Memo to Catholic Writers and USCCB

Memo to Catholic Writers and USCCB
In pursuit of the truth – www.cinopsbegone.com – Monday, November 30, 2009

Preface: An ounce of prevention is worth 51 million pounds of cure. The Manhattan Declaration and Bishop Thomas Tobin’s dialogues with Congressman Patrick Kennedy are major talking points in dealing with any CINOP in Congress. Here is
the poignant analysis of Health-Care by John Ellis, on Nov. 18/09 under FrontPage

No group has done more to promote the public funding of abortions than the Catholic bishops of America. That might well surprise them, flushed as they are with their success in making a deal in the House in which they supported passage of the Pelosi bill in exchange for an amendment barring public funding of abortions. But when you are dealing with people whose strategic goals are diametrically opposed to yours, you must be careful that what you get is not a temporary strategic retreat that can be reversed at any time, while what you have given is a huge and lasting strategic advantage...

Olympia Snowe helped to vote the Baucus bill out of committee because it ruled out the public option, which she opposed. Within days, Harry Reid had put the public option back in the bill that was now before the full Senate...

The bishops had given a far greater boost to ObamaCare than had Snowe: they actually endorsed the bill, and the slim margin of its victory in the House might not have been there without them. But when questioned by John Boehner, Henry Waxman finally admitted that there was no guarantee that the amendment would still be there as the bill progressed toward final passage. In other words, he and Pelosi had simply pocketed their priceless gain, and if they could betray the bishops, they would...

The AMA supported the bill in exchange for concessions that would reduce planned cuts in pay for doctors, insurance companies at one stage supported it because they thought they’d get more customers as more people were forced to buy insurance, drug companies supported it in exchange for concessions on drug price reductions…

What none of them seemed able to grasp was that the strategic goal toward which Reid and Pelosi were relentlessly advancing was something that would inevitably remove all of the protections they thought they had negotiated for themselves. The subsidized public option that Pelosi and Reid want would inevitably drive private insurers out of business, leaving the government the sole provider of health care INCLUDING ABORTIONS. When that happens government will also control drug prices, as well as conditions of work and pay for doctors.

But this is the kind of one-sided bargain that all these groups have been making with ObamaCare… Chamberlain’s wishful thinking would not allow him to see the power-mad glint in Hitler’s eye, and the same unwillingness to see the glint is at work in the health care debate. Appeasing a hungry monster never works: it grabs what it is offered, and immediately wants more, and more.

The bishops are unlikely to learn anything from the betrayal that Waxman openly admitted to… they will have the deflected attention from the real issues that waverers should have been unable to stomach: the massive addition to an already disastrous budget deficit, huge cost increases for health care & a public option that will degrade its quality…

The bishops, the insurers, the doctors, and the drug companies all need to grasp the rather simple fact that their own strategic goals are fundamentally in conflict with those of Pelosi and Reid, and the public option is at the center of that conflict. For all of them, making deals that allow the public option bandwagon to gather speed is sheer folly. The only way in which they can genuinely protect their interests is by stopping it, now.

George H. Kubeck, CINOP Pelosi and Reid are experts in the double-cross. Kill the HealthCare Bill!