Thursday, October 8, 2015

Judie Brown's commentary, "Medicaid Off the Rails!,"



What is Medicaid? According to Wikipedia, Medicaid “is a social health care program for families and individuals with low income and limited resources. The Health Insurance Association of America describes Medicaid as a ‘government insurance program for persons of all ages whose income and resources are insufficient to pay for health care.’”
Under Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, eligibility to receive Medicaid funds was greatly expanded, meaning that tax dollars are available to more individuals unable to pay for their own healthcare or for that of their family.
One of the organizations that receives Medicaid funding is Planned Parenthood, which means that some Medicaid funding will find its way into facilities that do not provide healthcare for families, but instead kill its youngest members while those individuals are waiting to be born. 
Yes, Medicaid funds are being used to pay for abortions!
A few states have taken action to remove Planned Parenthood as a recipient of those funds. They are doing this even though the Obama administration “is threatening states attempting to defund Planned Parenthood—those trying to stop the flow of their Medicaid funds to the abortion provider—with potential violation of federal law and, ultimately, the cutting off of Medicaid funds to those states.” At the same time, there are other states—17 to be exact—that specifically provide Medicaid funds for abortion! 
We find this situation bizarre, but then again that is one of the reasons why American Life Leagueand our Stop Planned Parenthood International program have worked tirelessly for many years to defund Planned Parenthood completely.
A history lesson may be helpful. For more than 40 years Planned Parenthood and similar organizations have been receiving our taxpayer dollars in one way or another. It all started with the Great Society Program in the 1960s and exploded with the launching of Title X of the Public Health Service Act. Today, we can liken these government programs to the eugenics movement of decades ago. Instead of encouraging two-parent families to stay together and raise their children in a stable family unit, these government programs teach that a child is a burden—one that they shouldn’t have to endure—and “reward” poor single parents by paying for the means to snuff out the life of their child. This skewed vision of family life and childrearing permeates society and, like an epidemic, infects each and every one of us—and results in the deaths of countless souls.
Over time, Planned Parenthood has inched its way into other federal programs that provide funding for “health services,” including Medicaid. That is why today it seems so difficult to pass a law that removes that funding from Planned Parenthood once and for all. As Politico reported: “Planned Parenthood got most of its $528 million in taxpayer support last fiscal year from two main pots of money—the Medicaid health care program for low-income people and grants such as the Title X family planning program.”
And what may be even more astounding is that right now there is a battle in Congress over defunding Planned Parenthood that may well fail before it can even advance. The House of Representatives seems strong, but the Senate is a nightmare! It is clear that Obama and most Democrats see nothing wrong with funding Planned Parenthood.
Furthermore, it is a well-known fact that few, if any, of these proponents of abortion have ever watched one or more of the Center for Medical Progress videos. In fact, they have joined in Planned Parenthood’s chorus claiming that the videos are fraudulent, even though forensic testing has proven that the videos are authentic and have not been altered.
But here’s the thing. Those who favor aborting children have grown numb to the truth of what an abortion does to a baby. Murder is not a word that any of them would use, yet that is exactly what abortion is. St. John Paul II said it best: “We need now more than ever to have the courage to look the truth in the eye and to call things by their proper name, without yielding to convenient compromises or to the temptation of self-deception.”
As Isaiah wrote in Scripture: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness” (Is 5:20).
Heeding those words, we move forward because, while Medicaid may be derailed today, it is never impossible to right the wrongs done with money meant to help lives, not kill them.