greatest social injustice that mankind has every seen.”
The court ruled in a 5-4 decision that the individual mandate is a tax and that Congress has the constitutional authority to levy taxes.
“Once again we are faced with another decision – just like with slavery, just like abortion – the Supreme Court’s got it wrong,” [Students for Life of America Executive Director Kristan] Hawkins said, adding that voting for pro-life candidates in the 2012 election is vital to the fight to end abortion on demand.
Under the enacted law, federal tax-based subsidies will begin in 2014 to subsidize millions of private insurance plans that will cover abortion-on-demand, including some plans (“multi-state plans”) that will be administered by the federal government. Under another provision of the law, the federal government could even order many plans that do not receive federal subsidies to cover abortion as a “preventive” service. The law also created an array of other mechanisms and funding pipelines by which access to and subsidies for abortion can be expanded if President Obama wins a second term.
Abortion is woven into the healthcare law in several ways that must now be addressed including:
* Failing to prohibit the use of federal tax dollars for abortion, abortion coverage, and abortion-inducing drugs and devices. * Pretending that the Hyde Amendment protections were enough to prohibit direct payment for abortions. * Permitting federally-subsidized Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) to provide abortion coverage through the state insurance exchanges required in all 50 states. * Failing to prohibit all multi-state qualified health plans from providing coverage for abortion. * Including a “preventive care” mandate that is being used to force coverage of drugs and devices known to end life. * Failing to provide comprehensive First Amendment conscience protections for individuals, employers, and insurance companies that have religious or moral objections to abortion.
[National Right to Life President Carol] Tobias said today’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding most of the ObamaCare law is a call-to-action for the right-to-life electorate to work to elect a Congress and president this November committed to repealing ObamaCare in 2013, in order to prevent a future in which abortion insurance will be heavily subsidized by federal taxpayers and federal bureaucrats will be authorized to ration life-saving medical treatment.
Of the decision, Family Research Council Legal Counsel Ken Klukowski, J.D., made the following comments:
"The Supreme Court has today given the federal government unlimited authority to use its tax power to require Americans to engage in specific commercial activity. The obvious implication is chilling: Uncle Sam can make you buy anything, at any price, for any reason."
Of the Supreme Court's decision, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins made the following comments:
"The Obama administration has created, for the first time in American history, new federal regulations that toss aside the constitutional right to religious freedom by forcing religious institutions and employers to pay for abortion-causing drugs, contraceptives and sterilizations."
While the media focus on "Occupy Wall Street" involving a few dozen ill-informed anarchists, these liberal "journalists" ignore thousands, across America, speaking against an intrusive federal government trampling on religious liberty.
A single exception: CBS News posted one story several days late, countering the rallies.
Demonstrators gathered on Capitol Hill Friday afternoon decried the Obama administration's policy to require private health insurance plans to cover contraception as a violation of religious freedom.
The rally was affiliated with more than 100 other demonstrations under the same name taking place across the country. The issue has united multiple faiths, with evangelical, Orthodox Jewish, Roman Catholic and Mormon leaders recently forming networks in every state dedicated to promoting religious liberty, starting with their opposition to the mandate.
But Jennifer Miller, a vice president at Planned Parenthood in Trenton, said the rallies were being held by extremist groups that have a long history of attacking women's health.
Hundreds gathered in New York City's Financial District on Friday to attend the Stand Up for Religious Freedom rally, held in protest of President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
The protest, led by the Pro-Life Action League and Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, was held in 160 cities Friday, including Los Angeles, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Miami. Opponents of Obamacare say it violates the Constitution's First Amendment right of freedom of religion.
A similar nationwide anti-Obamacare rally was held in March and, according to event organizers, 63,000 people in about 130 cities turned out to express their discontent with the HHS mandate
On a few occasions, the crowd, just outside the Capitol, chanted in unison. But the words weren't the sort you'll hear at Sunday Mass.
"We will not comply! We will not comply!" they yelled. Some wore "Don't Tread on Me" shirts. One leader of this Rally for Religious Freedom on Friday lamented over the speakers, "In America, unfortunately, there's a rule against everything."
The cultural Left is turning the Catholic faithful into anti-authoritarians.
This is how the culture war generally plays out these days: The Left uses government to force religious people and cultural conservatives to violate their consciences, and then cries "theocracy" when conservatives object.
What should have been obvious is becoming clearer to religious conservatives: Government is always a rival, and often an enemy, of religion.
To read the entire opinion column above, CLICK HERE.
