Questions for Conservatives About Healthcare Reform

Questions for Conservatives About Healthcare Reform

On Sunday evening as I was relaxing after dinner, my gallbladder violently rebelled against the meal (scrambled eggs and sautéed zucchini). This would not be worth writing about, except that, for the first time in my adult life, I don’t have health insurance. When, late last year, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Jersey informed me that my $600+ per month individual plan rate would increase to $753 (just for me), I knew I was done. My husband is retired with a work-related medical disability, you see, and we were fast approaching financial insolvency as we awaited the resolution of his decade-old workers’ compensation case. (That’s a story worth telling about the kinds of people who can outlast insurance companies in court, but one for another day.)

As I was doubled over in pain and retching in my bathroom, I begged God for relief so that I wouldn’t have to go to the emergency room and possibly have a surgery that would plunge my family into thousands of dollars worth of debt. I thought about the millions of people who have lived this reality for years and felt ashamed of myself for having been so indifferent to their plight for so long. God answered my prayer eventually, but I woke up Monday morning dry heaving from the taste of bile rising in my throat.

I made an appointment with my primary care physician, hoping he would give me the green light to delay the surgery that had been recommended last year until August, when I’ll be eligible for NJ Protect, a federally subsidized health insurance plan for New Jersey residents who have pre-existing conditions, but who haven’t had health insurance for at least six consecutive months. The doctor did give me the green light to wait, along with dietary and homeopathic recommendations and a prescription in case I have another attack. For this, I paid $100.

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Before he came into the room, however, I told his nurse that I would need him to fill out a form for NJ Protect affirming that I have a pre-existing condition. She began grilling me about my situation. “Can’t you get a job?” she asked. “I have a job. I’m an independent journalist,” I said. She wanted to know how I get paid. God only knows why I submitted to this inquest, but I told her I have contracts for steady work, but given the state of journalism (especially since fall 2008 when I moved from California back to New Jersey and began job hunting), it doesn’t matter how hard or much I work, I will never be able to afford $753-a-month for health insurance. I didn’t bother telling her about my supplementary work in catering or substitute teaching, and I didn’t tell her that I’d just been tapped for a coveted vocational school teaching job that I had to decline because of the kind of senseless bureaucratic regulations that many, including me, fear “Obamacare” will usher in.

Her rudeness got me thinking though. What is it, I wonder, about my free-market loving friends that makes them willing to suggest, even by default, that entrepreneurs and small business owners like me will be a drain on our national resources or that we have some sort of moral obligation to take corporate jobs in order to be deserving of affordable health care? I’m not speaking of her, of course, but of the plethora of conservative pundits who rail incessantly against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in the name of freedom. I don’t get it. Are they saying I shouldn’t be free to choose the kind of work that best suits me, my God-given temperament, and the needs of my family? Or that if I do, tough luck when I get sick? If it weren’t for the exorbitant cost of health care, I’d be earning enough income right now to meet my family’s modest financial needs. We can even manage the subsidized plan at $369-a-month now that my husband’s case has settled, but that’s a function of the ACA, so they’d like to deny me that.

Do Family Values Conservatives Think Mothers Reentering the Work Force Are Undeserving of Health Care?

On Tuesday, someone asked me what I thought of the Supreme Court ruling on the ACA. I took a deep breath and said I was glad it wasn’t struck down, because I need affordable health insurance sooner rather than later and the ACA is the engine that will give it to me.

I probably would have opposed it a decade ago when my husband was earning a six-figure income in home improvement sales and we were owners of an apartment building in addition to our own home. But then my husband’s back gave out and he spent several years trying to do other kinds of work before he was forced to retire at age 47. He now lives in crippling pain every day and takes care of the house. His medical expenses will be covered for the rest of his life through Medicare, a supplementary plan that we pay for, and workers’ comp. He’s eligible, in part, for these benefits because he worked outside the home and was injured at work, while I mostly stayed home and raised children for 20 years.

