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Obamacare’s Patient-Dumping, Privacy-Meddling Scheme
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2012

The stench of Chicago cronyism over the White House just got fouler. Inhale this:

A shadowy $10 billion Obamacare agency with zero oversight just awarded first lady Michelle Obama’s pet patient-dumping scheme at the University of Chicago Medical Center a $5.9 million taxpayer-funded grant. It will enable Mrs. Obama’s cronies to build a government-sponsored electronic medical record-sharing system.

The Chicago program, known as the Urban Health Initiative, is run by one of President Obama’s closest golfing buddies, scandal magnet Eric Whitaker, who has been entangled with Illinois corruption celebrities Rod Blagojevich and Tony Rezko over the past decade.

Fun fact: Whitaker recently was named by author Edward Klein as the man who purportedly offered hate-mongering Rev. Jeremiah Wright $150,000 in hush money during the 2008 campaign. (More here.)

The nearly $6 million grant was announced last week by the “Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation” at the Department of Health and Human Services. White House watchdog journalist Keith Koffler notes that “some 3,000 applications were received for a share on the $1 billion in 3-year grants available. Only 26 programs were included in the first batch of awards doled out.” The administration grants circumvent any and all congressional deliberation as part of Team Obama’s election-year “We Can’t Wait” initiatives.

The grant recipients will help fulfill the mandated Obamacare vision of a centralized patient-record database with unprecedented federal oversight. The provision is being challenged in court by the Goldwater Institute for forcing Americans to share “with millions of strangers who are not physicians confidential private and personal medical history information they do not wish to share.”

HHS denies any favoritism, citing a “competitive, objective” process. But as I first reported in March, a Congressional Research Service analysis concluded that Obamacare’s Innovation Center is subject to no administrative or judicial review. The Innovation Center director is, in effect, a super-czar without any checks or balances on his grant-making decisions, methods or results.

I warned two months ago that the Obamacare Innovation Center and its multibillion-dollar slush fund smacked of “another pipeline for political payoffs and Chicago-style boodle that will result in less patient autonomy, fewer health-care choices, more government intrusion and lower-quality care.”

The University of Chicago Medical Center grant walks and talks like just such a political payoff. I have reported extensively on how Mrs. Obama helped engineer the Urban Health Initiative’s plan to offload low-income patients with non-urgent health needs. With consulting help from Obama senior adviser David Axelrod’s Chicago-based PR firm and the blessing of fellow Chicago pal Valerie Jarrett (who chaired the hospital’s board of trustees), Mrs. Obama sold the scheme to outsource low-income care to other facilities as a way to “dramatically improve health care for thousands of South Side residents.”

The program guaranteed “free” shuttle rides to and from the outside clinics. In truth, it was old-fashioned cost-cutting and favor-trading repackaged by a nonprofit, tax-exempt hospital as minority aid. Clearing out the poor freed up room for insured (i.e., more lucrative) patients.

Put on your shocked faces: The first Catholic college has announced it is dropping its student health insurance plan in the wake of the White House refusal to repeal the religious liberty-sabotaging Obamacare birth control/abortion mandate.

Life News has the scoop:

Franciscan University appears to be the first casualty of the new Obama HHS mandate that requires Catholic colleges, groups and businesses to pay for drugs that may cause abortions and birth control for their employees.

Although President Barack Obama declared “If you like your health care coverage you can keep it,” when it came to passing Obamacare, a Catholic college in Ohio has determined it will no longer offer a student health insurance plan.

“The Obama Administration has mandated that all health insurance plans must cover “women’s health services” including contraception, sterilization, and abortion-causing medications as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA),” the university says in a new post on its website. “Up to this time, Franciscan University has specifically excluded these services and products from its student health insurance policy, and we will not participate in a plan that requires us to violate the consistent teachings of the Catholic Church on the sacredness of human life.”

