Great results from recent election

The results of the recent election show Americans do care about traditional values. Below is a recap from Focus on the Family president, Jim Daly.

The outcome of the 11/02 election is good for state marriage efforts and the hope of passing a federal ban on taxpayer funding of abortion.

- We were thrilled to learn that more than 50 pro-abortion House incumbents were replaced with an equal number of pro-life representatives--giving a no-taxpayer-funding-for-abortion bill even more support in the House.

- Incidentally, nine new pro-life House members are medical doctors.

On the state level:
- In Iowa, 3 state Supreme Court justices who previously ruled against traditional marriage were not retained, the first time a justice was not retained in Iowa since the retention process was started in 1962.

- There was also significant changes in several state legislatures. The chances of passing state marriage amendments are now stronger in Indiana, Minnesota, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

- In New Hampshire, conservative candidates have helped to flip both the House and Senate with a veto-proof majority. This is significant for marriage as it could signal a repeal of that state's same-sex marriage law.

- Pro-marijuana initiatives in California, South Dakota and Arizona all lost.

For a complete analysis visit Citizen Link.

What do they think?

photo credit {realsimple.com}

In the midst of our current health care reform, I keep wondering, what do our health care providers think?  Have any doctors or nurses been consulted before writing new legislative?  

Below are a few snippets from an article written by John D Lilly, MBA, D.O.; from the December issue of the Greene County Medical Society Journal.  I wish he would submit his article to the editor of the news paper...

Since 1969 numerous presidents have declared there was a health care crisis.  It is really a health care cost problem. It started in World War II when wage and price controls were in place and companies attracted new workers by offering health care benefits. Since then, we paid for hospital care principally through a cost-plus system of health care finance. That cost-plus system has evolved into a cost control phase with rules and restrictions written by impersonal bureaucracies far removed from the doctor-patient relationship. 

The difference between a normal marketplace and medical marketplace is striking. In a normal marketplace consumers spend their own money,  producers search for ways to reduce costs, individuals choose from diverse products, technological change is viewed as good for consumers and producers advertise price discounts and quality differences. 

In the medical marketplace consumers are usually spending someone else's money, physicians and hospitals increase costs to increase their income, most people who have health insurance are covered under an employer or government plan, third-party payers are increasing hostile to new technology, patients cannot find out the costs prior to admission and cannot read the hospital bill upon discharge and patients rarely can obtain information about the quality of physicians or hospitals.  

In a normal marketplace, like cell phones, quality increases and prices decrease with time. In the medical marketplace quality improvements are questionable and prices continue to rise.

Health care costs will never come under control until individual patients are put back in charge of making their own health care decisions with money that they control. We must also subject the health care sector to the rigors of competition and create market-based institutions. Health care costs cannot be controlled unless we empower individuals and make it in their self-interest to become prudent buyers of health care. 

This can best be achieved by promoting health savings accounts and eliminating Medicare reimbursement guidelines. It would be cheaper for the federal government to give every senior money to cover a health savings account each year. Insurance companies and physicians would then be forced to compete on price and quality.  Only a fundamental shift away from the cost-plus system will reduce health care costs and truly reform the system.

Wow!  Definitely a different approach than we're hearing on the news.  Hopefully more health care providers will continue to speak out. 

A follow up

I thought this article was very interesting...

After Viewing Abortion, Planned Parenthood Director Quits
from here

Last post on this topic!

A Right to Life

With all of the debate over health care reform, one particular issue stands out for me: not using federal dollars to subsidize abortions.  Below are a few snippets from an article that analyzes Obama's position on abortion for the past year.  Very strategic moves but a little sneaky too.  If you want to know what's really going on in our government pay attention!  Don't rely on Yahoo! to deliver the straight truth 100% of the time.

News story from POLITICO - "No easy way out for Dems on abortion"

On this hottest of hot-button social issues, few Democrats have positioned themselves as cautiously as Obama. Though his campaign-trail critics warned he would be the "most pro-abortion president in history," Obama has long presented abortion not as an ideological hand grenade but as a social challenge that can be tackled in a measured, nonpartisan way.

Since taking office, Obama has not backed off his support for abortion rights. Just days after his inauguration, Obama reversed the "Mexico City policy" banning federal funding to groups that discuss or provide abortions and withdrew restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. He nominated a lawyer to head his Office of Legal Counsel who once worked as legal director for the abortion-rights group NARAL and plucked a top political aide from the leadership of EMILY's List, the group that helps female candidates who support abortion rights.

When Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the White House tacitly signaled its confidence in her support for the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion, with press secretary Robert Gibbs telling reporters Obama spoke with his nominee about the concept of "settled law" and "left very comfortable with her interpretation of the Constitution."

But if Obama's policy choices have been aligned with a liberal agenda on abortion, he has also dutifully minimized opportunities for conflict with opponents of abortion. Obama first revealed his method when he signed the executive order yanking the Mexico City policy on funding for groups that provide abortion-related services — in a closed-press ceremony that avoided drawing attention to the policy shift.

 This is what I meant about sneaky...

Activists on the right say Obama's carefully parsed positions haven't won him any converts — but even they concede the president has succeeded in averting potentially volatile confrontations.

"He wants to say things that he thinks we want to hear," said Marjorie Dannenfelser, who heads the Susan B. Anthony List, a group that seeks to elect female candidates who oppose abortion. "I'm not talking about the pro-life movement; I'm talking about the vast majority of Americans who don't want to spend their money on abortion."

Call, email or fax your congressman today.  Tell them if you do not want your tax dollars used to provide abortions.