The Benefit of the Doubt...

A few times over these past few days I’ve been tempted to close my facebook account. At other moments I’ve thought about deleting about half of my “friends.”

It’s not because we have a difference of beliefs when it comes to health care. Believe it or not, I don’t have a problem with that. As a former liberal I can understand how a person can believe what the far left believes. And I know that you can be a wonderful, compassionate person and be a democrat.

I know that most of my very liberal friends support health care because they feel that it is the compassionate choice. With many of them there’s a good chance that they haven’t given much thought to the issue of abortion, but they’ve given a lot of thought to the problems with health care in our country (and I agree 100% that there are huge problems and that reform is needed).

If you don’t really think about abortion you can follow the party line that “it’s not a life, it’s a choice.” If you delve much deeper the logic falls apart pretty quickly, but it’s really a subject that most people don’t want to take a long hard look at. It’s too ugly.

I try to give my friends the benefit of the doubt.

I wish they would return the favor (and I’m sure some of them do, however since they’re not loud and obnoxious, they aren’t the ones that stand out when I check my account).

In the past few days I’ve seen every person who doesn’t personally approve of the health care bill demonized and bashed. It’s kind of interesting that the worst attacks started after the bill had passed. If Life had won out I would have been celebrating and dancing around, not going on line and thinking up nasty things to write about the other side.

I’ve seen Christianity and Conservatives bashed and the logic behind the attacks makes me wonder if my “friends” are ever actually around either group. Maybe not. You can live in certain parts of California and have your exposure to non-radical groups be pretty limited. And when you do happen to run across someone who doesn’t share your beliefs you can make fun of them, or demonize them, or do both.

A lot of people seem to think that only the rich have a problem with this bill. That’s possibly why it seems to bother some people out there that I write about being pretty poor and disapproving of the bill (don’t I know I’m supposed to be grateful!). They can’t seem to understand that life is about more than money and that there are things other than money that motivate both sides.

I believe that most of my friends are motivated by compassion for the poor. That’s wonderful and I agree that something needs to be done in our country. I just wish they wouldn’t support an act that was intrinsically evil in their search for social justice. Social justice will never come from evil. The end in this case does not justify the means.

We need to think of the lives that will be lost, as well as the lives that will be saved and understand that the two can be reconciled. Just not with this president and this congress. They’re too devoted to keeping murder legal. And social justice will never exist when the blood of innocents are being poured out for votes.

Stand with Stupak!

I just stumbled across this link and thought some of you might be interested! Let the "Stupak 12" know that you support them and that this country does not want to pay for the slaughter of innocent babies!

And I posted the facebook link on my facebook too. I bet that's going to get me some interesting comments over there...

Sadie Frown of the Week: This Coalition of American Nuns

I just saw this over at the Lair of the Catholic Cavemen and share the feeling of disgust and disappointment in these so called "religious." These nuns definitely deserve a Sadie Frown:

A coalition of American nuns, claiming to represent over 50,000 members of women's religious orders, has broken with the country's Catholic bishops by coming out in support of the health-care reform legislation now pending in Congress....

"... This is politics; this isn't a question of faith and morals," said Sister Simone Campbell, the executive director of Network. Women religious have a direct interest in health-care reform, she added: "We are the ones who work every day with people who are suffering because they don't have health care."

Full Story Here.

I wonder when Sister Campbell began to believe that matters of life and death began to fall outside of the realm of "faith and morals." These women are either willfully blind to something that most of the country understands (that abortion is most definitely included in the language of the Senate Bill) or they're lying. Neither would surprise me at this point.

This is yet another example of why a Vatican Investigation of these orders was so desperately needed. It seems that these sisters are intent on building the case against themselves.

As for the last sentence of the piece, as someone who is basically uninsurable and has spent half of the last decade uninsured because of a injury (which could have been corrected through a surgery that Blue Cross of California deemed "experimental" back when I was insured and then used to deny me coverage) I can honestly say that even suffering without insurance has not caused me to support these bills. I'd rather be uninsurable than sell out and join the culture of death that these nuns are now very much a part of.

Medi-Cal! Finally! It's a Miracle!

I am so incredibly thrilled right now. On Thursday we had yet another intake application meeting with a social worker for Medi-CAl. This time the social worker was the one that Paul is friends with and she's very nice. She was great with the application, and the meeting went pretty quickly since they already had copies of pretty much every singe document that we have from the last two times around and everything was done in about forty five minutes. We thanked her for all of her help (especially for being so nice and helpful!) and went home to wait for the state to process the application. I was cautiously optimistic.

