Uniting for Life

Winter, 1994

Articles

About This Issue

On the Clinton Rationing Plan

People "will know that they are not being denied treatment for any reason other than it is not appropriate - will not enhance or save the quality of life."

Hillary Rodham Clinton, Testimony to the Senate Finance Committee, Sept. 30, 1993

RELIGIOUS PRO-LIFE GROUPS OBJECT TO ABORTION COVERAGE IN PRESIDENT CLINTON'S HEALTH PLAN

Since President and Mrs. Clinton revealed the Clinton Plan for health care reform in this nation, most Americans have begun to form their opinions of what they believe should happen to solve the problems with the current health care system. Three major religious pro-life groups, representing Roman Catholics, Southern Baptists and Lutherans, have made their concerns known, not only to those in Washington, but, perhaps more importantly, directly to their faith communities urging them to take action. The United States Congress is expected to begin action on health care early in 1994.

Cardinal Roger Mahony, Archbishop of Los Angeles and Chairman of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee for Pro-Life Activities, is urging Catholics to participate in a message campaign to Congress on January 23, 1994. "No government has the right to force us to finance the deliberate destruction of human lives," Mahony said. Catholics are being asked to send a message to their congressional representative, senators and the President that abortion should be kept out of health care reform. "Project Life", sponsored by the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment, a Catholic grassroots action group, is expected to generate millions of postcards, mailgrams, letters and phone calls to Washington officials. The theme of the campaign is simply that "abortion is not health care... and coercing Americans to pay for abortion would violate the consciences of millions and jeopardize needed health care reform."

The Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention feels a responsibility to address the health care issue, according to Richard D. Land, executive director, "because President Clinton is a member of a Southern Baptist congregation and many Southern Baptists are deeply opposed to the President's agenda on human life issues." A consultation on health care reform is being planned for early in 1994 with special attention to the impact of the proposals on the sanctity of life at all stages of development. Land stated that the inclusion of abortion on demand must be prevented. "The Christian Life Commission will educate and involve grassroots Southern Baptists in this critical battle like we never have on any other issue. We must not fail."

Lutherans For Life, a national pro-life ministry, has written to Lutheran congregations in the major Lutheran denominations issuing a call to action. Edward Fehskens, executive director, states, "The witness of the Church for nearly two thousand years has consistently condemned the destruction of unborn human life by abortion. A nationally enforced, tax-payer funded regime of abortion will result in countless more deaths. Such a regime will also force millions of citizens to violate their consciences, compelling them to participate in that which is evil. This violation of conscience is unjust." Lutherans For Life is asking Christians to express to their congressional representative, senators and the President, their "strongest conscientious objection" to abortion funding in any national health plan. Request for prayer is made also.

THE CLINTON HEALTHCARE RATIONING PLAN: BINDING THE CONSCIENCES OF CHRISTIANS OPPOSED TO ABORTION AND EUTHANASIA

-- Candace Mueller

In the coming months, the United States Congress will consider proposals for reforming our nation's healthcare system that could threaten the freedom of conscience of millions of faith-filled Americans. Two major proposals are of grave concern to those who hold human life, born and unborn, sacred.

Abortion is to be included as a medically necessary service and therefore is to become part of the basic benefits package.

Lifesaving care is to be denied or "rationed" especially to those facing end-of-life decisions, people with disabilities, older people or others determined to be lacking "quality of life".

In short, the Clinton health plan treats lives just beginning as worthless and lives near the end as too costly.

These proposals are very serious and very wrong. Hopefully, many, if not most, Americans, Christians and non-Christians alike, will recognize the grave consequences for the physical as well as the spiritual well being of many of their fellow citizens.

While abortion on demand has been legal since the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade, and while many citizens have opposed that decision, they have not been required by law to terminate their pregnancies by abortion. (This is to say nothing of the possible financial incentives weighted toward abortion over other necessary care and services for a high-risk pregnancy that could occur under the Clinton proposal.) However, requiring Christians by law to pay for abortions through tax monies implicates them in a way that compromises their beliefs and conscience.

The Clinton administration's proposals will result in governmental policy that is not only unjust but also evil.