“Stand up for Religious Freedom” rallies were held in Little Rock and other cities across the country to protest an upcoming federal mandate that most businesses and institutions provide health insurance coverage for birth control. Religious hospitals are exempt from the mandate, but other institutions are not.
Speakers included Jerry Cox, president of the Christian conservative Family Council, who told the crowd that “there is a war on religious freedom.”
The Rev. Mark Evans, senior pastor at the Church at Rock Creek in Little Rock, said religious denominations are not the issue because any assault on religious liberty is wrong and should be opposed.
In La Crosse [Wisconsin] more than 100 people showed up to express their beliefs.
Democratic Party Chair Vicki Burke did comment on the rally saying;
“What they are upset with is just an individual part of Obama care. I think it’s fair and that insurance companies should be required to provide health care for women.”
"My message is we need to stick together as a country. We need to bring God back into our lives, period," said [Kathleen] Hehir.
We're trying to give the message that this is about religious freedom, not about abortion, not about contraceptives. It's about freedom, we want to practice our religion openly," said Jeff Vespo, St. Williams Knights of Columbus.
More than 1,000 people at a rally in downtown Detroit on Friday amplified their opposition to the Obama administration’s contraception mandate, saying it attacks religious beliefs and encourages sexually promiscuity.
The heavy Catholic- and Christian-influenced Stand Up for Religious Freedom rally, one of 160 across the nation and nine in Michigan, was held to protest the Health and Human Services policy that forces even religious-based institutions such as hospitals and universities to provide birth-control coverage in health care plans.
Speakers and attendees said they worry the government could further encroach on religious freedom.
Speaker Stacy Swimp, president of the Frederick Douglas Society, said the mandate is part of “the nefarious agenda of Planned Parenthood.”
Nearly 400 people turned out for the rally that was part of the Stand Up for Religious Freedom movement, a loose coalition of religious and conservative entities that has organized simultaneous demonstrations in more than 160 U.S. cities.
With anti-abortion pamphlets doubling as fans in the South Florida sun, the crowd shouted “Christ is risen!” and “Viva Cristo el Rey!” as Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski took the microphone. First in English and then briefly in Spanish, he defended the separation of church and state as a protection for religion and criticized this “unprecedented intrusion” on religious freedom.
Other Catholic, Protestant and Jewish speakers echoed his message and led the crowd in patriotic songs. There were no representatives from other religions, although organizers said that all were welcome.
Nearly 200 people gathered on the Linden Street side of Courthouse Square on June 8 at noon to join over 155 other cities across the country for a rally to “Stand Up for Religious Freedom.”
Coinciding with the 223rd anniversary of the day James Madison introduced the Bill of Rights to the First Congress, the rally’s main purpose is to protest the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, labeled “Obamacare” by critics, that will require all employer health care plans “to provide free contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs, regardless of any moral or religious objections,” according to literature by the Pro-Life Action League handed out at the rally by local organizer Mary Ann Haas of West Scranton.
“This is not a political rally. This is not a Catholic rally. This is not a contraception rally. This is for freedom of religion, that we can believe what we choose to believe. This doesn’t limit anyone. This doesn’t trample on anyone’s rights, and I think that the most perfect persons that I could think of are here today to express those feelings,” Haas emphasized.
On Friday, hundreds of residents from western Wayne County . . . participated in a Stand Up for Religious Freedom prayer rally at the corner of Five Mile and Levan, across from St. Mary Mercy Hospital.
The Archdiocese of Detroit has scheduled a Mass at 4 p.m. Sunday, June 24, at the Cathedral of Most Blessed Sacrament in Detroit as part of Fortnight for Freedom, scheduled June 21 through July 4, by the U.S. Conference of Bishops.
Dr. Miguel Lis-Planells, a neurosurgeon at the Michigan Head and Spine Institute in Southfield and vice chair of neurosurgery at Sinai Grace Hospital, said the U.S. is “less tolerant of God” and that marriage and family “are under attack.”
More than 100 Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally protesters gathered on the Monroe County Courthouse lawn Friday to express opposition to the United States Department of Health and Human Services’ mandate issued in January.
As speakers prayed into a microphone, the protesters bowed their heads in silence. From the elderly in wheelchairs to young children, attendees held cardboard signs that read, “your freedom is next,” “Stop Obama’s HHS mandate” and “stand up for your religious freedom.”
The Bloomington protest, which was organized by IU Jacobs School of Music student Martha Sliva, 18, was part of a nationwide movement. With the closest protest in Indianapolis, Sliva said she organized the event to inform the Bloomington and IU communities.