The RN at the health department had told me that it should only take about ten days, now that I'm pregnant, but I have to say that after 16 months of waiting, I was more than a tad bit skeptical. To be honest I was prepared for yet another disaster. I've gotten to the point where, no matter how good something looks when the paper work is being submitted, there's still a chance a number of things are going to go wrong. I think the comment a man who was in front of us on Thursday made, sums it up nicely.

He was a big grizzled mountain man who, if I had to guess, is probably a gold prospector from downriver. He had the accent quite a few people still have around this area, that sounded like he'd just stepped out of an old western. He'd just finished saying "ma'am could you give me that other form please" and he turned, looked at us and said "'cuz they'll screw you if they get the chance" before turning back around and saying "thank you kindly ma'am."

So you never know if you've really jumped through all the loops or if you've just forgot to dot an i or cross a t and its' going to come back to haunt you after hours of paper work and weeks of waiting.

Still, Paul's social worker friend, really seemed to want to help us, which was the first time we'd encountered that in the Health and Human Services office. I tried not to get to excited, but I felt like a weight had been lifted when we left the meeting with her.

Today (a mere two days later) when I went to the post office I saw two forms from Health and Human Services. I got a sick feeling in my stomach (which is pretty much standard these days with the morning sickness) and told myself that it was probably another rejection from our last application. After all, whenever the state sends us anything it seems to be in triplicate. We had received a rejection yesterday that said that while our income was under the requirement, the number of hours Paul worked was too much for a married couple (which just doesn't make any logical sense). That means that we could work less and make more and we would qualify, but because he works longer for less money, we didn't. However the hours have changed since the store changed over to CVS and now we qualify, even under the stupid state rules.

And that is what the letter said! All three of us now have full coverage! If I hadn't been in the car I would have jumped up and down and danced! It only took one day for the application to go through and one day for the acceptance letter to get here!

Thanks to everyone for the prayers! This is such a relief at the start of the pregnancy. My OB takes Medi-Cal, so I'll actually get to go to my own doctor. What a blessing!

Slog, Slog, Slog: Adventures in Getting Medi-Cal State Insurance

I promise that tomorrow I will be more optimistic... However right now, I'm struggling with optimism simply because I spent part of my afternoon at Health and Human Services and that offices is most definitely not a nice place to be.... so here's the newest update (and it is definitely Sadie frown worthy!):

I didn’t really think that the letter I wrote to our “Social Worker’s” supervisor would do anything. I say “social worker” in quotes because he’s never actually done any sort of social working in our case and from what we hear around town, that seems to be his modus operandi with all of his clients. I did get a voicemail message from the supervisor that said that we would receive a letter “explaining the outcome of our application” today (for anyone who's curious, it's still not here).

Despite the fact that it hasn't been delivered I know what it says because the social worker who wrote it (who is not our social worker, he is apparently too lazy to type a letter and sign it) felt so bad about it she told my husband what it says (she shops at the store he works at, so he talks to her a lot, and he stopped by the office last night to tell them that we REALLY need coverage now that I'm pregnant). She said she felt horrible and didn’t want to be the one to write it, but that she didn’t have a choice.

It says that we were rejected because Paul works over a hundred hours a month. I paused when I heard this because he doesn’t. We wish he did, but with unemployment hovering around 20% in our county, we’re thankful for the 20 hours he’s been cut back to, each week (thankfully there is a light at the end of the tunnel when he finishes grad school). The problem was, when our old social worker did the paper work, she asked us how many hours a week he worked. The store was just changing over, having been bought out by a large corporation and he’d been getting between 25 hours a week. That, averaged in with the 16-20 hour a weeks made it pretty close. When she asked the question I said between 80-100 hours and finally wrote down 100 (I had no idea that that was the limit, although I’m sure the worker, who heard the entire conversation, did). So between 80-100 hours a month became over 100 hours a month and just like that, we were disqualified, yet again because of a technicality.

But the pregnancy, theoretically, changed everything. There’s “presumptive eligibility” although, my doctor doesn’t accept it (I was giddy when I found out that she does accept medi-cal, however). And the women at Health Services were very reassuring that this would, in fact, change everything. I should, easily, qualify now.

