APP Communications Director Thomas Peters is published over at the Daily Caller today, on the lessons to be learned on both sides from Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts: 

Did the pro-life movement ... sell their souls to help Brown win, and fight for the better outcome?

The most common charge against the pro-life movement these days, especially when that movement is involved in politics and elections, is that it is actually a front of the Republican Party (never mind the fact that the pro-choice movement lumps the vast majority of its money and resources behind the Democratic party candidates). This pro-Republicanism is how liberals explain the pro-life movement’s support of both John McCain in the 2008 presidential election, and their incongruous support of Scott Brown (a pro-choicer) in the 2010 Massachusetts senate race: they’re both Republicans.

But the common thread between these two decisions is far more disarmingly simple: Brown and McCain, while not perfect from the perspective of the pro-life movement, were better pro-life choices than their respective alternatives. [Read the rest.]

I'm not sure if this is a situation of "better late than never":

Reporting from Washington - President Obama, after sustaining months of criticism for not being clear about what he wanted in healthcare legislation, will post specific proposals for a comprehensive plan on the Internet by Monday, according to the White House.

The posting would come three days before a televised meeting that Obama plans to convene with congressional Democratic and Republican leaders in hopes of restarting his stalled bid to overhaul the nation's healthcare system.

"There will be one proposal. It is the president's," Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said Thursday while unveiling a report highlighting large premium increases by insurance companies nationwide, including California-based Anthem Blue Cross.

"I think the idea is that it will take some of the best of the ideas [from the House and Senate bills] and put them into a framework moving forward," Sebelius said. (LA Times)

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the democratic leadership supports the expression of free speech only when these public voices agree with their own viewpoint.

And it is almost as if they are surprised that there could be genuine grassroots opposition to their proposed reform of health care.

Two posts full of videos and comments help make such a case:

• "Why Is Barack Obama Attacking Community Organizers?" at The Cloakroom 
• "This is what mob rule looks like" at Michelle Malkin

August will go something like this, he says:

Expect to see it portrayed by the Left as a good, old-fashioned populist street fight — the little guy vs. big special interests; David vs. Goliath.

Specifically, the president and his allies in Congress will jettison all these large interest groups they sought to co-opt through back-room negotiations and turn elsewhere for support. They’ll join hands with an entirely different collection of interest groups: think MoveOn.org, Families USA, the unions, the liberal blogosphere, and the Democratic National Committee, and you get the picture. Collectively they will don the robes and carry the slingshot of the young David and sanctimoniously seek to slay Goliath — i.e., those special-interest defenders of the status quo.

You can see the dramatic possibilities. However, this strategy poses a host of problems for the president. [Read on.]

This is an astonishing move.

On the official White House blog, Macon Phillips writes:

"There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care.  These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation.  Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov."

As Erick Erickson points out, this request is not only disturbing, it may be explicitly illegal.

Sen John Cornyn accused the White House of compiling an "enemies list."

Meanwhile, Ben Smith at Politico points out:

This is exactly what [the Obama team] did with the Muslim smear and other rumors (including the birth certificate) last year — created a website and e-mail address, its own Snopes, to highlight and then disprove that which was damaging its candidate.

I think Smith misses a critical point, however - the Obama team is no longer running a campaign, they are running the American government. And such active and aggressive means to control messaging and hamper debate simply have no place in any president's administration, democrat or republican.

An incredible charge from DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse who claimed Tuesday that 

mobs are being transported to rallies by "well- funded, highly organized groups run by Republican operatives and funded by the special interests who are desperately trying to stop the agenda for change the president was elected to bring to Washington. " (CNN)

The closet proof I have seen about these claims are scattered instances of center-right organizations which provide information about where town hall meetings are scheduled to take place.

Obviously one should not encourage violent protest which breaks-down the order of a free debate, especially when the free debate will actually provide a more substantial challenge to the reforms currently being proposed.

But to claim that these many, many public outbreaks of anger about the current political landscape are orchestrated by nameless, faceless special interest groups ... well, where is the proof? And if there is not proof, how is this not instead an attempt to curtail free speech rights?

The second in a series of videos by LetFreedomRing, on the follies of government-run Health Care:

The first video is here. The third (and final) video should be out next week.

Matt Drudge picks up this AP story which refutes claims made by abortion advocates that the health care bills in Congress are abortion-neutral:

Health care legislation before Congress would allow a new government-sponsored insurance plan to cover abortions, a decision that would affect millions of women and recast federal policy on the divisive issue.

... The new federal funds would take the form of subsidies for low- and middle-income people buying coverage through the health insurance exchange. Subsidies would be available for people to buy the public plan or private coverage. Making things more complicated, the federal subsidies would be mixed in with contributions from individuals and employers. Eventually, most Americans could end up getting their coverage through the exchange.