The proposals inflict an injustice because the unjust killing of human beings, born and unborn, is subsidized, and it unjustly requires all taxpayers to participate in that subsidy, including those opposed to abortion and euthanasia.

The proposals inflict great evil upon our taxpaying citizens by using their money for the destruction of innocent human life.

For Christians, the matter of right conscience is controlled by strong feelings based on knowledge gained from the Word of God. Millions of Christians know that abortion is wrong and that the Word of God as well as the statements of the historic Christian Church confirm this. They also confirm the wrongness of actively promoting cost-saving measures that result in involuntary euthanasia or physician assisted suicides by means of the rationing of lifesaving care.

To act against these conscientious beliefs, even when required by law, is a sin committed by a Christian who has full knowledge of the wrong-doing. Thomas Jefferson said that "to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical..." Christians should not stand by and allow our nation's government to contribute to this spiritual peril for many Americans.

A Christian is bound by conscience to disobey an order or a law which violates God's will. (Acts 5: 29). Therefore, through the democratic process, Christians must use all legal and judicial means available to prevent these objectionable policies from being enacted.

Christians are the beneficiaries of God's loving care (1 Peter 5:7) and, as Christians, we respond to His love by touching the lives of people who are hurting in an uncaring world. Christian care-givers are available and ready to help women and families who are struggling with a problem pregnancy. Carrying the burdens of others as they suffer disease or discomfort is also demanded of Christians. We cannot, in good conscience, pay for the elimination of these problems by abortion or deliberate death. Such proposals must be defeated.

WHY CLINTON'S PLAN MEANS RATIONING

1) Hillary Rodham Clinton told the Senate Finance Committee Sept. 30, 1993 that under the proposal, "[P]eople will know that they are not being denied treatment for any reason other than it is not appropriate - will not enhance or save the quality of life [emphasis added]." In short, she admits that poor "quality of life" will be a basis for treatment denial.

2) Clinton's proposal imposes "hidden rationing." There will be no government boards openly mandating such rules as "no kidney dialysis for people over 65." Instead, the Clinton Health Care Rationing Plan will force individual health plans to ration because of drastic limits on the health insurance Americans will be allowed to purchase.

3) Premium caps will rise far less than health care cost inflation. The law will require you to buy a "comprehensive benefits package," normally through a quasi-governmental bureaucracy called a "regional Alliance." Caps will be imposed on the average premium for the packages in the region. Each year, these caps will be permitted to rise only at levels considerably below health care cost inflation.

4) The resulting cost squeeze will force rationing. Each year the health plan you select to provide you the "comprehensive benefits package" will have less money in "real" dollars (the value of the dollar adjusted for health cost inflation). But it will be responsible for providing the same types of health care to the same number of people as the year before. Something will have to give - the health plan will have to cut down more and more each year on the treatments it makes available.

5) Consider the salary analogy. If the government prohibited your salary from rising more than 2% a year, regardless of inflation, your buying power would decrease steadily. Over time, as inflation ate away at the value of the dollar, your standard of living would slowly but significantly fall. Under the Clinton Rationing Plan, the same will happen to the value of the medical treatments your insurance will be able to buy.

6) The Clintons claim that the shortfall can all be made up from eliminating waste and fraud is wildly unrealistic. Robert Shiels of the respected econometric firm Lewin-VHS notes that to maintain the current level of health care under the premium caps Clinton would impose would require productivity increases by health care providers every year at five times the annual productivity increase in American manufacturing!

7) Health plans are authorized to deny treatments they consider "inappropriate" or outside their "practice guidelines." If health plans must offer the comprehensive benefits package, how can they legally ration? If they are allowed to deny treatment they consider "inappropriate" or that is outside their "practice Guidelines." This effectively allows denial of treatment when, in the words of the First Lady, it will not "enhance or save the quality of life."

8) Backup insurance to protect your family from rationing would be illegal. You could buy supplemental insurance for categories outside the comprehensive benefits package, such as certain dental benefits. But the bill prohibits selling supplemental insurance that "duplicate" categories inside the package -- precisely the ones that would be rationed.

9) Specialists would be drastically limited. Specialists trained by medical schools would be limited to 45% of all doctors - roughly half the current number. This will reduce the number of those specially trained to diagnose and treat complex illnesses, leading to rationing due to the lack of availability of specialists. It will also devastate medical research, which is largely conducted by specialists.

