Desperate Dems Recycle Planned Parenthood's Mammogram Lie by Michelle Malkin

The gruesome hits keep coming for the baby butchers of Planned Parenthood. President Obama and his top health officials have one last-ditch response left: Quick, hide behind the imaginary mammogram machine!

As more graphic, money-grubbing undercover videos of Planned Parenthood's for-profit aborted baby parts racket emerge thanks to the investigative work of the Center for Medical Progress, desperate Democrats are in full deflection mode. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Mathews Burwell defended federal funding for Planned Parenthood this week by invoking the women's health shield. "What I think is important is that our HHS funding is focused on issues of preventative care for women, things like mammograms," Burwell told the House Education and Workforce Committee.

Just one teeny, tiny problem with this defense: It's a completely calculated fabrication.

The breast-cancer screening charade casts Planned Parenthood as a life-saving provider of vital health services unavailable anywhere else. You may recall that during the 2012 presidential cycle, Obama himself falsely claimed during a debate that the abortion provider administers mammograms to "millions" of women -- and liberal CNN moderator Candy Crowley let him get away with it.

On cue, Hollywood activists Scarlett Johansson, Eva Longoria and Kerry Washington all attacked the GOP ticket for wanting to "end" funding for "cancer screenings" by cutting off government subsidies for Planned Parenthood's bloody billion-dollar abortion business. The celebrities in the White House and Tinseltown took their script straight from Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood's senior director of medical services, who purported to speak for countless women for whom Planned Parenthood is "the only way" they can gain access to mammograms. (If the name sounds familiar, Nucatola is the same wine-swishing Josephine Mengele who was exposed on tape by the Center for Medical Progress two weeks ago lolling through a business lunch negotiating payments for aborted baby parts.)

Once again, it was undercover pro-life journalists who unmasked the truth.

An investigation of 30 Planned Parenthood clinics in 27 different states, conducted by pro-life group Live Action, confirmed that the abortion provider does not perform breast-cancer screenings. "We don't provide those services whatsoever," a staffer at Planned Parenthood of Arizona confessed on tape.

Planned Parenthood's Comprehensive Health Center clinic in Overland Park, Kan., admitted: "We actually don't have a, um, mammogram machine at our clinics." 

Even the liberal Washington Post doled out a three (out of four) Pinocchio rating for the White House's mammogram lies. "The problem here is that Planned Parenthood does not perform mammograms or even possess the necessary equipment to do so," the paper's resident fact-checker reported. "As such, the organization certainly does not 'provide' mammograms in the strict sense. Instead, its clinics provide referrals and direct low-income women toward resources to help pay for the procedure. These services are by no means unique to Planned Parenthood. In fact, the Susan G. Komen Foundation and the American Cancer Society provide them, as well."

As I've pointed out previously, Planned Parenthood's purported "referral services" to outside mammogram facilities are negligible -- especially given the widespread availability of these and other free and low-cost breast and cervical cancer screening services across the country supported by both private and public grants.

Reluctant to do its job and just call out the president as an outright liar, The Washington Post fell short of giving Obama the full four-Pinocchio treatment for his Planned Parenthood mammogram propagandizing, but acknowledged that he has repeated the lies "too many times in one form or another for this to be considered just playing with words to generate a misleading impression."

The Obama HHS apparently needs to be reminded of its own review exposing the mammography deception. In June 2012, the agency responded to a request for information about how many Planned Parenthood clinics were certified to operate mammogram facilities. "Our search did not find any documents pertinent to your request," HHS told the Alliance Defense Fund.

Zip. Zilch. None. Nada.

Pro-life investigative journalist Lila Rose of Live Action has it right: "It is an alarming dereliction of duty that the Secretary of Health and Human Services refuses to view investigative reports that clearly demonstrate that Planned Parenthood, who receives close to half a million taxpayer dollars a year from the federal government, is engaged in the selling and trafficking of aborted baby body parts for profit," she said this week. "Ms. Burwell should be investigating Planned Parenthood, not covering for them."