More from the school’s website:

Due to these changes in regulation by the federal government, beginning with the 2012-13 school year, the University 1) will no longer require that all full-time undergraduate students carry health insurance, 2) will no longer offer a student health insurance plan, and 3) will no longer bill those not covered under a parent/guardian plan or personal plan for student health insurance. The current student health insurance plan will expire on August 15, 2012.

Destroying private health insurance was always the goal of health care “reform“.

Always.

That super-expensive health care law is paying out already. With the election less than six months away, the Obama administration wants you to know that they passed it, and now we’re finding out what’s in it: cash money!

The Department of Health and Human Services is now instructing insurers to make something clear in the first paragraph of customer premium rebates explanations: “This letter is to inform you that you will receive a rebate of a portion of your health insurance premiums. This rebate is required by the Affordable Care Act — the health reform law”:

The move is the latest sign the Obama administration is trying to draw attention to the law’s benefits before the fall elections, even though the law faces an uncertain future. The Supreme Court is expected to decide in June whether its central plank-a mandate that everyone carry insurance-violates the Constitution. Mitt Romney, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, has pledged to wipe out the law if elected.

Under the 2010 legislation, insurers that don’t spend a specified amount of revenue on actual medical care — as opposed to administrative costs — must refund the difference to customers. The nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation has projected refunds would total about $1.3 billion and go to roughly 16 million people who buy their own policies or get them through an employer.

Kaiser estimates checks would range from an average of $72 for those with insurance through a large employer to an average of $127 for those who bought individual policies.

Too bad they’re not quite as gung ho to assign credit when they’re extracting money from us:

–“This huge tax bill is brought to you in part by the stimulus, proud parent program of Solyndra.”

–“Your children and great-grandchildren are hereby presented with the tab for their share of the $16 trillion debt courtesy of government entitlement programs.”

–“Additional sales tax on this item due to extreme cost over-runs on construction of the ‘Train to Nowhere.’”

–“This $695 fine brought to you by Obamacare™.”

Some things we’ll never see…

Feminists really know how to come up with ways for us to provide touching tributes to our moms, don’t they?

The National Women’s Law Center has a fun, exciting and indeed ironic way to way to celebrate Mother’s Day this year: birth control stories!

On Monday noted contraception activist and Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke took to Twitter to encourage like-minded women to share their contraception stories for the day honoring moms across the country.

“The stories of the past prepare us for the fights of today! @NWLC is collecting Mother’s Day stories re: #contraception http://bit.ly/JjXcq1,” Fluke tweeted.

The feminist NWLC is collecting and publishing stories about the birth control struggles of moms and grandmas this week — in the process stoking a narrative that women’s access to birth control is on the brink.

Ah yes, this Sunday, there’s no better way to say “I love you mom” than by telling her that the mean GOP refused to fund your $9 a month birth control, but you banged that Occupy Wall Street loser she warned you about anyway, and that’s why she has a grandchild to raise. Damn those anti-women Republicans!

This will generate some genuine Hallmark moments.

On May 2nd I received a news release from NuVo Condoms announcing that they “will donate condoms to any high school administration that would like to have a free supply of condoms available to distribute to students before their school prom.” The offer can also be found on their website, so—no—I am not making this up.

Two thoughts collided in my brain when I read that. First, I thought it was a devilishly clever public relations and marketing gambit. The second was that high school proms have apparently changed a great deal since I attended mine in 1955. The 1950s reflected the morals of the time when even a married couple on television like Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez of “I Love Lucy” could be seen to share a bed.

Another factor that altered the sex lives of teenagers and adults was the introduction in the 1960s of the birth control pill. It was Margaret Sanger, an early advocate of birth control who underwrote the research necessary, raising $150,000 for the project and it was Frank Colton and Carl Djerassi who came up with the first oral contraceptives, thus earning themselves a spot in the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

In the 1950s the condom was still the best way to prevent pregnancy and for many young men carrying one in their wallets it denoted their readiness. Suffice to say an unwanted pregnancy then and now was sufficient reason to avoid unprotected sex. Abortion was still against the law until January 22, 1973 when the Supreme Court in Roe v Wade concluded that women had a right to abort an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy.