However, I’m not giving up on getting Paul coverage. I’ve read all the paperwork. I’ve done all the research. We do qualify. Twice they have twisted our own answers to come up with an inaccurate reason to deny coverage. Now it’s become a matter of principle (added to by the fact that it looks like he broke his foot months ago, has been walking around in pain and would really like to see a doctor, although at this point I doubt there’s much they could do).

We are reapplying (we have an appointment with the nice social worker, who is not our social worker, to help with our paperwork on Thursday). It drives me crazy to fill out the immense amount of paper work, yet again (third times a charm!) but that is how I will be spending tomorrow.

Welcome to State Run Medical Coverage. The clock is ticking. It’s been 16 months and we are still filling out paperwork. Sadie was approved last spring and they’re still refusing to pay her bills for well baby check-ups. They say that we have the wrong birth day and sex for our sweet 16 month old girl. Apparently they have decided that Sadie is a 5 year old boy…. Yup…. State run coverage is going to be great….

A Little Good Followed by A Lot of Evil...

This story, on Catholic Online, made my entire day!

BRYAN, Texas (LifeSiteNews.com) - "The director of the Texas Planned Parenthood abortion mill where the 40 Days for Life campaign began has resigned, saying she experienced a conversion after watching an ultrasound video of a child being killed by abortion.

"I just thought I can't do this anymore, and it was just like a flash that hit me and I thought that's it," said Abby Johnson in an interview with local news network KBTX 3.

Johnson had been affiliated with Bryan's Planned Parenthood facility for eight years, and worked as its director for two. She said she began to feel uncomfortable with Planned Parenthood's business philosophy after the organization, suffering from the economic downturn, told her to try to bring more abortions in the door. "The money wasn't in family planning, the money wasn't in prevention, the money was in abortion and so I had a problem with that," said Johnson.

But the turning point for Johnson was reportedly when she witnessed an actual ultrasound image of an abortion being performed on an unborn child. "

Read full story here.

It's wonderful to see a woman involved in such a horrible field realizing the evil of abortion and recognizing the lies she had been telling herself for years and then actually following her conscience and speaking out!

On the other hand this article shows that the battle is far from being won and that we must continue to fight for the rights of unborn children.

"The bills before congress fail to meet the nonnegotiable obligation to protect the sanctity of life from conception to natural death. Rather than protect our children who have a basic right to health care – which certainly includes the right to life – Congress has, time and again, insisted on advancing the morally bankrupt legalized "right" to abortion, which is the intentional killing of our precious, innocent children. Further, with pernicious aspirations to expand their attack on life, these same politicians intend to force Americans to pay for the barbaric deeds of abortion.
...
Let’s be clear: pro-abortion politicians, with obdurate persistence, are committed to funding abortions with tax-payer dollars; they are aligned with Planned Parenthood, an abortion institution that is vehemently opposed to any restrictions limiting the intentional killing of the unborn; and they have consistently, throughout their terms in office, voted against protecting the lives of our young brethren. These public officials have every intent to publicly fund the death of God’s newly created. The proposed "public option" health care plan is the means these politicians will use in order to execute their agenda.

And what is this agenda? It is one which seeks to establish a new global ethic; one where the most heinous crimes imaginable are legal and publicly funded; one where killing innocent persons is elevated to a "right" which is, according to the adopted ideologies of its adherents, inviolable. It is a non-ethic ethic; one where freedom of an evil 'choice' trumps the fundamental first right to life. It's blatant, open immorality that, through the use of clever rhetoric and propaganda, is falsely characterized as "compassion", "freedom", and "women’s reproductive care"."

And for your daily dose of dumb a quote a rant from an abortion provider who seems to heap all pro-lifers into one, evil category (yeah, right... in what twisted reality are the people who kill babies everyday the "good guys"? The word "delusional" comes to mind.):

"I guess my point is that none of us will tolerate your scare tactics. And in the long run they aren't doing anything but creating more negative energy in the world."

All I could think when I read this line was that this woman kills babies every single day, and she thinks pro-lifers are "creating more negative energy." I can't think of many things more negative (or downright evil) than killing innocent children.

The Letter to Our Social Workers Supervisor: The Struggle for Medi-Cal Continues...