10) Research and development will be curtailed. The premium caps, together with special oversight on the pricing of "breakthrough" drugs, will greatly reduce the incentive to private investors to gamble on the development of new drugs and other treatments. In addition the number of trained specialists qualified to conduct research will be severely curtailed by law.

11) Choice of doctors curtailed. Although theoretically people could select health plans that do not limit their choice of doctors, most health care economists agree that the severe premium caps and other disincentives will make such plans economically infeasible. You could be forced to use an abortionist to deliver your baby, or a doctor who didn't think her life was worth living to treat your mother.

12) The Clinton Health Care Rationing Plan will cause "slow strangulation." It will gradually, year by year, strangle our ability to save the lives of members of our families when they need the care the most - when faced with a costly life-threatening condition.

(Paid for by the National Right to Life Committee, Inc.)

Speaking of Life -

THE PROPOSED HEALTH PLAN IS A KILLER

-- Dr. Jean Garton

NEWSWEEK captioned a photo of the First Lady with the words: "Hillary Clinton: Putting a Face on Health Care Reform." But as she and others market the Health Plan, its face appears to be one of deception, rejection and selection.

DECEPTION because it proposes a "basic benefits" package that would not benefit unborn children.

Existing health insurance would be replaced with a plan that includes abortion as a basic benefit.

It deceptively avoids the word "abortion," hiding it, instead, under the category of "medically necessary reproductive health services."

The "face" of the health plan is also one of REJECTION. It would deny needed therapy and other benefits to tens of thousands of people, many of them children - who suffer from cerebral palsy, cystic fibrosis and other congenital and chronic disabilities.

The plan would cover therapy following an illness or accident but not therapy for children born with a birth defect because the plan does not consider that child either ill or injured.

The "face" of the health plans is also one of SELECTION. It would cover the abortion of a child - who was discovered before birth to have a congenital defect - but would not cover that same child for long-term therapy if it was allowed to be born.

The decision to abortion could be greatly influenced by the financial assistance available to parents of such a child.

No state can long endure the weakening of its power over life and death. It finds some way to reclaim its authority. In this case, abortion-on-demand is becoming abortion-by-demand... not openly or obviously but deceptively and selectively.

This health plan has a face all right, but it's the face of a killer.

Beginning the night before, the National Prayer Vigil for Life takes place in Washington at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception for the Roman Catholic community.

Orthodox Christians for Life are holding a pre-March Orthodox prayer service at St. Nicholas Orthodox Cathedral, Washington, DC, starting at 9:00 a.m. Friday morning.

The Taskforce of United Methodists on Abortion and Sexuality is holding its annual service of worship in the Simpson Memorial Chapel of The United Methodist Building, located on Capitol Hill, at 9:30 am.

The National Pro-Life Religious Council (NPRC) is sponsoring its second annual ecumenical Christian prayer service for the March at Mount Olivet Lutheran Church, downtown Washington, that begins at 10:00 am and will end with a procession to the Ellipse for the March. Representatives from twelve denominations and fellowships in NPRC's membership will assist in leading the service. The Rev. Dr. John Brown, United Church of Christ pastor and president of the NPRC, will preach.

NPRC SEEKS NEW MEMBERS

This is your opportunity to join with other Christian pro-life leaders to help restore legal protection to the unborn child.

The National Pro-Life Religious Council, Inc. (NPRC) is a Christian pro-life coalition which acknowledges Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and is called to witness to and affirm the biblical standard of the value, dignity and sanctity of human life.

NPRC's Board of Directors consists of leaders of pro-life religious groups or pro-life groups with a religious outreach.

Associate membership is open to any individual, church, or group which subscribes to NPRC's principles.

NPRC currently has members working within pro-life groups associated with the following denominations or churches: American Baptist, Catholic, Disciples of Christ, Episcopalian, Evangelical (member denominations of the National Association of Evangelicals), Lutheran, Orthodox, Presbyterian, Southern Baptist Convention, United Church of Christ, and United Methodist.

Please join NPRC today and help us end the tragedy of abortion!

The IRS has granted 501(c)3 status to the NPRC, allowing your contributions to aid in the work of NPRC to be tax deductible.

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