So, what I’d also like to know is why the family values crowd thinks it’s okay to abandon women like me, who bought into their message and eschewed careers, but then had to re-enter the workforce because of death, divorce, or disability without the benefit of a strong work history? Is this really how they want to repay us?  You know, the uninsured mothers who serve as teachers’ aides in their children’s classrooms, or bring them their salad at The Cheesecake Factory, or wipe their aging parents’ bottoms so they don’t have to?

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And, what about my fellow pro-lifers? All they seem concerned about when it comes to the ACA is the contraception mandate. Don’t they care about women like me who dropped out of college to have our babies instead of aborting them because we heard and believed their message, but then are forever playing catch up career-wise? Don’t they owe us some level of fidelity for living out what they merely preach? Or did we only matter to them when our stories affirmed their cost-free convictions?

These are serious questions, not accusations. A freedom-loving, family values, pro-life writer is asking them.

Now, I understand that one reason an individual health insurance plan is so expensive in New Jersey is because insurers here are not permitted to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions and insuring everybody drives up costs. But, I thank God New Jersey is ahead of the curve in this regard. In California, I could not purchase insurance for my son after he was routinely kicked off our family plan as a young adult and then diagnosed with a debilitating, uninsurable condition.

He eventually got well with the help of a generous doctor who treated him on the cheap and a county health service that he still uses because so few specialists take his lousy $190-a-month individual plan. You see, he works for a non-profit organization as a warehouse supervisor, but like many employers, his employer hires most of its workforce for just under the number of hours at which employer-delivered health insurance is mandatory. I know what “government” care looks like and it isn’t pretty, but it’s something and I thank God for it.

I frequently hear insured people say that if the ACA survives, it will mean they won’t have access to timely medical care. This tells me they not only believe they have a right to health care, but that they have a right to the prompt delivery thereof. And yet, they don’t seem to think people like me and my son have any right to it at all. Well, I disagree with them. I need heathcare reform and I think I deserve it, not from “the government,” but from the society that my family and I have contributed to and served for most of our lives. I’m not saying Obamacare is the answer. I’m only saying that we need to solve this problem and the uncaring rhetoric of my conservative friends is speaking so loudly that I’m finding it difficult to hear anything else they’re saying about healthcare reform.

*Please note: an editorial change has been made to this article.
‘Obamacare’ Prevails: Supreme Court Upholds Healthcare Law

‘Obamacare’ Prevails: Supreme Court Upholds Healthcare Law

In a 5-4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act today, including the controversial individual mandate that requires all Americans to buy health insurance beginning in 2014. However, the ruling limited the federal government’s power to punish states for not expanding Medicaid coverage, as the ACA required.

“The Court did not sustain it as a command for Americans to buy insurance, but as a tax if they don’t. That is the way Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., was willing to vote for it, and his view prevailed. The other Justices split 4-4, with four wanting to uphold it as a mandate, and four opposed to it in any form,” Lyle Denniston, the 81-year-old reporter, wrote on SCOTUS blog today.

The immediate sense is that this is a major victory for President Barack Obama and the signature legislation from his first term in office. “Whatever the politics,” the president said after the ruling, “today’s decision was a victory for people all over this country whose lives will be more secure because of this law and the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold it.”

But the decision also was an indication that the Supreme Court perhaps isn’t as predictably partisan as many believed prior to the announcement. Breaking with the court’s other conservative justices, Chief Justice Roberts announced the judgment that allows the law to go forward with its mission of covering more than 30 million uninsured Americans. Many observers speculate that Roberts’s ruling reflected his attempt to avoid going down in history as an activist chief justice on what might be the most important decision of his tenure.

UrbanFaith spoke to a variety of legal and medical experts about what the implications of today’s decision may be.

BERNARD JAMES: “An extraordinarily important substantive issue about the power of Congress under the Commerce Clause.”

Bernard James, professor of law at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, along with three other sources UrbanFaith talked to earlier this week, expected the individual mandate to be struck down, but said the ruling has the potential to answer “an extraordinarily important substantive issue about the power of Congress under the Commerce Clause.”

The Commerce Clause refers to Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution. It gives Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the states.

