Obama appeals ruling which protected Catholic family business from HHS mandate

DENVER, September 26, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – A judge’s order will not stop the Obama administration from pressing forward in its quest to punish a Catholic family’s business for refusing to comply with the HHS mandate.

Hercules Industries, an HVAC business in Denver, won an injunction against the controversial provision requiring employers to cover contraceptives, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs in its health care plans on July 27.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department appealed the ruling to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, also based in Denver. 

“On the same day President Obama spoke of religious freedom at United Nations, his Justice Department acted to deny that freedom to small business owners,” said Maureen Ferguson and Ashley McGuire of The Catholic Association in a statement e-mailed to LifeSiteNews.com.

Eric Holder's Justice Department appealed the religious freedom ruling.

The Newland family sued HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, saying the mandate violated their mutual Catholic faith.

“The cost of religious freedom for this family could be millions of dollars per year in fines that would cripple their business and potentially destroy jobs if the administration ultimately has its way,” said Matt Bowman, senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom. “In filing its appeal today, the administration sent a clear message that it wants to force families to abandon their faith in order to earn a living. That’s the opposite of religious freedom.”

The Obama administration has rhetorically shifted from supporting “freedom of religion” to “freedom of worship,” a change its detractors believe is designed to suppress religious opposition to growing secular regulation.

“Under the Obama Constitution, family business owners like the Newlands of Hercules Industries may practice their religion on Sundays, within the four walls of their church, but they have no right to practice that faith during the work week,” Ferguson and McGuire said.

The Newland family puts its faith at the heart of its business, which has expanded from a mom-and-pop operation to a bustling business than employs 265 people and was recently honored by the Colorado House of Representatives. 

“ObamaCare puts us in a really bad position,” business founder Paul Newland said. “You can either choose to abandon your faith...or you can pay millions of dollars of fines that would eventually cripple our business and harm the company and all of its employees.”

Senior Judge John L. Kane of the U.S. District of Colorado, a Carter appointee, ruled this summer that the administration’s claims that government has an interest in promoting access to birth control “are countered, and indeed outweighed, by the public interest in the free exercise of religion.” 

Mitt Romney reacted to Kane’s decision by saying, “Freedom of conscience has won an important victory.” 

David French, the founder of Evangelicals for Mitt, told LifeSiteNews.com in July, “If Obama is re-elected, the legal battles over the HHS mandate will drag on for year after year, with dozens and perhaps hundreds of challenges filed.”

More than 2,200 hospitals face penalties under ObamaCare rules

Fox News

By Jonathan Serrie

A provision of ObamaCare is set to punish roughly two-thirds of U.S. hospitals starting this fall over high readmission rates, according to an analysis by Kaiser Health News.

Starting in October, Medicare will reduce reimbursements to hospitals with high 30-day readmission rates — which refers to patients who return within a month — by as much as 1 percent. The maximum penalty increases to 2 percent the following year and 3 percent in 2014. 

Doctors are concerned the penalty is unfair, since sometimes they have to accept patients more than once in a brief period of time but could be penalized for doing so — even for accepting seniors who are sick. 

“Among patients with heart failure, hospitals that have higher readmission rates actually have lower mortality rates,” said Sunil Kripalani, MD, a professor with Vanderbilt University Medical Center who studies hospital readmissions. “So, which would we rather have — a hospital readmission or a death?”

But according to federal government figures, nearly one in five Medicare patients is readmitted to a hospital within 30 days of release, costing taxpayers an estimated $17.5 billion. 

“Readmissions has been a low-hanging fruit for Medicare,” said Jordan Rau, a staff writer with KHN, an editorially independent program of the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation. “They’ve been very unhappy that about 2 million Medicare beneficiaries are being readmitted every year between 30 days of discharge.”

Medicare evaluated readmission rates at 3,367 of the nation’s hospitals and will impose penalties on 2,211 starting in October, according to KHN. The analysis shows 278 hospitals will receive this year’s maximum penalty of 1 percent. On the other side of the spectrum, 50 hospitals will receive the minimum penalty of 0.01 percent, KHN reports.

The penalties are intended to create financial incentives for the quality of care hospitals provide, instead of the number of procedures. But physicians debate whether readmission rates are the best measure of outcomes.

Kripalani and some other physicians are concerned that readmissions-based penalties may have a disproportionate effect on research hospitals because they handle large numbers of complex cases.

“Often these kinds of institutions take care of the most sick patients,” Kripalani said. “They’re sent patients by other hospitals because of specific expertise they have. So, perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that some of the nation’s best hospitals do have slightly higher readmission rates compared to other hospitals.”