Ladies, open your eyes and hearts. Watch the videos for yourselves. Get the facts. Unmask the lies. The cackling profiteers of Planned Parenthood don't care about your breasts. They're too busy putting price tags on the baby hearts, livers, lungs and limbs swirling around in bloody pie plates, stacked in their "research" labs, subsidized with your tax dollars and sold to the highest bidders. For "preventative care," of course. 

COPYRIGHT 2015 CREATORS.COM 

Via: Real Clear Politics

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Health chief defends Planned Parenthood amid calls to defund

President Obama’s top healthcare official defended federal funding for Planned Parenthood at a hearing on Tuesday as Republicans zeroed in on cutting off its money.

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell focused her comments on how the federal funding for Planned Parenthood provides mammograms and other services for women.

“What I think is important is that our HHS funding is focused on issues of preventative care for women, things like mammograms and cancer prevention screenings,” Burwell told the House Education and the Workforce Committee.

“We do not fund abortion,” she added, though Burwell noted there are some exceptions to the Hyde Amendment, a law that prohibits federal funding of abortion.

Planned Parenthood has often been a GOP target, but the political storm surrounding the nonprofit has reacheda  fever pitch following the release of a series of undercover videos showing officials candidly discussing the donation of fetal tissue for medical research.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday that the chamber will vote to cut off funding for the organization before leaving next week for the August recess. 

Lawmakers, including a group of 49 senators last week, have called on HHS to investigate Planned Parenthood.

“I would like some commitment from you here today on when your department will conduct an investigation on this very, very serious matter,” Rep. Rick Allen (R-Ga.) said Tuesday.

Burwell resisted those calls, deferring to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

She noted that Attorney General Loretta Lynch has said that Justice is conducting a review.

Planned Parenthood had apologized for an official’s “tone and statements” in the first video but said it has broken no laws and argued that the released videos had been heavily edited to inflict political pain on the organization.

Even then, Planned Parenthood said officials in the videos made it clear they were looking for legal compensation for expenses, not profit. 

Still, the videos inflicted a toll on the group. It has turned to the public relations firm SKDKnickerbocker to help in its defense. The firm sent a memo on Monday night that discouraged the media from covering the videos. 

“The extremists who entered Planned Parenthood labs under false pretenses violated research protocol, and, worse, violated the privacy of patients involved,” the memo stated. “Those patients’ privacy should not be further violated by having this footage shared by the media.”

Most Democrats have come to the defense of Planned Parenthood.

Via: The Hill

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Subpoena threat issued for ObamaCare files

House Republicans are threatening to subpoena documents related to an ObamaCare program at the center of their lawsuit against President Obama.

The Republican chairmen of the Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce committees on Wednesday released a letter to the administration reiterating a request made in February for documents related to the program. 

Reps. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Fred Upton (R-Mich.) set a deadline of July 21 for a response. If the administration does not provide the documents by then, a subpoena will be considered, they said.

“If HHS fails to produce the documents and information, the committees will have no choice but to consider the use of the compulsory process to obtain them,” the letter states.

Ryan and Upton first asked for the documents in February. The letter reiterating the request was sent to Health Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew.

House Republicans argue that the administration is unconstitutionally spending money on an ObamaCare program despite Congress declining to appropriate money for it. That allegation is at the center of House Republicans’ lawsuit, which is being heard by a federal court in the case House v. Burwell

The funds in question are for “cost-sharing reductions” that help insurers lower out-of-pocket costs for low-income people.

House Republicans are seeking documents related to the administration’s decision to make payments through the program despite the absence of an appropriation. 

In court filings, the administration has laid out the case that it did not need an appropriation for the funds because they are mandatory spending not subject to the appropriations process. 