I just finished the letter I'm writing to our social worker's supervisor. If I don't hear from him (and if he's anything like his coworkers I'm not sure I expect to) I'm going to write our state representatives and the newspaper. I really hope this can be resolved. Our state is so inefficient it's disgusting. Here's the body of the letter:

I wanted to start by briefly going over the experience that has led me to write this letter. We first applied for Medi-Cal when my husband lost his job and we lost our health insurance in July 2008. We applied with Healthy Families for our daughter, checking the box that said that we would like to be considered for Medi-Cal too. Since we had no income at the time we didn’t qualify for Healthy Families, and in September our application came to your office. I received a new packet and returned it to Health and Human Services immediately. And then I waited and waited, paying cash for our health expenses (we still had a small savings back in those days). I attempted to contact our first social worker, by calling and then by leaving notes in the office, in December. A month later, after multiple phone calls, I asked to speak to a supervisor (it had been over four months since we’d completed our application and we hadn’t heard anything) and for the first time our social worker decided we deserved a call back. She explained that she was very busy but that our application was a top priority.

She sent me a list of a few documents that hadn’t been asked for in our initial packet. I filled them out right away and sent them back. And we waited. And waited. In spring I received notice that we had a new social worker and that they didn’t have all of our pay stubs. The pay stubs were something we had given copies of to our last social worker, but I still went down to the storage locker, made copies and brought them in (they were due the day after we received the letter).

In July we finally received notice that we had been rejected because we had several hundred dollars too much in our savings. The letter said that if we had proof that we had paid that money out in medical fees, we would qualify for Medi-Cal. We had paid thousands of dollars in medical bills, so I made copies of the bills and proof of payment and brought them in to the office. I was told that that ought to fix the problem.

Shortly after we received another rejection letter stating the same thing (that we had too much in savings when we applied but that if we brought in medical bills to prove that we’d spent it we would qualify). At this point I was tired. It had been 11 months since I’d applied and I had called and left so many notes, and had made absolutely no progress.

At this point my husband and I decided to reapply because we didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.

In August we finally sat down with our new “new social worker” (at least number 3 I believe). We were meticulous. We brought ever paper on the list. We filled out every form and asked questions to make sure we didn’t leave a thing out. We were way under the income requirement and our savings is gone. We were assured that everything was in order this time.

It is now November 2009 (15 months since we applied) and we have yet to be notified in writing about the status of our Medi-Cal application. Our new social worker (#4? Dennis) told my husband that we had been notified that we had been rejected. We have not. I have saved every piece of paper I have received from your office and filed it away. This has exceeded the initial 45 days we were promised over and over again.

When my husband Paul asked how this could possibly have been denied he was told that we were denied because we are still married. I’m sure that this can’t possibly be correct, because the state of California couldn’t possibly engage in such discriminatory, anti-family policies. Since Dennis was wrong about us being notified in writing, perhaps he’s also wrong that our application has been denied? I must admit that his relationship with us so far hardly inspires confidence.

We’ve come into the office time and again and left note after note for Dennis (our current social worker), but he refuses to meet with us and does not return our calls or notes. We’re really not sure where to turn. Any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time.

Marriage as a Reason for Denying State Medical Coverage?

This morning after Sadie wakes up, we're packing up the car and heading, with my parents and grandparents, over to the coast. The coast is pretty close to us, as the crow flies, but is about two hours away with all the twists and turns of the mountain roads. Paul is going to drive up from San Francisco after school this evening (he usually gets out of school around 4 pm), and it will probably take him around eight hours, as we're stopping just a few miles short of Oregon. It will be nice to get away for a couple of days and I'm going to do my best not to think about the whole Medi-Cal thing. Just as soon as I finish this post.

Apparently, being married is a reason for being denied Medi-Cal. It's called "deprivation." What it means is that while we could make quite a bit more money if we were separated, and still qualify for Medi-Cal. We can make next to nothing as a married couple, be well under the set amount to qualify for a married couple and still not qualify. They don't advertise "deprivation" as a reason for being refused on the pages of forms, possibly because if people knew about it they'd make a fuss. You can't get much more anti-family than refusing someone simply because they're married.

It just doesn't make sense. If marriage was an meant immediate disqualification, it seems that that is something that could have been told us 15 months ago.

I did some digging and tried to discover how this could be possible and here's what I found. It seems that there is a 100 hour a month limit that the primary provider in the family is allowed to work and if that person works more than a hundred hours, no matter how much he or she is paid for that work, the family is automatically disqualified.