The list of hospitals facing penalties includes nationally known names such as Vanderbilt, University of Chicago Medical Center and Massachusetts General, according to Medicare data compiled by KHN.

Some physicians are also concerned about what impact Medicare penalties will have on “safety-net” hospitals that treat large numbers of poor patients with limited access to primary and followup care. However, researchers who helped Medicare develop its quality assessment guidelines say the measures take into account the relative illness of patients coming into each hospital.

“The readmission measures are risk-adjusted measures,” said Susannah Bernheim, MD, director of quality measurement programs at Yale School of Medicine’s Center for Outcomes Research & Evaluation (CORE). “So, if safety-net hospitals are caring for patients that are generally sicker, that’s going to be accounted for by the measures. What I think is really remarkable is how well many safety-net hospitals in this country do on the readmission measure.”

Bernheim added that the risk-adjustment also applies to research/teaching hospitals serving the sickest patients.
“These measures represent what a patient really experiences,” Bernheim said. “And as long as they’re designed in a scientifically sound way, they’re going to really help move the quality of our health care system forward in meaningful ways.”

Physicians debate how much control hospitals actually have over readmission rates since many patients return after failing to follow recommended outpatient treatment, medication and dietary guidelines.

But faced with penalties, the nation’s medical centers now have a financial incentive to seek improvements to the way they follow up with patients after they’re released.

“There’s a real question and a real heavy debate about whether it’s fair to hold the hospital responsible for that,” Rau of Kaiser Health News said. “Medicare’s answer has been that the problem overall with the health care system is that no one’s ever in charge. And so they’ve decided to tell the hospitals, ‘Like it or not, your fault or not, you’re in charge.’”

Thousands join grassroots women's movement opposing HHS mandate

Women protest the Obama administration's contraception mandate. Credit: Women Speak for Themselves.

Washington D.C., Sep 23, 2012 / 05:56 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Thousands of women across the country are leading grassroots efforts to make their voices heard in opposition to the federal contraception and sterilization mandate.

The Women Speak for Themselves movement is driven by “things that women are deciding to do on their own,” said Meg McDonnell, who has been assisting the group from early in its existence.

McDonnell told CNA on Sept. 20 that the movement has received “hundreds of e-mails” about women’s efforts to defend religious freedom, including prayer campaigns, local rallies, blog posts, discussions with elected representatives, voter registration drives, billboards and letters to the editor.

The movement began in February, when George Mason law professor Helen Alvaré and former Thomas More Law Center counsel Kim Daniels wrote a letter responding to the controversial federal mandate that requires employers to offer free contraception, sterilization and abortion-causing drugs in their health care plans, regardless of their religious and moral objections.

The open letter asked President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Kathleen Sebelius and members of Congress not to claim to speak for all women in promoting the mandate.

It criticized those who try to “shout down anyone who disagrees” with them by invoking “women’s health,” while ignoring the negative physical and social effects of contraception for women.

“No one speaks for all women on these issues,” the letter said. “Those who purport to do so are simply attempting to deflect attention from the serious religious liberty issues currently at stake.”

Within weeks, the letter was signed by thousands of women of various religious and political backgrounds who oppose the mandate. The letter is currently approaching 34,000 signatures.

What started as a simple letter has become a movement, with the women on the list working to “keep it active,” McDonnell explained. “It’s really them that keep it going.”

As more women signed the letter, she said, they consistently wrote to Alvaré about the issues they were facing and the efforts they were leading in their local communities.

Relief at having an opportunity to speak out and the ability to stand up for their beliefs was a “common theme,” she explained. 

McDonnell attributes the growth of the movement over the last seven months largely to the “woman to woman contact” and the “continual discussion” that is being generated, allowing the conversation to reach a wider audience.

Decades after legalized abortion swept through America, she said, “a lot of women have experienced the negative effects” of the sexual revolution. Seeing that these ideas did not lead to happiness, they now want to “set a better path for younger women.”

The women in the movement hold differing views on contraception, she noted.

“But they stand with us on the religious freedom issue,” she said. “And that’s the key point.”

The group’s website, www.womenspeakforthemselves.com, includes talking points for discussions on the mandate and religious freedom, exploring the “war on women” rhetoric, and whether free contraception is really the best means of promoting women’s equality.

These talking points help to “clarify the dialogue,” McDonnell explained.