... In the Senate, the plan passed by the health committee is still largely silent on the abortion issue. Staff aides confirmed that the public plan—and private insurance offered in the exchange—would be allowed to cover abortion, without funding restrictions.

Under both the House and Senate approaches, the decision to offer abortion coverage in the public plan would be made by the health and human services secretary.

Is there any doubt, given her record on the issue, that Kathleen Sebelius wouldn't allow abortion coverage in the public plan?

And as backstory, Steven Ertelt points out that the previous coverage of the abortion-in-health-care debate published by the AP was woefully misleading, and as a result, several organizations had demanded a retraction. Such pressure perhaps resulted in the commissioning of this more-complete analysis of the situation.

And not surprisingly, she is progressively pleasing none of them:

House liberals are offended that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) mocked their threats to oppose a Democratic healthcare bill, saying leaders are underestimating their frustration over a deal cut with centrist Blue Dogs. In a session with reporters before leaving for the August recess, Pelosi said, “Are you asking me are progressives going to vote against universal, quality, affordable healthcare for all Americans? No way.” Her directness elicited laughter in the room.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), co-chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, on Monday expressed outrage at the comments and said her group is being “laughed at.”

Woolsey is the author of a letter signed by 60 fellow House liberals vowing to vote against a deal cut with the Blue Dogs. Liberals feel the bill weakens the “public option,” the group’s signature issue in the healthcare debate.

“It didn’t take us very seriously,” Woolsey said. “She may be overlooking the strength behind the 60, and there are more who are absolutely committed to a robust public option.” (The Hill)

The health care debate on the democrat side is becoming a voyage between Scylla and Charybdis - between the Scylla of a "robust" public option which will undermine private competition (creating a huge national debt burden) and the Charybdis of a more economically-feasible plan which still creates an explosion of government beuracracy in the already-overburdened health care industry.

Oregon has a government-run state health care plan. And this has led, not surprisingly, to rationing of care for the elderly, as this very personal local news segment reveals:

I thought the spokesperson for the government-run health care program came off very poorly. And note how it was the private pharmeceudical company that did the right thing in the end.

Peggy Noonan recently wrote about the virtue of individuals in the medicine industry, and whether they would be able to continue performing acts of kindness under government supervision:

Let me throw forward three other things that I suspect lessen , or will lessen, support for full health-care reform, two of them not quantifiable.

The first has to do with the doctors throughout the country who give patients a break, who quietly underbill someone they know is in trouble, or don’t charge for their services. Also the emergency rooms that provide excellent service for the uninsured in medical crisis. People don’t talk about this much because they’re afraid if they do they’ll lose it, that some government genius will come along and make it illegal for a doctor not to charge or a hospital to fudge around, with mercy, in its billing. People are afraid of losing the parts of the system that sometimes work—the unquantifiable parts, the human parts.

Sadly, the "human parts" of health care seem to have been edged-out of the Oregon government-run health care system.

update: Hot Air also posts on this story, which apparently is from 2008. No matter though: government-run health care programs have had problems with rationing benefits for some time.

It's going to be a long August recess....

Local report from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Something like this, Krauthammer says:

In the end, Obama will have to settle for something very modest. And indeed it will be health-insurance reform.

To win back the vast constituency that has insurance, is happy with it, and is mightily resisting the fatal lures of Obamacare, the president will in the end simply impose heavy regulations on the insurance companies that will make what you already have secure, portable, and imperishable: no policy cancellations, no pre-existing condition requirements, perhaps even a cap on out-of-pocket expenses.

Nirvana. But wouldn’t this bankrupt the insurance companies? Of course it would. There will be only one way to make this work: Impose an individual mandate. Force the 18 million Americans between 18 and 34 who (often quite rationally) forgo health insurance to buy it. This will create a huge new pool of customers who rarely get sick but will be paying premiums every month. And those premiums will subsidize nirvana health insurance for older folks. Net result? Another huge transfer of wealth from the young to the old, the now-routine specialty of the baby boomers; an end to the dream of imposing European-style health care on the U.S.; and a president who before Christmas will wave his pen, proclaim victory, and watch as the newest conventional wisdom reaffirms his divinity.

An incredible series of events took place yesterday which resulted in abortion coverage being mandated in both the public option for government health insurance and (to less of a degree) for coverage of abortion in private insurance.

This amendment will now have to be voted on by the entire House after the August recess.