Out of the last 15 months we have only met that 100 hour limit one time and that was two months ago when the store Paul worked for changed over from one corporation to another. That happens to be the month that we re-applied for Medi-Cal. We didn't go over the 100 hours, but when we made the estimate on the paperwork and wrote how much he was working each month I wrote down about 100 hours. Paul was getting too close to qualifying for benefits, so he was suddenly cut back from 30 hours a week to 16-20 hours a week (making things very tough, although in a county with 25% unemployment, we're just grateful that he was able to find a job).

I wonder how many couples say they're separated, just so they can have health insurance. I've been joking around with Paul telling him that he needs to move into the trailer if he wants to get to see the doctor about his foot, which he thinks he broke months ago, and which still hurts constantly. Way to support marriage California!

I'm going to write letters to my local representatives, but I'm rather beat down on the whole issue at this point. I've been fighting for this for the past 15 months and every time I think we've jumped through every hoop and done everything they say is necessary, something else comes up. Getting away for a few days will be a good thing.

Medi-Cal, Gross Incompetence and Lies

I am very upset and asking for prayers. As some of you know we have been trying to get Medi-Cal, the California state health insurance coverage, for the past 15+ months. We lost our insurance shortly after Sadie was born. We qualified for Medi-Cal the first time we applied, but gross incompetence (and the inability of our first social worker to input simple information into a computer) meant our application was rejected. We reapplied two months ago (they promised to respond in 45 days). Today, after leaving multiple notes and phone messages with our social worker (this is social worker #5) my husband was told that our application was rejected. The reason: Because we're "together." He's claiming that being married means automatic disqualification. According to everything I've read this is absolutely not true. It's so stressful and it means that if we want to appeal it we have to court or we can reapply and hope we get a different decision. This is insane!

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. This is California we're talking about.

The "Right" to Die

It seems that the respect for life is dwindling abroad as well as at home. In an article titled "It's my life and I demand to end it when I want" David Aaronovitch demands the right to end his own life on his own terms. Here are a few highlights.

Past ambiguities about what you could and couldn’t do tended to favour those whose job it was to interpret them — usually the priestly classes of the professions. But over the years we have come increasingly to believe that our judgments about ourselves, albeit as informed by some experts, have a sovereign quality. We have gradually applied this to our clothing, our sexual existences, our capacity to choose and change partners, our fertility, our spiritual beliefs — and now, inevitably, to our deaths. The choice to do as Freud did, to say: “I want to die now, please help me,” is no more or less than the choice that I want for myself. And even that understates it, I realise, because it is the choice that I now demand.

Life has become so devalued in the West that the choice to live or die sits next to choices about sexuality and fertility (in Mr. Aaronovitch's mind at least). But in some ways he is right to make that link: Our culture's frivolous treatment of fertility and the lives that result from it ties in to the devaluation of human life. We can kill our unborn children in the womb and now Mr. Aaronovitch makes the next logical step, we should be allowed to kill ourselves as well. Has life really become this cheap?

So why should we not have the right to determine, within reason, when and how we die? Some religious people will say, in essence, because God says so. But one may observe that sometimes God so invoked seems to have served mankind well (as over opposition to eugenics) and sometimes badly (as over, say, family planning). Church folk will forgive me for addressing some of the more secular objections raised in July’s Lords debate.

"Within reason"? Who defines what is "within reason?" Suicide is now "reasonable"?

First there was the point made by Lord Mackay of Clashfern, that “any proposal to alter the current position involves a judgment that a certain kind of life, or a certain span of life, has become unworthy of support from [the] principle [of the sanctity of life]”. To which I reply: “No, it doesn’t.” What a proposal might do is to permit the liver of a life to decide its value — not Lord Mackay, me or the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Finally someone brings up the sanctity of life! Thank you Lord Mackay. And Mr. Aaronovitch: "Yes, it does."

Third, and related, was the contention, advanced by many, from the Bishop of Exeter to Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws that the law ought not to be changed because people would either feel “pressured into dying” or actually would be pressured into dying.

This seems to be the problem we're all facing... but hey, it would cut costs... and we really need to cut costs if this health care plan is going to work....

"The Case for Killing Granny": Newsweek Reaches a New Low

Newsweek has done it again. Here's an article titled "The Case for Killing Granny" by Evan Thomas. We're about to run off to Mass (today is our anniversary, three years of wedded bliss and four years since our first date) but here's some food for thought. Although it certainly isn't the kind of thought I like to start my day with....