Republicans counter the administration requested an appropriation for the program in 2013, which was turned down. But the administration says it later realized the request was unnecessary because it had the funds through mandatory spending. 

Obama administration officials also say Congress never took action to block the funds and even passed a bill, the No Subsidies Without Verification Act, that was predicated on the idea that the funds were available.

“Thus, although the House seeks to focus on the Administration’s initial budget request for FY2014, the end result of the budget process for that year confirms a shared understanding that these payments could be made,” the administration wrote in a court filing last week.

The administration has asked that the lawsuit be dismissed, saying Congress does not have legal standing to sue the president.

But Judge Rosemary Collyer leveled tough questions at the Department of Justice lawyer during arguments on the question in May.

Via: The Hill

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Obama can't pass buck on health insurance

(CNN)The Obama administration has had plenty of advance notice about the King v. Burwell decision and the potential outcomes, but it seems the President's only plan is to continue pointing his finger at the states for a problem he created. In fact, when testifying recently about Obamacare implementation and the upcoming court decision, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell refused to give concrete answers to basic questions about the administration's contingency plan or willingness to work with Congress on a fix.  

Just last week, Secretary Burwell was in Wisconsin. She could have used the opportunity to tell Wisconsin residents how the federal government is going to solve its Obamacare mess, but instead she promoted the use of "free" Obamacare services. Free for who? According to data gathered by the Manhattan Institute, individual insurance premiums in Wisconsin for a 40-year-old male climbed 83% compared with pre-Obamacare numbers, and 38% for a 40-year-old woman. For a 27 year-old, the hike was even greater. It seems that P.J. O'Rourke was frighteningly accurate when he said: "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free."

When the federal government pushed Wisconsin to expand Medicaid, holding out the promise of millions in federal funds in 2013, we said "No thank you." We knew trusting the federal government to follow through on its promises would end with Wisconsin taxpayers on the hook.  Forced to accept the confines of Obamacare, our goal was to chart a path to protect those in Wisconsin who needed Medicaid the most, while moving people toward true independence.  

Wisconsin is the only state that didn't accept the Medicaid expansion funds and that has no gap in coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. For the first time in state history, everyone living in poverty has access to coverage.  But despite our best efforts to mitigate the damage of Obamacare, the consequences of the law have been profound as employers have cut hours, while some workers lost their insurance altogether and are struggling to pay the dramatic premium increases. Meanwhile, even many families that have Obamacare coverage can't afford the deductible and doctor fees, while others can no longer see trusted doctors. 

It's clear Obamacare must be repealed and replaced with a plan that puts patients and their families back in charge. 

From the beginning, the President's implementation of Obamacare has been called into question, and in the next week, the Supreme Court is expected to rule on King v. Burwell, deciding a central component of Obamacare's structure: Can the federal government subsidize healthcare plans purchased on the federal exchange?  

If the high court rules in favor of the administration, Obamacare will continue, unchanged.  And that means the Republican House and Senate must redouble the fight to repeal and replace Obamacare. 

Via: CNN

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HHS Confirmation Hearings: 49,000 Words, Zero on Abortion-Drug Mandate

Two Senate committees held hearings this month on the nomination of Office of Management and Budget Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell to succeed Kathleen Sebelius as secretary of Health and Human Services, the federal agency most responsible for overseeing implementation of Obamacare.

In these two hearings, according to transcripts published by CQ Transcriptions, the senators and the nominee spoke approximately 49,000 words. Not one of these words directly addressed the contraception-sterilization-abortion-inducing drug regulation that Sebelius issued under Obamacare and that is now the target of more than 90 lawsuits.

The closest anyone came was Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, who told Burwell he was going to ask her a question in writing in "regard to abortion coverage transparency for insurance plans offered in the federal exchanges."

The central question in the lawsuits filed against Sebelius is whether the federal government can force Americans into complicity with the taking of innocent human life by compelling them to buy or provide health insurance that covers abortion-inducing drugs.

Via: CNS News

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