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WASHINGTON (AP) - Some of President Barack Obama's political appointees, including the Cabinet secretary for the Health and Human Services Department, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press. The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees' email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more...

House Republicans want more information about the Obama administration's $54 million grants to help people navigate the new insurance marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act. On Friday, six GOP members of the Energy and Commerce Committee wrote a letter asking Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius seven questions about the grants, which will allow "navigators" to help consumers shop for healthcare in new insurance exchanges. The legislators requested information "to assist the Committee in understanding the role Navigators will play" once the healthcare reform law is fully implemented. They asked about the role and number of the...

It's a nice catch by Investors Business Daily's John Merline, but not exactly a shock to anyone who understood the real dynamics of the uninsured before ObamaCare. Advocates for a government-imposed overhaul of the health-care industry regularly decried the 47 million uninsured at that time (now 48 million) as if it was a monolithic bloc of people clamoring for insurance but who had no way to access it. Now, their own surveys show that half of their target market has no interest in health insurance anyway: Let's leave aside for a minute the oddity of this effort. Its backers have...

A federal D.C. circuit court ruled late Tuesday, just a few days after arguments, that not only can Wheaton College and Belmont Abbey stay in court, but what the Obama administration has said about fixing the religious-freedom problem they and other religiously affiliated non-profits have with the HHS abortion-drug, contraception, sterilization mandate must become real policy, and that the Department of Health and Human Services must report to the D.C. court every 60 days until they fix the problem. This is a huge step toward some restoration of religious liberty as we’ve known it. (This particular court command, of course,...

The Hatch Act’s prohibition against campaigning on the taxpayers’ dime didn’t stop Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius from making a pitch for President Obama’s reelection at a Human Rights Campaign Event in Charlotte, N.C. “Strictly speaking, what she did was against the law,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz acknowledged. “But we also need to take into consideration her intent and prior record. Secretary Sebelius is a highly respected member of this Administration with no previous criminal record. Further, it is clear that her intent was admirable. An effort to help reelect the President serves a higher purpose. The...

The mayors of Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. are publically threatening Chick-fil-A, telling them they are not welcome to expand in “their” cities because CEO Dan Cathy does not support same-sex marriage. Edwin Lee, mayor of San Francisco, even tweeted a threat: “Closest #ChickFilA to San Francisco is 40 miles away & I strongly recommend that they not try to come any closer.” It does not seem to matter that the First Amendment is crystal clear: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech.” Unfortunately,...

(CNSNews.com) – In a bid to expand federal welfare rolls, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius claimed on Thursday that HHS had the authority to waive the key requirement in President Clinton’s welfare reform law – the requirement that beneficiaries find and maintain a job. A plain reading of the law, however, does not seem to support this claim. On Thursday, HHS issued what it called guidance to state welfare agencies, claiming that it could absolve states of the requirement that some welfare recipients work in order to continue receiving benefits. HHS claimed that its authority to approve innovative...

The author who turned Georgetown University into a horror scene in “The Exorcist” plans to sue the school in church court, charging that his alma mater has strayed so far from church doctrine that it should no longer call itself Catholic. William Peter Blatty, who graduated from Georgetown in 1950, says the “last straw” was the university’s speaking invitation to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Sebelius, who addressed graduating public policy students on Friday (May 18), has been criticized by conservative Catholics for approving a mandate that requires many religious institutions to cover employees’ birth control costs. The...

(CNSNews.com) – Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said on Monday that youth violence is a “chronic health issue” that can lead to asthma, obesity, or depression for "the youth who are involved," although she did not make clear whether she was speaking solely about the victims of youth violence or the perpetrators or both. “But it's important to remember--you just heard from the law enforcement side of this--it’s important to remember that the costs of violence go beyond deaths or injuries or tolls on families and communities,” Sebelius said at a Department of Justice conference Monday on youth...

The Obama administration has chosen to ignore the First Amendment and add insult to injury for Catholics whose schools, hospitals and charities help make this nation great. Now the real fight begins. Religious leaders had feared the worst from Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and her Department of Health and Human Services, which since September has been considering whether to exempt Catholic and other religious employers from a regulation mandating insurance coverage for sterilization and contraceptives, including some that cause abortion. But on Friday afternoon, Sebelius announced the bad news in the most offensive way possible. Refusing even the smallest compromise with...