“Once it’s clear what the Commerce Clause permits and what it requires, not just health care, but all other subjects on the current agenda for this Congress will be more easily pondered and legislated,” said James.

“There were not five votes to uphold [the individual mandate] on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power,” editor Amy Howe wrote on the SCOTUS blog. “Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose,” she wrote in her summary of the ruling.

JAMES A. DAVIDS: “This is like federalism on steroids.”

James A. Davids, former president of the Christian Legal Society and a joint professor at the Robertson School of Government and the School of Law at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Virginia, said that ever since the New Deal was implemented in the 1930s, the Supreme Court has viewed federal power “expansively.” That vision of federal power was “tweaked” under the Renquist court, Davids said, in its rulings on two bills, the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 and the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990. As with today’s ruling, the court said then that there may be good reasons to enact these laws, but not under the Commerce Clause. “There were exceptions going into the power of the government under the Renquist court, under federalism issues, and this is like federalism on steroids,” said Davids.

Davids also said the Rehnquist court ruled that it was constitutional for the federal government to withhold highway funding from South Dakota when the state refused to comply with the National Minimum Drinking Age Act. In this case, the Court said current Medicaid funding cannot be revoked, but new funding can be withheld.

“Nothing in our opinion precludes Congress from offering funds under the ACA to expand the availability of health care, and requiring that states accepting such funds comply with the conditions on their use. What Congress is not free to do is to penalize States that choose not to participate in that new program by taking away their existing Medicaid funding,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in his opinion. Roberts, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, cast the deciding vote to uphold the ACA.

DR. BEN CARSON:“We got what could be expected” from politicians.

For Dr. Ben Carson, the world-famous neurosurgeon and director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore, Maryland, the outcome of today’s decision doesn’t change much. “The impetus behind the bill was the fact that we had these escalating costs and people who weren’t adequately covered … even though we spend twice as much per capita on healthcare as anybody else in the world,” said Carson.

He supports the concept of health-care reform, but doesn’t think the ACA was done right and compared the effort to hiring pundits to rebuild a bridge instead of hiring structural engineers. “It was done by politicians and special interest groups as opposed to by people who actually know what the problem is and know how to deal with it,” said Carson. “We got what could be expected in that situation.”

Escalating beaurocracy and a lack of comprehensive electronic medical records make the practice of medicine more difficult than it once was, Carson said. In his new book, America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great, he includes a chapter on health-care reform. He suggests using “health stamps” to incentivize the uninsured to use  clinics rather than emergency rooms for their primary care. This would lead not only to cost savings, but to better care for patients with chronic illnesses, Carson said.

He also advocates Tort reform to rein in the costs of medical malpractice suits. “We’re the country in the world that has the biggest problem with that. Is it because we have the worst doctors? Of course not. It’s because of special interest groups. The Trial Lawyers Association. We will not deal with them. Every time it has come up before Congress, the House has passed it, but the Senate will not vote on it, because there are some filibustering senators who are in the hip pocket of the Trial Lawyers Association,” said Carson.

Finally, Carson said we have to come to grips with the fact that insurers make money by denying people care. “That’s a basic inherent conflict of interest. We have to find a way to deal with that,” he said.

TONY MEGGS: “We’re grateful that congress, both left and right, saw healthcare sharing ministries like ours … as being part of the solution.”

Some Christians, especially the self-employed and small business workers, are participating in medical cost sharing ministries like Medi-Share because they can’t afford the high cost of individual health insurance plans. Today’s ruling won’t have a direct impact on them, said Tony Meggs, the president and CEO of Medi-Share’s parent organization, Christian Care Ministry.

As part of an alliance of three cost sharing organizations, Medi-Share lobbied for and won an exemption from the individual mandate for its members. “We’re grateful that Congress, both left and right, saw healthcare sharing ministries like ours and the other two ministries as being part of the solution,” said Meggs.

His organization’s 19-year history of paying every eligible bill (approaching $700 million to date) and its focus on wellness and preventative care helped convince legislators that cost-sharing ministry members deserved an exemption, he said.