But the need to spend less money on the elderly at the end of life is the elephant in the room in the health-reform debate. Everyone sees it but no one wants to talk about it. At a more basic level, Americans are afraid not just of dying, but of talking and thinking about death. Until Americans learn to contemplate death as more than a scientific challenge to be overcome, our health-care system will remain unfixable.

It doesn't seem to me that the problem lately has been a fear of death in America. It's a lack of respect for life, which is apparently a problem for Mr. Thomas.

There is no way we can get control of costs, which have grown by nearly 50 percent in the past decade, without finding a way to stop overtreating patients. In his address to Congress, President Obama spoke airily about reducing inefficiency, but he slid past the hard choices that will have to be made to stop health care from devouring ever-larger slices of the economy and tax dollar. A significant portion of the savings will have to come from the money we spend on seniors at the end of life because, as Willie Sutton explained about why he robbed banks, that's where the money is.

"Overtreating patients." Is that what we're calling saving lives these days?

The desire to see a physician is often pronounced in assisted-living facilities. Old people, far from their families in our mobile, atomized society, depend on their doctors for care and reassurance. I noticed that in my mother's retirement home, the talk in the dining room was often about illness; people built their day around doctor's visits, partly, it seemed to me, to combat loneliness.

Let's ignore the fact that many of the elderly actually need to see doctor's far more than a young person because their health is failing. My grandmother died this past summer and she had to see the doctor many times a month because she had frequent bladder infections, which nearly claimed her life on a monthly basis for years before her actual death.

Check out the article if you can stomach it. It let's you know how little respect some people actually have for life.

Added: I just posted this and after talking with my husband one more thought popped into my head. The basic idea of cutting costs and not ordering unnecessary tests is one that could help fix part of the problem with our system. However Mr. Thomas sites his grandmother's choice not to undergo further procedures (and she was allowed to make that choice) and then tries to derive implications that could be used across the board to cut costs.

That's where we disagree.

If a person who is dying of cancer doesn't want to go through yet another round of chemo it's their choice. I have a problem when the choice becomes the insurance companies or the governments (as some now claim it will be) and is taken out of the individual's hands. That's why the second quote about making "hard choices" is so disturbing. Who will be making these hard choices? More then ever this causes me to wonder if our elderly will be pressured towards ending their own lives, a claim which I thought earlier was just a political scare tactic. It seems to be a real possibility if many people agree with Mr. Thomas' views.

Fact Checking the Abortion Claim

For my readers who do doubt that abortion will be part of the Obama Care you may want to check out this article on FactCheck.org. It's very enlightening and since this is a non-partisan organization that calls both sides out on a regular basis you might believe them a bit more then you'd believe me. The final sentence sums it up pretty well:

As for the House bill as it stands now, it’s a matter of fact that it would allow both a "public plan" and newly subsidized private plans to cover all abortions.

Of course there is debate over how the language in the article should be interpreted, so you may want to check out their link to their mailbag. I'm not going to post Planned Parenthoods response because I try not to repeat blatant lies (and if you're using Planned Parenthood as your moral compass when checking on what's right and wrong, or even true, there may be some problems) but I will post the letter from Douglas Johnson the Legislative Director at the National Right to Life Committee:

We think that FactCheck.org is in error in the way it uses the term "public funds."
It is true that the Capps Amendment does contain, on page 6, a caption that reads, "(3) PROHIBITION ON USE OF PUBLIC FUNDS FOR ABORTION COVERAGE." But this is another red herring, artfully inserted by Chairman Waxman’s seasoned staff. If you read the OPERATIVE clause that immediately follows that caption, you see that the prohibition applies ONLY to the "affordability credit" – that is, it applies ONLY to one very specific type of "public funds."

There is nothing in the Capps Amendment that prohibits the use of any type of "public funds" (or "federal funds") for abortions by the new public option plan, EXCEPT the prohibition on using the "affordability credit." If the Capps Amendment ACTUALLY contained a clause "that prohibits the use of public funds to pay for abortions" (your phrase), then the public option would NOT be able to pay for abortions at all – because once the federal agency collects the premiums (including the abortion surcharge required on pages 4 and 5 of the Capps Amendment), those premiums ARE public funds. They are in a federal account and will be paid out by a federal agency in accord with federal statutes and regulations.