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced new guidelines in Washington Monday requiring health insurance plans beginning on or after August 1, 2012 to cover several women's preventive services, including birth control and voluntary sterilization. According to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius the decision is a part of the Affordable Care Act's move to stop problems before they start. "These historic guidelines are based on science and existing literature and will help ensure women get the preventive health benefits they need," she said in a news release. More at Link...

Health insurance plans must cover birth control as preventive care for women, with no copays, the Obama administration said Monday in a decision with far-reaching implications for health care as well as social mores. The requirement is part of a broad expansion of coverage for women's preventive care under President Barack Obama's health care law. Also to be covered without copays are breast pumps for nursing mothers, an annual "well-woman" physical, screening for the virus that causes cervical cancer and for diabetes during pregnancy, counseling on domestic violence, and other services. "These historic guidelines are based on science and existing...

In a letter to several pro-life groups complaining about President Barack Obama’s decision to drop some of the conscience protections for medical professionals, the administration is defending the decision. Several pro-life groups sent a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius warning her of the alarming effects on patients that will follow the Obama administration’s recent move to strip the medical community of key conscience protections on abortion. As LifeNews.com reported in February, the Obama administration overturned some of the conscience protections the Bush administration put in place to protect pro-life medical workers who don’t want to be involved in certain...

RICHMOND, Va. – President Barack Obama's administration on Monday asked a federal judge in Virginia to dismiss the state's lawsuit alleging Congress overstepped its constitutional bounds with the new health care reform law. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius argued in a motion filed hours before a midnight deadline that the law is well within the scope of the Constitution's Commerce Clause. Virginia's Republican attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, filed suit in U.S. District Court in Richmond less than eight hours after Congress enacted the law. It argues that requiring people to buy health coverage or pay a fee exceeds...

Medicine: The administration's nominee to run Medicare and Medicaid is a fan of Britain's National Health Service and rationing services. He believes in less discretion for your doctor, more power for your government. 'The decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open" is what Dr. Donald Berwick, President Obama's nominee to head the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, said in an interview published in Biotechnology Healthcare in June 2009. The question is whether the Senate will confirm Berwick with open eyes. Berwick says: "NICE is...

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama has picked a top health policy expert to run Medicare and Medicaid, an administration official said on Saturday, filling a role at the heart of his historic healthcare reform. Obama plans to nominate Dr. Donald Berwick as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a unit of the Department of Health and Human Services, the official said.

Obamacare Strategy is to Reduce Company Profits

Kossack Mote Dai's discovery that "objective" analyst and MIT economist Jonathon Gruber has received a sole-source contracts with the Department of Health and Human Services since June 19, 2009 to consult on the “President’s health reform proposal" has gained some larger attention. Marcy reported that he has two contracts for a total of $392,600 to consult on the plan. The issue is that Gruber has consistently been referenced by the White House as an objective analyst in support of the bill--including the controversial excise tax--without disclosing his role as a contractor on the issue. Link: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/1/8/823043/-Transparency-Problem-in-HCR-Debate

Sebelius Says U.S. Will Donate Part of H1N1 Vaccine Supply to Foreign Nations Before Meeting This Nation’s DemandThursday, October 22, 2009 By Chris Neefus      ....... Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) asked Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebilius why the United States should get vaccinations ahead of people in other countries, including those in countries that are producing the vaccine for the United States. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)When Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) had his turn to question Sebelus, he raised the issue of whether the United States was "entitled" to the vaccine more than other nations. "Why should we be more entitled, the U.S. be more   entitled to...

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 25, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Obama administration has aroused a fierce First Amendment controversy after threatening companies selling private Medicare coverage not to tell their customers that current health care legislation would result in benefit cuts - or else face a lawsuit. The administration and Senate Democrats justify the move by saying the claim, spread by at least one such company, is patently false. Yet some say the administration is the one twisting the facts to help the unpopular legislation: critics note that even the head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office agrees that the legislation would...