“They understand that they need to bend the cost curve in some way in getting people to make better choices in terms of how they live their lives. From a diet and exercise perspective, those are things that Congress was interested in, and so I think it was a combination of [that and] the fact that we’ve been here for a long time. This is how we help people. It’s credible. We’re not scamming people,” said Meggs.

Medi-Share’s steady growth “accelerated” after the ACA was enacted, Meggs said, and he expects that growth to continue because he says there is about a 40 percent cost difference between an individual health insurance plan and a monthly Medi-Share contribution.

There are differences, however. Medi-Share participants must sign a statement of faith and agree not to abuse drugs or alcohol or engage in extra-marital sex, Meggs said. Medical problems resulting from violations of these agreements are not generally “shared,” nor are mental health problems or some pre-existing conditions. Additionally, insurance companies are contractually obligated to pay for eligible services, but “sharing” medical expenses is voluntary for Medi-Share members. “There’s no guarantee. There’s no contract. Our program is strictly voluntary, but what I can tell you is that over a 19 year history, a 100 percent of every eligible bill that we’ve ever published has been shared,” said Meggs

What about you?

How will today’s ruling impact your family’s health decisions?

Everyone Wins (and Loses): The Supreme Court’s Immigration Ruling

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a key component of Arizona’s controversial immigration law Monday, allowing local police to request documentation from people they suspect to be in the country illegally. It struck down “two provisions that made it a crime for an illegal immigrant to seek work or fail to register with the federal government,” NPR reported. It also ruled against “a portion of the law that allowed state and local law enforcement officers to arrest anyone based solely on the suspicion that the individual was in the country illegally.”

Governor Jan Brewer declared the ruling a victory, according to Politico. “Today is the day when the key components of our efforts to protect the citizens of Arizona, to take up the fight against illegal immigration in a balanced and constitutional way, has unanimously been vindicated by the highest court in the land,” she said. “Arizona’s and every other state’s inherent authority to protect and defend its people has been upheld.”

But the ruling “reignited concerns that the law could lead to widespread racial profiling and civil-rights violations by overzealous police targeting Hispanics, including U.S. citizens or those who are here legally,” The Arizona Republic reported. Writing at The Grio, Judith Browne Dianis said the decision is also “a mixed bag and a cautionary note for black folks” because anti-immigration laws “intrinsically include us in their broad sweep, as civil rights violations always do. ”

“I am pleased that the Supreme Court has struck down key provisions of Arizona’s immigration law,” President Obama said in a statement. “What this decision makes unmistakably clear is that Congress must act on comprehensive immigration reform. A patchwork of state laws is not a solution to our broken immigration system – it’s part of the problem.”

His administration went further. “Just hours after the Supreme Court issued its decision on  SB1070, federal officials said they would immediately rescind a controversial federal-state partnership that uses local cops in Arizona to detain immigrants,” Colorlines reported.

Rival Mitt Romney took the opposite approach, according to The Washington Post. “I would have preferred to see the Supreme Court give more latitude to states, not less. And the states, now under this decision, have less authority, less latitude, to enforce immigration law,” he reportedly said at a fundraiser in Scottsdale.

The ruling could be a “boon” to the president, but Romney loses no matter what, said Howard Fineman at The Huffington Post. “Praise the court and [Romney] offends Latinos; fault it and he offends social conservatives who have made a crackdown on the undocumented a key Tea Party plank. … Since possession of a valid driver’s license is, under the Arizona law, sufficient proof of citizenship, the ruling will force legal residents and citizens to get them if they don’t have them. There’s no better place to run a registration drive than at or near a DMV. Most of those voters are likely to be Democrats, or at least Obama supporters,” Fineman wrote.

Either way, “Many politicians – and Americans in general – don’t understand the complex contours of Hispanic voters in America,” The Christian Science Monitor reported. The problem begins with the term Hispanic, which was reportedly “manufactured by Congress in 1976 to be an umbrella term that applies to all Americans of Spanish descent.”