Jeff Emanuel has the details at Red State: 

Yesterday afternoon, House Energy and Commerce Committee member Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) proposed an amendment to the House health care overhaul bill to allow for federal funding of elective abortion coverage for those enrolled in the “public option,” to mandate that every regional Health Insurance Exchange contain at least one private insurance plan that offers abortion coverage, and to permit taxpayer subsidies of those private insurance plans and others that cover elective abortion.

The Capps amendment passed 30-28, with E&C Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA), Capps, and 28 other Democrats voting in favor of mandating (and allowing taxpayer funding to be used to subsidize) abortion coverage.

Taxpayer dollars do not currently pay for, or subsidize, insurance plans that cover elective abortion services. This amendment, if the health overhaul bill to which it is attached is passed and signed into law, would alter that policy, using the tax dollars of every American - pro-life or pro-choice - to subsidize abortion coverage (and, by extension, abortion services).

A counter-amendment introduced by Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA) was defeated only after Rep. Waxman decided he wanted to bring the counter-amendment back for "reconsideration" and a re-vote.

Bottom-line: now the health care plan not only allows for abortion coverage - it mandates them.

Via Hot Air, disappointing behavior from the speaker of the house:

A day after formally delaying a vote on a healthcare bill and having to accept a further weakening of a public option to compete with private insurers, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) lashed out at the health insurance industry and urged her members to do the same during the August recess.

“They are the villains in this,” Pelosi said of private insurers. “They have been part of the problem in a major way. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening. And the public has to know that. They can disguise their arguments any way they want, but the fact is that they don’t want the competition.”…

.... “It’s almost immoral what they are doing,” added Pelosi, who stood outside her office long after her press conference ended to continue speaking to reporters, even as aides tried in vain to usher her inside. “Of course they’ve been immoral all along in how they have treated the people that they insure with pre-existing conditions, you know, the litany of it all.”

Speaker Pelosi is trying to shift the debate way from the problems inherent in the health care reform bill towards the problems in the private health care and insurance markets. But there is little disagreement about there being problems in the current system - there is great disagreement, however, about how to best fix these problems.

Oddly-enough, democrat leadership does not seem willing to include tort reform in their proposals for the American health care system, even as frivelous lawsuits are a huge source of waste, driving up the premiums and costs which Speaker Pelosi is so concerned about.

As a summary reminder, alleged injustices by insurance providers does not justify a new injustice of a flawed public option. If Americans aren't being well served today, they certainly do not deserve to be more exploited tomorrow.

A single-payer activist group convinced Barney Frank to talk to them:

The fact that he is an advocate of single-payer isn't all that surprising. After all, Barack Obama in 2003 admitted the same desire to see America embrace a single-payer model of health care. 

What we should pay attention to is that, in Barney Frank's estimation, a robust public option will necessarily lead to single-payer eventually.

Actually, such an outcome is almost guaranteed because the government does not have to play by the same rules as the private market, as our current expenditures demonstrate. 

The government public plan can operate at huge deficits, and while it supposedly is meant to  provide "competition" to the free market, it will in fact undercut and crowd out private plans, like Frank says.

Aside from specific ethical concerns one can have about the public option, this philosophical and practical objection must also be considered as we begin debating health care in this upcoming recess.

From Let Freedom Ring:

Notsosure.org will ultimately grow to several videos with a related theme: voters and interested citizens who were drawn to Candidate Obama’s messages of “Hope” and “Change” are now beginning to have doubts about the policies proposed by President Obama. Politicized Healthcare is the first of these. Others will follow.

High production values, and at least some attempt to reach out to the other side of the health care reform debate (albeit by caricaturing their position somewhat):

It took some time for a consensus to emerge that, yes indeed, abortion will be mandated under the current version of health-care reform being debated in Congress.

It now appears that euthanasia-counseling and rationing of care may also become one of the sad fruits of this mis-named "health-care reform."

Although one must always be careful of attributing intent to those who have framed the bill, it is troubling that both abortion and euthanasia appear to be skillfully-incorporated into the fabric of the reform being proposed.

RedState contributor Erick Erickson relates a disturbing sentence spoken by a democrat aide who said "probably the best part of the [health care] bill is the increase in Hospice care which will solve the prolonging of life issue.” Erickson writes:

This seems to prove the argument that the Obama bureaucrats will eventually decide who lives and who dies.

Remember, the Democrats have already put in their legislation a requirement for senior citizens to, every five years, learn how to die with dignity.

Also remember that hospice care is for the already terminally ill. So how will increasing hospice care funding solve “prolonging of life issues” unless the government is going to start putting people who are not terminally ill into hospice after they’ve had their mandatory “how to kill yourself” training.

Fred Thompson recently spoke with Betsy McCaughey, a former New York state officer, about the provision in the health-care bill for mandatory "Advance Care Planning Consultation":

At issue is section 1233 of the legislative proposal that deals with a government requirement for an "Advance Care Planning Consultation."

