The best argument against Obamacare may be lying quietly in a London hospital. Not even a year old, tiny Charlie Gard rests peacefully, completely unaware of the global crusade to keep him alive. The hum of the room’s machines is nothing compared to the commotion outside, where doctors, lawyers, judges, and world leaders all fight for the right to decide Charlie’s fate.

At the center of the storm are Connie Yates and Chris Gard, the 11-month-old’s parents, who can’t understand why the hospital is demanding that they let him die instead of taking him to the U.S. for potentially life-saving treatment. It isn’t a matter of money; the couple has raised more than $1.6 million for the trip. It isn’t a matter of care; doctors at the Vatican and neurologists in America have already offered their services. It isn’t even a matter of transport; the parents can make all of the necessary arrangements. This is about a hospital, under a system of socialized medicine, determined to decide who deserves care. And according to the bureaucracy at Great Ormond Street Hospital, Charlie doesn’t. But if their son is still fighting, Charlie’s parents said, “we’re still fighting.” Thursday, the family will take as much evidence as they can to the High Court to plead for his release.

In the meantime, an ocean away, Americans are getting a frightening preview of their future if the Senate doesn’t repeal Obamacare. “Congress … ought to hang a photo of little Charlie right in the House and Senate as a reminder — amid all the Obamacare fate debates — why government has no business in health care,” Cheryl Chumley argued in The Washington Times. Like us, she shudders to think of a world where unelected bureaucrats have the power to limit which specialists you see, what treatments are available, and in some cases, whether you’re eligible for care at all.

This is the same rationing threat FRC raised when Obamacare was fiercely debated seven years ago. No one wants a board of strangers sitting at the controls in Washington making health decisions for Americans — especially not when innocent lives hang in the balance. But the reality is this: The more control the government has, the more power it has over the application of that care. As Obama’s former Medicare boss famously said, “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care. The decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”

Vice President Mike Pence understands that Charlie’s case won’t be the exception if America continues down this path. “We hope and pray that little Charlie Gard gets every chance, but the American people ought to reflect on the fact that, for all the talk on the Left about single-payer, that’s where it takes us,” he told Rush Limbaugh. “We breathe a prayer and the hope that the single-payer system in England will see its way clear to allow the family — the mother and the father — to be able to choose the greatest extent of life-saving treatment that’s available to their child.” If not, he said soberly, they’ll be “submitted to a government program that says, ‘No, we’re going to remove life support from your precious 11-month-old child’ because the government has decided that the prospects of their life are such that they no longer warrant an investment in health services.”

More than 3,000 miles away, America is at its own health care crossroads. While the Senate tries desperately to find consensus on a health care bill, surely it has it on the most important piece: the need to repeal Obamacare. If anything can light a fire under the GOP to act, the image of these two heartbroken parents should. Their agonized faces are the future of Obamacare. As Paul Diamond warns, “This arrogance of the elites, who presume to know what is the best for a child over those parents who are deemed too emotive, too uneducated, or who have the wrong religious views, is not a peculiar British problem. This problem is alive and well in the U.S. [too] and must be countered wherever it is found.” Help save other families from Connie and Chris’s nightmare. Contact your senators and tell them to repeal Obamacare!

Originally published here.

Clarity on Charity: ECFA Calls GuideStar to Account

Users aren’t the only ones upset by the Left-hand lurch of GuideStar — so are fellow charity raters. The use of Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) “hate” labeling came as a shock to the rest of the industry, which knows neutrality is the only way to be taken seriously. Although GuideStar took down the red banners from pages like FRC and at least 40 other conservative organizations, the damage had already been done.

At the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA), President Dan Busby was sad to see GuideStar show its true colors. By aligning itself with the extremists at the SPLC — a group, ironically, that gets an “F” from Charity Navigator’s index — he recognizes that GuideStar lost the respect of several industry colleagues and donors. “Faith-based organizations that espouse beliefs held for millennia and based in the Bible do not hold their views as a result of ‘hate,’” Busby wrote in a letter to CEO Jacob Harold that was just made public. “Rather, they hold them because they believe that God Himself has decreed the beliefs in His Word.”

While we are pleased to learn that GuideStar has apparently reversed its course, at least to some extent, we nevertheless feel compelled to express our deep concerns regarding GuideStar’s consideration of the practice of assigning such a label or any kind of similar practice in the future. The practice by GuideStar of labeling any 501(c)(3) organization as a hate group undermines GuideStar’s credibility among nonprofit leaders as a neutral, objective source of information about the nonprofit sector… We believe it would be very damaging to the public service reputation of GuideStar for it to be viewed as just another advocacy organization.

For now, GuideStar is trying to stay out of the limelight and pick up the pieces of its shattered reputation. In the meantime, let’s hope this blowback is a warning to other CEOs of the perils of picking sides in the culture wars — especially when that side includes a partnership with a group so radical that the FBI, U.S. Army, and Obama Justice Department backed away.

Originally published here.

Faith in the White House

Monday, I was invited to join about two dozen evangelical leaders from around the country at the White House for various briefings on a full range of issues that included the repeal of Obamacare, federal court appointments, foreign policy, Israel, and about a half-dozen other topics. The day-long meeting included time with both President Trump and Vice President Pence, concluding with prayer for them both in the Oval Office.

As I have stated before, I don’t agree with every decision or action by this administration, but I do agree with most — and I have found President Trump and the team he’s assembled to be genuinely interested and responsive to the concerns of the evangelical community. Trust me, after 14 years in this city, I am not naive to the ways of Washington, so it means something when I say that I am more optimistic that we (concerned Christian citizens) can change the course of this country and turn America back to the source of her greatness. To see this happen, we must not grow weary in well doing.

We must pray for our leaders, who are men and women with feet of clay, but many of whom have hearts after God. We must not be distracted or discouraged by the increasing volume of the media that has all but thrown off its disguise of objectivity. I never thought I would say this, as a former TV reporter that has defended the media, but DON’T TRUST THE MEDIA! Identify and rely on alternative, verifiable conservative news sources. FRC provides relevant and reliable information on timely topics, but you need more. A few other sources I trust are CNSNews.com, The Daily Signal, Todd Starnes at FoxNews.com, and the Washington Examiner. It is also critical, probably now more than ever, that you respond to our alerts as we work with the president’s team to drive forward a mutually beneficial agenda. Now is the time!

Originally published here.

This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.