In more than 150 cities throughout the nation, more than 10,000 people rallied against the HHS mandate during the second Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally. The first rally was in March.
“The people want to have their liberties back and they don’t like to see religious institutions, particularly the Catholic Church, have to be forced to deny their sincerely held faith and the doctrine of their faith in order to be in compliance with government because at that point who is God?” [Minnesota Congresswoman Michele] Bachmann said.
“That’s really the issue at hand and we cannot have this change that Barack Obama has put forward and that’s why you see the people here today who are working very hard to make sure they can hold on to their religious liberties,” Bachmann said.
“This is the line in the sand,” she said. “This is our fundamental right for religious liberty. It is why the Pilgrims came to this country, to have religious freedom. Barack Obama is taking away that basic right from the American people. So, of course, we’re going to stand."
With the help of the British National Health Service, Katie and Andy Matthews' Christmas gift to their 9-year-old daughter Megan is a brother whose body components, it is hoped, will save her life.
“To manufacture a person in this way is to offend against the respect that is due to the integrity of that person, no matter how compelling the goal of trying to cure.”
Toddler Max Matthews . . . became the first ‘saviour sibling’ to be created in the UK after doctors cultivated embryos that could provide stem cells to treat Megan’s condition.
Now, blood taken from 17-month-old Max’s umbilical cord and bone marrow has been successfully used in a transplant for Megan, who suffers from Fanconi anaemia and was not expected to live beyond seven years old.
The £6,000 procedure that led to Max’s birth was paid for by the NHS as a last chance to help Megan.
While saviour siblings have been born before with the help of U.S. laboratories, this is the first time medics have carried out the entire process in the UK.
Doctors had initially tested Megan’s existing brother, Stuart, 11, only to find he was not a match to treat his sister against the effects of Fanconi’s Anaemia, a rare and inherited disease which made her likely to get cancer.
Her parents carried out a worldwide search for a potential bone marrow donor, but without success.
They then looked at a special fertility group’s tissue typing programme and underwent a single round of IVF in Nottingham to produce six embryos, which were tested for the disease and to find a possible match.
Two of the embryos were found to be free of the disease and a tissue match, and these were transferred to the mother. [. . . and the other four embryos???]
Doctors who are atheist or agnostic are twice as likely to make decisions that could end the lives of their terminally ill patients, compared to doctors who are very religious, according to a new study in Britain.
Dr. Clive Seale, a professor at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, conducted a random mail survey of more than 3,700 doctors across Britain, of whom 2,923 reported on how they took care of their last terminal patient.
Many of the doctors surveyed were neurologists, doctors specializing in the care of the elderly, and palliative care, though other specialists like family doctors, were also included.
To ensure doctors are acting in accordance with their patients' wishes, Seale wrote that "nonreligious doctors should confess their predilections to their patients."
Seale also found that doctors who were religious were much less likely to have talked about end of life treatment decisions with their patients.
Physicians in the U.K. who reported being very or extremely religious were less likely to endorse certain end-of-life decisions, including continuous deep sedation and initiation of treatment that would be expected to shorten life, Clive Seale, PhD, of Queen Mary, University of London, reported online in BMJ.
"One potential response to the findings about the influence of religious faith is to suggest, as others have done, that religious doctors disclose their moral objections to certain procedures to patients so that patients can choose other doctors if they wish," Seale wrote.
Obamacare has landed in Denver, where doctors at a pain-management clinic have been told they must stop treating patients with a successful process that extracts their own adult stem cells, cultivates them and then reinjects them to stimulate growth in damaged limbs.
The FDA asserted its authority on 6 August, when it requested a federal injunction from the US District Court of the District of Columbia to prevent stem-cell clinic Regenerative Sciences in Broomfield, Colorado, from preparing its treatments. The company isolates, cultures and processes adult stem cells from a patient's bone marrow or synovial fluid. Doctors then inject the cells to treat fractures, torn tendons and other ailments.
In July 2008, the FDA told Regenerative Sciences that its treatments are drugs according to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, and biological products under the Public Health Service Act. But the company did not apply for FDA approval and continued to offer the treatment. Now the agency says that the company is not following good manufacturing practice, and that the treatment's safety and efficacy is unproven.
But Christopher Centeno, Regenerative Sciences' medical director, argues that as the treatment uses a patient's own stem cells, it is a medical procedure akin to in vitro fertilization, and therefore none of the FDA's business.
Centano confirms his work provides a much less costly and significantly more convenient alternative to knee or hip joint replacement surgeries, which sometimes require a year or more of recuperation.
