We do not belong to the government.

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Boondoggle or Worse? The House's Health Care Reform Bill November 12, 2009 Ronald Reagan once joked, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" Well, the Gipper was wrong. I have 12 even more terrifying words: "I'm the government's health care choices commissioner. Let me see your insurance policy." You see, the health care choices commissioner will be the head of just one of the 111 new government agencies created by the mammoth health care reform bill, which passed the House last Saturday by the narrowest of margins. Unless you've read all of the nearly 2,000 pages of the bill, you might not have heard of the health care choices commissioner. But there is a lot more in this bill you've never heard about as well. For example, as Bill Pear writes in the New York Times, supporters of gay rights included an amendment that would lower taxes for gay couples, ensuring tax-free health care benefits for an employee's same-sex partner. This was never debated on the floor, nor was it passed as a tax measure.It was just swept up into what has become the health care grab bag. So chalk one up for the gay lobby. Then there's a provision requiring vending machines to post calorie counts for the goodies they offer. And fast food chains will have to provide a "calorie count for each standard menu item." Health care reform? The bill also has new programs such as grants for home visitation programs, in which nurses and social workers can coach new mothers on parenting practices and teach them how to interact with their child "to enhance age-appropriate development." Like most of the congressmen, I haven't read these provisions, so I'm not sure who gets to decide what "age-appropriate interaction with children" is. But I'm not sure I want the government making those kind of decisions—telling parents how to interact with their kids. I'm all for health care reform. Adequate health care is too expensive for too many. If we could clean up Medicaid and Medicare and provide health care subsidies for the working poor, I and a lot of other people would be dancing in the streets. Now, the House members deserve some credit. They fought for, and won, pro-life provisions in the House bill. But it's all now up for grabs in the Senate. Hopefully, the Senate will come up with a more responsible bill, which does not add a trillion dollars to debt, and which does not put the government in absolute control of our health care. The biggest issue to me is whether the government ultimately makes life-and-death medical decisions. We've seen glimpses of this already. Just look at Florida's plan to combat a potential swine flu emergency. The state's approach to treating patients will be "the greatest good for the greatest number." But this utilitarian approach is a potential death sentence for the elderly and those with disabilities. I urge you to go to the ColsonCenter.org and view this week's installment of the Two-Minute Warning, where I talk about the dangers of utilitarianism—especially as it relates to health care. And you can download some very valuable free materials. I wouldn't be so concerned if this health care reform bill were just another example of bad legislation. But I fear much more is at stake. A government that decides who lives and who dies is no longer a government of the people and by the people. And it's certainly not a government for the people.

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Battlefield Triage vs. Indiscriminate Rationing

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And now the Florida Department of Health has issued a set of guidelines that instructs hospitals on what to do "if the state is overwhelmed by [H1N1] cases."

The guidelines recommend that hospitals bar "patients with incurable cancer, end-stage multiple sclerosis and other conditions from being admitted to hospitals." Another "recommendation" is that doctors "remove patients with poor prognoses from ventilators to treat those who have better chances of surviving."

To facilitate this culling of the herd, the guidelines "suggest" that "intensive care unit patients and those using ventilators to be reassessed after 48 to 72 hours." Those who have gotten sicker "would be taken off the machines or discharged from critical care" and replaced by those "who may have a better chance of survival."

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It Makes a Difference What We Believe because reality exists

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You're Teaching My Kid What? Exposing the Sex-Ed Biz November 10, 2009 This commentary contains material that may not be suitable for children. Dr. Miriam Grossman was lecturing at a Philadelphia college about sexual health. The students had invited her to talk about something they'd never encountered in all their years of sex education—the dangers of non-marital sex. Grossman will never forget the girl who told her that everything she'd said about sexually transmitted diseases was correct. "I always used condoms, but I got HPV anyway, and it's one of the high-risk types," the girl said. If the infection did not go away, she had a 40 percent chance of developing cervical cancer. In her new book, You're Teaching My Child What?, Grossman says she felt "a wave of sorrow" at the girl's words—but she was hardly surprised. The girl was yet another victim of a destructive philosophy that has been forced on America's youth under the guise of "sex education." The sex-ed lobby has always claimed it was all about health—teaching kids how to stay safe. But in reality, their goal was not preventing disease, pregnancy, and emotional distress. It's about indoctrinating them into a radical ideology—sexual freedom. Kids are urged to consult websites that urge them to begin "exploring" their sexuality at a young age, insist that sex at any age is a right, and encourage them to engage in bizarre and dangerous activities. The findings of science are not allowed to interfere with these radical teachings. If new research proves the dangers of the behaviors they advocate, the so-called "sexperts" simply ignore it. For instance, sex educators urge kids to avoid pregnancy by engaging in oral sex. But two years ago, cancer specialists found that oral cancers were on the rise among young adults, who used to be at very low risk if they did not smoke or drink. If kids interact with five or more partners, they increase their risk "a whopping 250 percent." And yet sex educators, Grossman writes, portray this activity as safe and normal. What's the result of this teaching? One in four American girls now has a sexually transmitted disease. What do the sex educators say about this? They shrug it off, telling kids that "most" people contract an STD in their lifetime—as if such a thing were normal and unavoidable. This ought to make us really angry. The "comprehensive" sex educators have done enormous harm to our kids. They keep right on teaching kids that life is a sexual-free-for-all with no consequences as long as they use so-called "protection." Read Dr. Miriam Grossman's book, You're Teaching My Child What? You can get a copy at BreakPoint.org. And then, share it with the teens in your life. They need to know the truth—that while STDs, cervical cancer, and heartbreak may be increasingly common, they are no more "normal" than swine flu. Once again, science is backing up the truth of the Judeo-Christian worldview. That is, sex ought to occur exclusively within the context of marriage. And anybody who tells us otherwise is sacrificing truth, science, and the health of our children.

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