One might conclude that a lot has changed but you might also be wrong. The Guttmacher Institute has been studying sexual and reproductive health worldwide and in a February 2012 fact sheet on “American teens’ sexual and reproductive health” they report that, while on the average young people have sex for the first time at about age 17, they do not marry until their mid-20s.

“In 2006-2010, the most common reason that sexually inexperienced teens gave for not having had sex was that it was ‘against religion or morals’ (38% among females and 31% among males). The second and third most common reasons for females were ‘don’t want to get pregnant’ and ‘haven’t found the right person yet.’”

Despite the popular notion that today’s teens are sexually promiscuous, even “among sexually experienced teens, 70% of females and 56% of males report first having sex with a steady partner, while 16% of females and 28% of males report first having sex with someone they just met or who was just a friend.”

Throughout history raging hormones have always been at odds with societal prohibitions, mostly advocated by religious institutions and by parents who are concerned for their children’s welfare and future. In present times, too, there is a greater awareness of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) though the message has not reached as many teens as you might imagine.

Nuvo condoms say its message is about “having a positive, fun yet responsible approach to sexuality and sexual relationships.” Their proposal to provide free condoms to schools having a prom poses a moral dilemma. If the schools offer the condoms they are in effect condoning teen sex.

SCREENSHOT

Jacob Stieler dances with a friend.

A Michigan couple continues to be harassed by the Michigan Department of Human Resources because they’ve chosen to stop dosing their child with cancer-causing drugs prescribed by Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital.

Hospital officials filed a complaint with the Department of Human Services against Kenneth and Erin Stieler after they decided to discontinue their son Jacob’s treatment for Ewing sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer, after a PET scan showed no signs of cancer. The radiation and chemotherapy he was taking left him physically weak, nauseated and depressed, Erin Stieler told The Grand Rapids Press when the DHS first went after the couple in late 2011.

“Several times he told me he wanted to fall asleep and never wake up,” Erin Stieler said. “He said it would be easier if he were in heaven and didn’t have to deal with this.”

The Stielers researched the drugs 10-year-old Jacob was being given and determined that they were harmful. “Chemo is poison. I’m not going to subject my child to that, especially if there is no evidence of cancer,” Erin Stieler told the newspaper.

The chemotherapy chemicals mandated by the State include ifosfamide, etoposide and doxorubicin — carcinogenic drugs that the Food and Drug Administration has said have never been proven safe for children or been shown to be effective against the type of cancer Jacob has. But hospital doctors claim Jacob must continue taking the drugs or risk dying from cancer.

Even though lower courts have twice ruled in the Stielers’ favor and Jacob has been cancer-free for almost a year, DHS officials have continued to push the Michigan court system with appeals.

DHS claims in its appeals that Jacob’s health situation is urgent. Yet its actions seem more a form of harassment, because DHS waited 55 days after first being contacted by the hospital before it filed the initial complaint and twice waited the maximum number of days possible before filing appeals.

Apparently, health and government officials in Michigan do not believe that parents are qualified to make health decisions for their children. In Michigan last year, you may remember, a SWAT Team surrounded a Detroit home and kidnapped a 13-year-old girl because the girl’s mother stopped giving the child an antipsychotic drug — on the advice of a physician — that had been prescribed by another doctor at a health clinic. The girl was finally returned to the mother, but not until the child had been sexually assaulted while in State custody.

The medical mafia goon squad claims to want to help people, but its cures are worse than the disease. And the media mafia never tells you the true way to health is a proper diet of fresh organic fruits and vegetables and no processed foods.

It also doesn’t tell you that the pharmacists that mix the toxic poisons prescribed to “cure” cancer are dying from cancer caused by the poisons they handle.

