Plans, Trans and Auto-Repeals
What kind of government says its health care can’t afford to keep people alive — but *will* pay to change their gender? Yours! Welcome to the Obama administration, located at the intersection of illogical and outrageous. In two seemingly unrelated stories [Tuesday], the House helped to highlight just how radically out of touch the President’s policy is with everyday Americans. For years, the Obama administration has argued that it’s cheaper to “let sick people die” than treat them. And to prove it, they wrote a little something into the President’s signature law authorizing 15 unaccountable bureaucrats to make decisions from Washington about whether you deserve care — and from whom. They called it the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), or “death panel,” as most people know it. Of course, the administration never hid IPAB’s real agenda. In fact, the head of Medicare at the time, Donald Berwick, was quite blunt about its role in rationing care.
What kind of government says its health care can’t afford to keep people alive — but will pay to change their gender? Yours! Welcome to the Obama administration, located at the intersection of illogical and outrageous. In two seemingly unrelated stories [Tuesday], the House helped to highlight just how radically out of touch the President’s policy is with everyday Americans.
For years, the Obama administration has argued that it’s cheaper to “let sick people die” than treat them. And to prove it, they wrote a little something into the President’s signature law authorizing 15 unaccountable bureaucrats to make decisions from Washington about whether you deserve care — and from whom. They called it the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), or “death panel,” as most people know it. Of course, the administration never hid IPAB’s real agenda. In fact, the head of Medicare at the time, Donald Berwick, was quite blunt about its role in rationing care.
Not surprisingly, the idea of a dozen strangers making health care choices for the rest of the country wasn’t exactly a crowd-pleaser, even for Democrats. While the White House tried to tamp down the criticism, most Americans were on to IPAB’s dirty little secret: that it will cost American lives to save Medicare dollars. Tired of the President trying to inject more government into the doctor-patient relationship, members of the House overwhelmingly voted to kill IPAB. With an almost 100-vote cushion, the repeal sailed through the House with 11 Democrats on board.
Meanwhile, as the House was sending the President a message on his idea of health care, the White House was busy sending its own. In a stunning turn of events, the government’s Office of Personnel Management announced that it had ordered federal employee health insurers to start covering transgender surgery, pills, and other therapy by next January. It’s the latest in a long line of unconstitutional, jaw-dropping ObamaCare mandates: taxpayer-funded sex changes.
If the government thought sick patient care was expensive, it should see the tab for gender “reassignment” surgery, which, at the very least, costs $20,000! Presumably, the White House didn’t want to show up empty-handed for [last night’s] LGBT pride bash. And while the decision wasn’t necessarily a surprise, the timing of it was. Two months ago, OPM said it wouldn’t consider a policy change like this until the fall.
In its usual heavy-handedness, instead of recommending the coverage, this President is demanding it. “Effective January 1, 2016,” Director John O'Brien writes, “no carrier participating in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program may have a general exclusion of services, drugs, or supplies related to gender transition or ‘sex transformations.’” Although the coverage is only available to the country’s two million government workers, it’s only a matter of time before the White House expands its sexual chaos to every insurance plan in America.
The National Center for Transgender Equality’s Mara Keisling has long been a fan of forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for biological disfiguration. “With today’s announcement,” Keisling cheered, “transgender federal employees can now access health care that is so fundamental to their well-being and, in the long-term, will make transgender employees happier.” Unfortunately for Mara and her confused counterparts, nothing about this “treatment” will make transgender employees happier. On the contrary, researchers have found, sex reassignment surgery does nothing to address the fundamental psychological issues underlying transgenderism. In one of the largest studies of its kind, Sweden discovered that in many cases, the surgery may have actually exacerbated the problems. “… [Ten] years after having the surgery, the transgendered began to experience increasing mental difficulties. Most shockingly, their suicide mortality rose almost 20-fold above the comparable non-transgender population.”
Only in Washington does is seem reasonable to create a board that will ration health care to the sick, while also creating a right for sex change coverage that will only increase the ailing population.
SPLC Hits on Women
If the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) thought it could use the Charleston tragedy to get back in the media’s good graces, they blew their chance. The so-called “civil rights” group did worm its way into some stories on the race politics at work in South Carolina, but most people were too outraged by its latest “extremist list” to listen. In the three years since SPLC inspired Floyd Corkins to walk through our doors and shoot Leo Johnson, the organization’s intimidation of conservatives has only increased.
Despite its credibility problems (the DOD and FBI both distanced themselves from the SPLC after it was linked to domestic terrorism in federal court), the organization insists on recklessly labeling as haters people it disagrees with. And while fewer people take SPLC seriously after the shooting at FRC, there is no undoing the danger their targeting can cause.
This time around, the group has taken a break from its radical sexual agenda to put together a hit list of “the most hard-lined anti-Muslim women activists in the country” (all of whom just happen to be conservative). Among others, the SPLC made the ridiculous decision to target women with enormous followings — like Ann Coulter, Brigitte Gabriel, and Laura Ingraham. You want to talk about a “war on women?” This is it! As I told Fox News’s Megyn Kelly [Tuesday] night, what legitimate civil rights group would try to intimidate and silence women? That’s what organizations like the Taliban do! SPLC cares “not cares not at all about the safety of the people it condemns…” Megyn pointed out, “nor the truth.” And, as FRC knows all too well, this kind of hostile labeling carries tremendous risk. Not a day goes by that our staff doesn’t walk past the bullet holes that Floyd Corkins intended for them.
Now, after leading a gunman to our front doors, the SPLC has, as Judicial Watch put it, “assembled a starter kit for Islamists to attack American women.” What these 12 brave conservatives have in common is not that they’ve spoke out against Islam — but radical Islam. And unfortunately for SPLC, most of the country agrees with them! As Ben Franklin wisely said, “Never argue with someone who buys ink by the barrel.” When SPLC starts picking a fight with popular media personalities (most of whom have large platforms to fire back), their days are numbered. Whatever scrap of credibility they had left will be destroyed by the majority of Americans who see these women as heroes — not haters.
Trump Towers over GOP Race
Donald Trump has dozens of houses, but the one he wants most is the White one on Pennsylvania Avenue. The billionaire business mogul is the latest (and most recognizable) face to enter the GOP race. Like Senator Rick Santorum, Governors Rick Perry and Mike Huckabee, this is a repeat trip to the Republicans’ biggest stage. Never afraid to speak his mind, the television star made quite a splash with his announcement speech — getting plenty of chuckles for his blunt honesty.
“I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created,” the businessman said. On immigration, Trump got plenty of attention on social media for his insistence that America should build a Great Wall of Mexico. “Nobody builds walls better than me, believe me. And I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great great wall on our southern border and I’ll have Mexico pay for that wall.” As a man who knows how to negotiate, Donald promised to do a better job than the Obama administration is doing in the Middle East. “I will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. And we won’t be using a man like Secretary Kerry that has absolutely no concept of negotiation, who’s making a horrible and laughable deal…”
On social issues, Donald Trump is more of a mystery. Same-sex “marriage,” he said, isn’t his “thing.” And while he says his views on marriage are “evolving,” he still favors “natural marriage” between a man and woman. In 2011, he made it clear that, after years of being pro-choice, he underwent a pro-life transformation — in part because of the personal stories he’d heard. At the time, he also vowed to fight abortion funding in ObamaCare. Regardless of how Trump performs in the race, one thing’s for sure: he’s just made it much more interesting.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