Many government agencies collect funds from various sources – appropriations from general revenues, certainly, but also specific fees required by statute or regulation, user fees, fines, assets of drug dealers, and many others – and, in this case, premiums. Once the government agency has control of the funds, they are all public funds. The drafters of the Capps Amendment understand this very well, and they carefully crafted language that applies only to a single sub-class of public funds.

Again, the Capps Amendment does NOT contain any general prohibition on the use of "public funds" (or "federal funds") for elective abortions. Rather, the Capps Amendment says that the cost of the elective abortions cannot be counted against the "affordability credits" (premium subsidies), but must be counted against the abortion-specific premium add-on (what we call the abortion surcharge). We assert that both sources are "public funds" and both sources are "federal funds."

Thank you for your consideration of these points.

Douglas Johnson
Legislative Director
National Right to Life Committee

Obama Care is Unacceptable! And I'm Uninsured!

This whole health care debate is absolutely exhausting and it's caused some major tension in our house. Apparently some people are so desperate to believe the President that they'll accept any claim that he makes about abortion not being part of the health care bill. Or they wish that that particular issue would just disappear (I too wish it would disappear, but I wish it would disappear because it was outlawed, not because everyone decided to give up and ignore the slaughter of unborn children...). I also find the double standard about respecting the office of President to be amusing/disturbing. The same people that are now whining that conservatives need to be more respectful were calling George W an idiot on a daily basis from 2000-2008. How's that for respecting the office? Or do only liberal presidents deserve respectful treatment?

On facebook a number of friends have posted on this is issue on a daily basis. Many of the posts are quite rude. One (written by an elementary school teacher I had) said that people who are against this plan are all greedy selfish people with coverage. I'd like to address this idea.

I don't have health insurance and I haven't for over a year. I can't buy insurance if it doesn't come with a job (my husband's since I'm a SAHM) even if we had the money to buy it. Here's my last experience with trying to buy insurance and why it just won't happen:

I was covered by Blue Shield of California, through my parents, when I was in college. I was getting ready for another season of rugby after returning from South Africa and I was training hard. I was on the field and in the gym an average of seven hours a day. I'd had some back spasms before I left for Africa after a person I knew grabbed on to my hair and yanked it hard, jarring my back (and a troubling incident after that when I was doing sprints and my legs simply stopped working). I went to my schools health center and they repeatedly assured me that I'd just pulled a muscle and that it wasn't serious.

One day after practice my best friend and I drove to the beach in Pacifica to surf. While we were out I fell down the face of a wave and hit my board with my chest. The timing couldn't have been worse. The wave hit me as it closed and my body bent in two backwards with my feet ending up next to my head. I made it in to the beach and laid down. When my friend found me and helped me out of my wet suite there was a bruise down my spine and my back was swollen. I went back to the health center. They gave me muscle relaxers and said it was just a pulled muscle again. I asked if I should be able to play rugby. They said it should be fine in a few days and I went on my way.

After months of pain that ranged from back spasms to pain shooting down my legs (and several trips to the health center where they acted like I was insane and told me that I was fine) I found a orthopedic spinal specialist. We talked for about five minutes and he was very concerned. The MRI he ordered showed the problem L5-S1 was "desiccated." He could never see if it had completely ruptured because the herniation went straight into my spine, instead of to one side or the other. After 4 epidurals and months of physical therapy I had lost thirty pounds of muscle (was weighing in at 103 lbs at 5'5") and was in constant pain. The surgeon that worked with my doctor thought that he could fix it. It was a new surgery, but as a specialist he had had success with it and it was much less risky then fussing my spine.

Blue Shield refused the request for the surgery because the technique was experimental.

And then I lost my insurance because I had graduated.

After a couple of painful years I applied for insurance with Blue Shield. It took them several months to talk to all of my former doctors. They came back and said the could not cover me because I had an uncorrected herniation of L5-S1. It didn't matter that it was uncorrected because they had refused (multiple times) my doctor's requests for the surgery. It disqualified me from getting insurance.

My back finally healed on its own and I am pain free 99% of the time. But I am also uninsurable. I absolutely believe reform is needed. However that reform cannot include abortion coverage!

If I were thinking selfishly I'd absolutely say I supported Obama's health plan. I might actually get some sort of coverage (and believe me anything would be better then nothing). It's unnerving being uninsured.

It isn't selfishness or greed that keeps me from supporting our President's plan and I do believe reform is needed. But any plan that involves abortion is unacceptable. The selfish idea is the idea that a woman's right to do whatever she wants with her body is greater then her unborn child's right to life.