Speaking of Hispanics, the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference issued a statement stating, in part, that the Court “initiated the process of establishing a legal firewall against draconian measures as it pertains to immigration” and conveyed “a clear message that 21st century jurisprudence will not tolerate measures that polarize and segregate our communities.”

Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform also issued a statement, from Jim Wallis, that said, in part, “The decision to strike down key provisions of this legislation is a victory for everyone in the faith community who seeks to follow the Bible’s call for concern for the vulnerable and ‘stranger’ among us. Arizona’s immoral legislation threatened families, harmed children, and made it difficult for law enforcement to safeguard the communities they swore to protect; it remains important to ensure that any remaining parts of the legislation are never used to justify racial profiling by local police.”

The American Civil Liberties Union will devote $8.7 million to fight expansion of “show me your papers” laws in other states, its Executive Director Anthony D. Romero announced Monday. The ACLU will “aggressively battle any state’s attempts to enact copycat legislation while also fighting the ‘corrosive effects’ of existing anti-immigrant laws in Arizona and five other states,” its statement said.

It may be an uphill battle. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 55% of likely voters wanted SB1070 upheld, while only 26% wanted it overturned. Nineteen percent were undecided about the law.

What do you think?

Did the U.S. Supreme Court make the right decision?

Obama’s Healthcare Mandate: Redefining Religious Freedom?

Obama’s Healthcare Mandate: Redefining Religious Freedom?

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY UNDER FIRE?: Supporters of religious freedom and against President Obama's HHS mandates on faith institutions rallied in front of the HHS building on March 23. New protest rallies led by Catholic and conservative groups are taking place around the nation. (Photo: Olivier Douliery/Newscom)

Last Friday at noon, hundreds of demonstrators gathered on Capitol Hill and at rallies across the nation to protest President Barack Obama’s health-care law and, specifically, the law’s mandate requiring employers to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives.

Conservative politicians and activists led the charge, with leaders such as Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann declaring, “This is about, at its heart and soul, religious liberty. … We will fight this and we will win.” Bachmann’s battle cry represents a growing movement of religious conservatives who contend that the president’s plan violates their freedom and beliefs.

Growing up, I had the opportunity to attend a Catholic school until my senior year. As a result, I know first-hand the strong commitment to pro-life causes that many Catholics hold. For instance, as a choir member, it was an annual tradition for us to sing at the youth mass that occurred before the Right to Life March, a protest against Roe v. Wade. Abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty were topics that came up regularly in religion class. So it came as no surprise when I heard that 34 Catholic organizations have filed 12 federal lawsuits challenging the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ birth control mandate under the Affordable Care Act (also known as “Obamacare”).

Under the mandate, employers are required to provide access to contraceptive services as part of their health plans at no cost. However, as President Obama stated during a February 10 press conference, “[W]e’ve been mindful that there’s another principle at stake here — and that’s the principle of religious liberty, an inalienable right that is enshrined in our Constitution. As a citizen and a Christian, I cherish that right.” Knowing that many religious institutions oppose the use of contraceptives, originally all churches were exempted from the requirement. Now, that exemption is extended to any religious organization that has an objection to providing contraceptives; in those cases, the insurance company is responsible, not the organization.

To many people, including Christians, this sounds reasonable. So, why are Catholic organizations complaining?

The problem, they argue, is in the definition of “religious organizations.” In a lawsuit filed by Catholic organizations in Washington, D.C., the plaintiffs state that the mandate requires religious organizations to satisfy four criteria.

• First, the organization’s purpose must involve teaching and sharing religious values.

• Second, employees must subscribe to the same faith.

• Third, the organization must primarily serve those that subscribe to the same faith.

• Finally, the organization must be a non-profit.

“Thus, in order to safeguard their religious freedoms,” the lawsuit continues, “religious employers must plead with the Government for a determination that they are sufficiently ‘religious.’ ” Failure to adhere to the mandate could lead to penalties and fines. Since many Catholic organizations, such as hospitals, charities, and schools, employ and extend services to people of different faiths (and many people who claim no faith at all), it would be difficult to prove they are exempt from the mandate based on religion.