Contrary to some reports, she said, opponents of the mandate are “not trying to say that contraception should be outlawed.” Rather, they are advocating a return to policies that allow women to purchase birth control if they choose to do so, while permitting religious groups to follow their moral convictions. 

The movement has also released an online video highlighting the efforts of women to protect religious liberty and promote “a more thoughtful, more complete vision of women’s freedom.”

In addition, a new book called “Breaking Through: Catholic Women Speak For Themselves” (Our Sunday Visit, $16.95) has been published. The book, which is edited by Alvaré, features women speaking “in their own voices” about the issues they face in their careers, as moms and in their faith lives. It also features the stories of how they came to embrace Church teaching in their own lives.

McDonnell believes that women will continue to make use of outlets that allow them to speak their opinion in the public square.

Religious freedom is an important ongoing issue that is “not solely related just to this mandate,” she explained.

“Women are smart,” she said. “They’re moms, they’re wives, they’re working in the professional world. They realize that there are greater things ahead for women.”

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Column: Christian companies can't bow to sinful mandate

By David Green, CEO and founder of Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc
Sept. 12, 2012
USA Today

When my family and I started our company 40 years ago, we were working out of a garage on a $600 bank loan, assembling miniature picture frames. Our first retail store wasn't much bigger than most people's living rooms, but we had faith that we would succeed if we lived and worked according to God's word. From there, Hobby Lobby has become one of the nation's largest arts and crafts retailers, with more than 500 locations in 41 states. Our children grew up into fine business leaders, and today we run Hobby Lobby together, as a family.

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  By Derik Holtmann, AP
  Protesters against the contraception mandate.

Enlarge

By Derik Holtmann, AP

Protesters against the contraception mandate.

We're Christians, and we run our business on Christian principles. I've always said that the first two goals of our business are 1) to run our business in harmony with God's laws, and 2) to focus on people more than money. And that's what we've tried to do. We close early so our employees can see their families at night. We keep our stores closed on Sundays, one of the week's biggest shopping days, so that our workers and their families can enjoy a day of rest. We believe that it is by God's grace that Hobby Lobby has endured, and he has blessed us and our employees. We've not only added jobs in a weak economy, we've also raised wages for the past four years in a row. Our full-time employees start at 80%above minimum wage.

But now, our government threatens to change all of that. A new government health care mandate says that our family business must provide what I believe are abortion-causing drugs as part of our health insurance. Being Christians, we don't pay for drugs that might cause abortions. Which means that we don't cover emergency contraception, the morning-after pill or the week-after pill. We believe doing so might end a life after the moment of conception, something that is contrary to our most important beliefs. It goes against the biblical principles on which we have run this company since day one. If we refuse to comply, we could face $1.3 million per day in government fines.

Our government threatens to fine job creators in a bad economy. Our government threatens to fine a company that's raised wages four years running. Our government threatens to fine a family for running its business according to its beliefs. It's not right.

I know people will say we ought to follow the rules, that it's the same for everybody. But that's not true. The government has exempted thousands of companies from this mandate, for reasons of convenience or cost. But it won't exempt them for reasons of religious belief. So, Hobby Lobby — and my family — are forced to make a choice. With great reluctance, we filed a lawsuit today, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, asking a federal court to stop this mandate before it hurts our business. We don't like to go running into court, but we no longer have a choice. We believe people are more important than the bottom line and that honoring God is more important than turning a profit.

My family has lived the American dream. We want to continue growing our company and providing great jobs for thousands of employees, but the government is going to make that much more difficult. The government is forcing us to choose between following our faith and following the law. I say that's a choice no American — and no American business — should have to make.

David Green is the CEO and founder of Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.

Inter-Faith Prayer Service September 13th

The next Inter-Faith Prayer Service for Religious Freedom will be September 13th at 7:00pm at Polk Street United Methodist Church, 1401 S Polk Street. This prayer service is hosted by the Downtown Women's Center.

Bishop Patrick Zurek of the Diocese of Amarillo will join other pastors from the city, inluding Dr. Burt Palmer of Polk Street UMC, Pastor Ernest Perez of Open Heaven Ministries, and Pastor Tiller Watson of New Hope Baptist Church, in praying for the preservation of our Religious Liberty. This prayer service is in the fourth in a series of five prayer services leading up to the election. These prayer services began in June at St. Mary's Cathedral and have been a huge success, with each service drawing over 700 people. You can see a video of the last prayer service at the Arena of Life Cowboy Church here.

The last prayer service will be October 18th at 7:00pm at First Baptist Church, 1208 South Tyler.

Please join us if you can.