As the “Affordable Care Act” continues to be exposed as anything but, we’ll be seeing increasing numbers of current and former members of Congress claiming to have been the “lone voice of opposition” to party leaders bent on passing Obamacare so we could find out what’s in it. Outgoing Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank is one of them:

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) thought President Obama was making a “mistake” in pressing for healthcare reform in 2010 and urged the White House to back off after Democrats lost their 60-seat majority in the Senate, the congressman tells New York magazine.

“I think we paid a terrible price for healthcare,” Frank told the magazine in a lengthy interview as he prepares to retire at the end of his 16th term. “I would not have pushed it as hard. As a matter of fact, after [Sen.] Scott Brown [R-Mass.] won [in January 2010], I suggested going back. I would have started with financial reform, but certainly not healthcare.”

Democrats lost 66 House seats in the 2010 midterm elections. One political science paper estimated that about 25 of those losses could be linked directly to voting in favor of the healthcare reform law.

Barney didn’t think it was a big enough mistake to vote against, however.

Frank went on to claim that it isn’t Obamacare per se that is unpopular, but instead blamed opposition to the law on the selfishness of people who already have health care:

“When you try to extend healthcare to people who don’t have it, people who have it and are on the whole satisfied with it get nervous,” Frank said. “The problem with healthcare is this: Healthcare is enormously important to people. When you tell them that you’re going to extend healthcare to people who don’t now have it, they don’t see how you can do that without hurting them. So I think he underestimated, as did Clinton, the sensitivity of people to what they see as an effort to make them share the healthcare with poor people.”

To Barney Frank, no such thing as bad or incompetent legislation emerges from the left side of the aisle — it’s just that the public is too stupid and greedy to allow themselves to comprehend the genius.

As the law is implemented, those who pushed Obamacare are forced to ask “are you going to believe us or your lying eyes?” The public to a great degree is believing the latter, which to the left means it’s well past time for a government takeover of the ophthalmology industry.

From the UK Telegraph:

The therapy, which targets a molecule found in 90 per cent of all cancers, could provide a universal injection that allows patients’ immune systems to fight off common cancers including breast and prostate cancer. Preliminary results from early clinical trials have shown the vaccine can trigger an immune response in patients and reduce levels of disease. The scientists behind the vaccine now hope to conduct larger trials in patients to prove it can be effective against a range of different cancers. They believe it could be used to combat small tumours if they are detected early enough or to help prevent the return and spread of disease in patients who have undergone other forms of treatment such as surgery. Cancer cells usually evade patient’s immune systems because they are not recognised as being a threat. While the immune system usually attacks foreign cells such as bacteria, tumours are formed of the patient’s own cells that have malfunctioned. . . .

PHOTOS.COM

Two corporations with news organizations that regularly cover President Barack Obama and his policies got money from the Obamacare slush fund.

A provision in the Obamacare bill gives the Administration of Barack Obama a taxpayer-funded $5 billion slush fund to dole out to favored businesses, labor unions and States to pay for health insurance for early retirees. Two recipients of those funds are The Washington Post Company and CBS Corporation.

The fund is the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP), and about $2 billion of the fund’s total — which is supposed to last until 2014 when the Obamacare taxes begin to kick in — has been doled out already. It is projected that the fund will be exhausted before the end of the year.

But it’s noteworthy that two corporations with news organizations that regularly cover Obama and his policies are recipients of the largess. The Washington Post Company, the parent of The Washington Post, received $573,217. CBS Corporation owns CBS News and raked in $722,388.

House Republicans are asking questions of the Administration in an effort to learn what criteria it uses to determine who gets what.

Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) told The Daily Caller in an email: “It is fine with me if they continue covering the ObamaCare debate. When NBC used to cover energy issues, they identified themselves as a subsidiary of General Electric. CBS and Washington Post just have to disclose that they are subsidiaries of the Obama Administration.”

And House Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) emailed The Daily Caller with this: “This program is providing ‘free’ money to corporations, states, unions, and pension plans. In addition, the Washington Post and CBS received funding under this program. How can the Washington Post and CBS be impartial on the issue of health care when they received funding under the health care law?”

Of course, it’s been a long time since the MSM displayed any sense of impartiality.