“If a group isn’t perceived as ‘religious,’ then they will be forced to provide drugs that violate their doctrine,” says Chieko Noguchi, the Director of Communications for the Archdiocese of Washington, one of the plaintiffs. “If the government can order us to violate our conscience, then what comes next?”

But don’t think that this is just a Catholic issue. According to the mandate’s opponents, it affects all Americans who profess to believe in God.

“One of the central missions of any church is supporting the less fortunate in our communities,” writes Lutheran pastor Joe Watkins in a June 3 editorial for the Philadelphia Inquirer. “With this mandate’s redefinition of a religious institution, many charitable operations will effectively be driven out of business. Under the new law if you are a Lutheran charity and you provide help to or hire non-Lutherans, you cease to be a religious institution. The same goes for Catholics, other Protestant denominations, and all other faith-based organizations.” He also argues that this will not only impact all religious groups, but also those who are either influenced or helped by these groups, since more time would be dedicated to religious background checks for potential employees and clients.

“It is distressing that our government would opt for a coercive and unfair regulation that requires us to make such an impossible choice,” Watkins wrote. “As a church, we have always opposed the use of drugs and procedures that are abortion-inducing. … Under this new governmental regulation, though, just by simply following our beliefs, we will face penalties under law.”

Watkins isn’t alone in his critique of the mandate. Back in February, some 2,500 Catholic, evangelical, Protestant, Jewish, and other religious leaders signed a letter asking the President to “reverse this decision and protest the conscience rights of those who have biblically based opposition to funding or providing contraceptives and abortifacients.” Also, the Catholic Church is planning to invite evangelicals for their upcoming event “Fortnight for Freedom,” which will take place the two weeks between June 21 and July 4 in order to bring attention to religious freedom issues.

In his speech announcing changes to the mandate, President Obama reflected on his first job in Chicago working with Catholic parishes in poor neighborhood. “I saw that local churches often did more good for a community than a government program ever could, so I know how important the work that faith-based organizations do and how much impact they can have in their communities.”

I am living proof of the positive effects of the faith-based organizations that President Obama described. I’m a proud, non-Catholic alumna of a Catholic school who understands why Catholics and their supporters are upset and concerned by the Affordable Care Act’s implications for religious freedom. By defining what a religious organization is, the HHS mandate could potentially hinder Christians from living out their faith with integrity. We, as Christians, are called to serve others no matter what. As a self-professed believer, President Obama should’ve recognized this.

What do you think?

Are Catholics and their conservative allies overreacting to the mandate or do they have a point?

Tony Evans: Gay Marriage Is Not a Civil Rights Issue

ALTERNATIVE VOICE: Dr. Tony Evans pastors the 9,000-member Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas and is president of the Urban Alternative, a national ministry devoted to restoring hope in families. (Photo: Bob Daemmrich/Newscom)

When President Obama announced that he now supports same-sex marriage, he cited his Christian faith as the reason for his “evolving” views. Yet for many other Christians, their commitment to Jesus Christ and an orthodox view of the Bible is the reason why they reject homosexuality as a valid lifestyle.

In a report on NPR’s Morning Edition, Dallas preacher and bestselling author Tony Evans said the issue is especially intense in African American churches. “The breakdown of the family is the single greatest challenge that we face today,” said Evans, which is why he believes black pastors are often the most outspoken opponents of same-sex marriage.

NPR religion correspondent Barbara Bradley Hagerty then asked Evans about the argument that same-sex marriage is a civil rights issue like race, but Evans wasn’t having it. “The issue of race is not an issue of choice. It’s an issue of birth,” he said.

When Hagerty asked Evans whether he believes homosexuality is a choice, he replied: “The Bible is clear on that one too. And that is, sexual relationships are to be between men and women within the context of marriage. That’s not only related to the issue of homosexuality, but adultery, or fornication or bestiality. All of that is proscribed in the Bible.”

Read and listen to the entire report here.