Yes the system needs major changes. Unfortunately this plan is unacceptable as it is. It isn't the change that I can believe in.

My Experience with State Run Health Insurance:Medi Cal

I have spent the last thirteen months of my daughter's life trying to get health insurance for my family. We lost our insurance four weeks after my daughter was born and paid out of pocket for her appointments and vaccines. It drained our savings pretty quickly.

I had heard wonderful things about California's Healthy Families Program. Our doctor accepted the insurance and said that the coverage was great. So we applied and waited... and waited... Months passed. Finally we got a letter that said that we didn't make enough money to qualify for Healthy Families. They were forwarding our application to Health and Human Services because we may qualify for Medi-Cal (one would hope that if we didn't make enough for one type we would qualify for the other... imagine hearing, you don't make enough for a type of public assistance... it defies logic!).

Thus we began to deal with the bureaucracy put in place by the great State of California to ensure the well being of its citizens. In September we received a giant packet of paperwork that needed to be returned immediately. I rushed to make copies of pay stubs and bank statements, loan statements and car bills. Our income had fallen from $26,000 a year to $12,000 a year. I was sure we would qualify. I returned the packet.

December came and we hadn't heard anything back from HHS. I went to the office to see what I could find out and was told to call my social worker. When I said we hadn't been told we had a social worker I was given a name and a number. I called and the phone rang through to voice mail. The message told me what information I should leave and then informed me not to call back. My case worker would respond in writing or over the phone.

A month passed with no call (we had now been waiting for five months). I went back to the office. I was told to call my social worker. I bit my tongue hard to keep from yelling (I was very frustrated and had no idea that the waiting was just beginning). I said I'd called a month earlier and that I hadn't heard anything. I was given a piece of paper to write a note on and handed it back, filled out, under the bullet proof glass. I now understood why it was there. This process could drive someone crazy.

Two weeks later a friend of my father who worked in the office of HHS told me to call to speak with her. I explained what had gone on and she was horrified. She told me that she would transfer me to the case worker and that I should say that if I didn't hear from her I would call back and ask to speak to her supervisor. I received a call an hour later from our apologetic case worker. She had been out of the office for a while and things had piled up. She was very sorry. She would send another packet with more paperwork for us to fill out.

I got the packet, with a list of included forms. They weren't all there. I filled out what I had and went down to the office. I showed the list and asked if I could get the forms or if I could speak to my Social Worker. I was told that she wasn't picking up her phone, and they didn't know which forms were on the paper I'd showed, so I could, you guessed it, leave her a note. At this point I nearly lost it. I refused to leave. My voice got louder. I was holding my eight month old daughter and had spent most of her life trying to get someone in this office to call me back. No one would call if I left. I was told to sit down. Amazingly, someone found the forms. I filled them out and turned them back in.

This spring our application was denied. We had $1000 too much in savings when we applied, but if we could prove that we had spent that much on medical bills we would qualify and our application would be reprocessed. I scrambled around the house. I easily found more then a thousand dollars in bills. I took them in to the HHS office. And waited.

The next letter that came claimed that I had never turned in my husband's pay stubs for the month of November. I had, but apparently they were no longer with our file. The letter said that if the office didn't receive copies of the stub by the next day, our application would be denied. I drove down to my parents storage locker and ripped apart our belongings until I found a box with last years pay stubs (when you live in a 10x15 ft cabin there's not a lot of room for storage). I found them and we took them to the office the next day. My husband said he would take them in because he was afraid I might snap if I went in.

This July, 11 months after our application arrived at HHS, we received a letter saying we had been denied. It explained again that we had too much in savings, but that if our savings had been drained by medical expenses, we could reapply.

I didn't take more copies of the bills in, because I didn't trust myself to explain that we had already given them over a thousand dollars in medical bills, without bursting into tears in the middle if the office.

Today my husband went into the office. He says he just acts like a big dumb guy and everyone is helpful (and a little flirty). They gave him papers to fill our and had him watch a movie about all the services they offer. Then they interviewed him and set up another interview for Wednesday morning. I need to fill out all the paperwork again and get together all the various statements to take in. It seems that things might finally be going somewhere.

Still, I'm afraid to get my hopes up... I have lost all faith in our state's health system. And I see no reason to believe the federal government would do any better...