But the Food and Drug Administration, in the wake of the adoption of President Obama's plan to nationalize health-care decision making, has ordered the company to halt, because the federal agency views the process as making "drugs."
Karen Midthun, acting director for the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in the announcement, "FDA recognizes the importance of the development of novel and promising new therapies. However, when companies like Regenerative Sciences fail to comply with FDA laws and regulations, they put the public's health at risk."
Centano told WND that despite the company's repeated efforts [since 2008] to obtain a resolution in the disagreement, the FDA continually declined to respond – until Obamacare was adopted.
Now the federal agency has moved to "enjoin" the company's operations, and Centano told WND his company will fight.
"I think what we're seeing is a massive federalist move here," he told WND. "I think this represents that [for] Obamacare to work there has to be strict federal control over medicine. . . . The government is trying to get more and more positive control over what your doctor does or doesn't do."
40 year-old Raymond Harwood had £60,000 of surgery last year but recently the government lacked the £8,000 for surgery for breast implants so he could fully become Miranda Lee, so Raymond/Miranda threatened to sue.
“They should do top and bottom, not just half. It will cost the NHS more money if they don’t settle out of court,” she said.
Miss Lee, who is unemployed and had her male genitalia removed and her voice altered to make her sound more like a woman.
But when Miss Lee asked for a further £8,000 for cosmetic surgery, to complete what she described as her transition to being a "real woman", it was refused because the trust said there was not enough money.
"Infertility is a disease, and we need more ways in which we can combat it as a disease," said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Democrat and co-sponsor of a "family building" bill that would require insurance companies to cover infertility services.
Infertility affects a "staggering" one in eight couples, the congresswoman said, but just 15 states require such health insurance coverage.
A companion family-building bill has been offered in the Senate by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, New York Democrat.
Federal data show that an estimated 7.3 million women, aged 15 to 44, struggle with "impaired fecundity," which means they have trouble getting pregnant or sustaining a pregnancy.
Of married women in that age group, about 2 million are infertile, which means that they have not become pregnant despite 12 months of sexual activity without contraceptives.
Leading causes of infertility include sexually transmitted diseases, especially chlamydia and gonorrhea, which result in infections that scar delicate reproductive organs.
The UK government's universal health care system warns a baptist nurse "that she could be disciplined after a patient complained that she had offered to pray for her."
Guidance given by the NHS suggests staff could be sanctioned if they offer spiritual help to anyone who does not share their beliefs, according to the sponsors of a motion at the British Medical Association’s (BMA) annual representatives meeting in Liverpool.
The doctors will argue that the rules need clarifying to distinguish between those who try to offer religious support to patients as part of a programme of care and zealots who might target the infirm as potential converts.
The debate, which comes after the case of a nurse, Caroline Petrie, who given a warning earlier this year, will take place on Wednesday.
. . . a Department of Health document warns explicitly that disciplinary action could be taken against health staff discussing prayer with patients.
The NHS guidance says: "Members of some religions ... are expected to preach and to try to convert other people. In a workplace environment, this can cause many problems, as non-religious people and those from other religions or beliefs could feel harassed and intimidated by this behaviour.
"To avoid misunderstandings and complaints on this issue, it should be made clear to everyone from the first day of training and/or employment, and regularly restated, that such behaviour, notwithstanding religious beliefs, could be construed as harassment under the disciplinary and grievance procedures."
Christian Medical Association CEO Dr. David Stevens, M.D., agreed with statements from Senator Hillary Clinton this week that more Americans are open to the idea of "universal health care" because the nation's current health care system has deteriorated. However, the physician warns, there are still important principles Christians need to consider in thinking about a "universal health care" approach.
In Iowa this week, Senator Clinton told ABC's Good Morning America there was "no doubt about it" -- that the United States will have universal health care if she is elected president in 2008. Clinton said the American people will make universal health care an issue because of the failures of current health care coverage in America, which she sees as a whole different atmosphere than when she tried a universal coverage plan with husband and former President Bill Clinton in the early 90s.
Dr. Stevens of the Christian Medical Association (CMA) does agree that America's health care system is definitely broken. "It is costing us two and a half times more per person on health care in this country than other western countries, and in some instances our care is not as good," he points out.
Also, some of the same concerns physicians had about universal health care during Bill Clinton's administration are still valid now, the CMA spokesman adds. "Physicians were more concerned, especially in the early 90s, about increasing government control of health care and the bureaucracy that would result," the doctor says -- bureaucracy, he emphasizes, that may add up to 30 to 50 percent of health care costs and that makes decisions instead of giving patients choices in their health care coverage.