One of the most shocking things is page 425, where the Congress would make it mandatory absolutely that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session," she said. "They will tell [them] how to end their life sooner."

The proposal specifically calls for the consultation to recommend "palliative care and hospice" for seniors in their mandatory counseling sessions. Palliative care and hospice generally focus only on pain relief until death.

Two senior House Republicans confirm the fears expressed above:

In a statement sent to LifeNews.com House Republican Leader John Boehner and Republican Policy Committee Chairman Thaddeus McCotter [said:]

"Section 1233 of the House-drafted legislation encourages health care providers to provide their Medicare patients with counseling on ‘the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration’ and other end of life treatments,'" the pair say.

That section "may place seniors in situations where they feel pressured to sign end of life directives they would not otherwise sign."

"This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into law. At a minimum this legislative language deserves a full and open public debate – the sort of debate that is impossible to have under the politically-driven deadlines Democratic leaders have arbitrarily set for enactment of a health care bill," they state.

Of course, such aggressive counceling of the elderly about their so-called "option to die" is gravely opposed to human dignity. This is yet another reason to oppose speedily-passing a bill which, with each passing day, is exposed to promote "reforms" that threaten human life and dignity.

update: Jeff Emanuel has written on "The Downside of a ‘Public Option’: Oregon’s Physician-Assisted Suicide Promotion and Overall Rationing of Care":

"... over the course of this decade, the state of Oregon has put in place a formal procedure for rationing care to patients whose health coverage is subsidized by government (i.e., who are enrolled in some form of the state’s “public option”). To date, they are the only government in the world to have formally done this, though many — from Britain to Canada to states here in the U.S. — work “cost-effectiveness” into their official denials of medical treatment. "

In last Friday's Declarations column for the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan describes three things she thinks will "lessen support for full health-care reform." Her second:

Second, and this is big, some of the bills being worked on in Congress will allow for or mandate taxpayer funding of abortion. Speaking only and narrowly in political terms, this is so ignorant as to be astounding. A good portion of the support for national health care comes from a sort of European Christian Democrat spirit of community, of “We are all in this together.” This spirit potentially unites Democrats, leftists, some Republicans and GOP populists, the politically unaffiliated and those of whatever view with low incomes. But putting abortion in the mix takes the Christian out of Christian Democrat. It breaks and jangles the coalition, telling those who believe abortion is evil that they not only have to accept its legality but now have to pay for it in a brand new plan, for which they’ll be more highly taxed. This is taking a knife to your own supporters.

Health care negotiations ended last week on a sour note:

House healthcare negotiations dissolved in acrimony on Friday, with Blue Dog Democrats saying they were “lied” to by their Democratic leaders.

... The seven Blue Dogs on the Energy and Commerce Committee stormed out of a Friday meeting with their committee chairman, Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), saying Waxman had been negotiating in bad faith over a number of provisions Blue Dogs demanded be changed in the stalled healthcare bill.

“I’ve been lied to,” Blue Dog Coalition Co-Chairman Charlie Melancon (D-La.) said on Friday. “We have not had legitimate negotiations.

“Mr. Waxman has decided to sever discussions with the Blue Dogs who are trying to make this bill work for America,” Melancon said.

Although those Blue Dogs were supposed to be headed back into another meeting of the Energy and Commerce Democrats, their anger was visible.

If the two sides cannot reach an agreement, the only hope for passage of the bill in the House will be to go straight to the floor, an option leaders shied away from endorsing but said was an option.

But the Blue Dogs issued dire warnings to leaders contemplating that approach.

"Waxman simply does not have votes in committee and process should not be bypassed to bring the bill straight to floor,” Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.), the lead Blue Dog negotiator, said on Friday. “We are trying to save this bill and trying to save this party.”

Melancon said there would be 40-45 “solid no” votes from the 52-strong Blue Dogs, among other problems throughout the caucus. And Melancon said there are more Democrats who will vote against the bill. (The Hill)

I think this episode provides more evidence that one of the greatest problems facing health care reform is the ultra-liberalism of the current democrat leadership, which is at-odds with the more conservative elements of the party.

A single payer system of health care (otherwise known as nationalized health care), is lurking in the shadows of the health care reform proposed by Barack Obama and democrats in Congress.

Historically, when countries adopt a government option for health care, over the course of time it crowds out private options because the government program is artificially subsidized. 

What ought to be pointed out, is that contrary to what Obama has said recently, in 2003 he was a proponent of seeing the American government become the single payer of a universal health care for Americans:

Transcript:

“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program.” (applause) “I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.” Obama speaking to the Illinois AFL-CIO, June 30, 2003.