Legislative Updates
Socialized Medicine in Delaware
This past week was full of legislative efforts to quickly usher in a completely socialized form of healthcare.
Legislators got back this week from their 2-week Easter break and got busy straight away. In an Appropriations Committee hearing on Wednesday, covered the substituted versions for HB 110 and HB 350, bills to pay for abortion with taxpayer funds and create a board to oversee hospital budgets, respectively. The House Floor agenda included HB 140, a bill to legalize assisted suicide.
Delaware is one of the few states that fully follow the Hyde Amendment restrictions regarding abortion. The 1977 federal Hyde Amendment banned the use of federal funds for abortion. This means that insurance programs that are federally funded, like Medicaid, are not allowed to cover abortion procedures with small exceptions for instances like rape or incest. Rather than seeing such exceptions as sufficient, it is Delaware’s goal to make abortion fully funded up to the point of even removing cost-sharing requirements. This is what HB 110 does; it fully funds abortion through state funds when Medicaid doesn’t cover the procedure.
The second bill listed, HB 350, creates a so-called “review board” of government appointees to oversee the financial budget of hospitals. The appointments to the review board are based on a handful of subjective characteristics, but ultimately up to the Governor, Speaker of the House, and President Pro Tempore to appoint. Their ability to decide the financial budget for hospitals, which are nonprofit entities, sets a precedent for government intrusion into other nonprofits.
Both HB 110 and HB 350 passed their Appropriations hearings, placing them on the House Ready List to be added to the Floor Agenda any day. That Ready List moved HB 140 onto the Agenda the very next day.
HB 140 is not a new bill, but has been on the schedule annually for quite some time now. Last year was the closest it came to passing the House, but still was held back from moving forward. The concept seemed to gain more ground as this year’s iteration was heard in committee. All comments changing their stance or standing in unsure support gave scenarios where they thought assisted suicide made sense, scenarios to help ease the pain of an individual already on their proverbial death bed. The visual they were actually explaining is that of palliative care, a provision already legal in Delaware. What they failed to factor in are those that would qualify for assisted suicide being those with medical conditions as common place and curable as anorexia or diabetes. Rep. Lyndon Yearick (R), rightly pointed out the finality that needs to be considered when legalizing death. Not only are there no ‘backsies’ for those that would end their life from this being legal, but the culture is forever changed from doing so. The first state to legalize, Oregon, seems to make records regularly with numbers of those choosing assisted suicide steadily rising.
The vote for HB 140 wasn’t split down party lines, like many of these sort of issues tend to be, but saw a stray from party lines as two Democrats voting against and one Republican voted in favor. With four legislators absent, there were only 16 nay votes and 21 in favor; HB 140 passed with a simple majority.
With bills like HB 110, HB 350, and HB 140, we are witnessing the attempt at the Marxist takeover of a societal institution. In all three, the government is stepping into healthcare where they ought not. HB 110 and HB 140 is the prioritization of death over life; HB 110 is actually the government paying for said death with taxpayer funded abortion. Then they turn around in HB 350 and are somehow supposed to be able to make unbiased decisions regarding hospital funding. It is always cheaper to end life, rather than to protect it; abortion and assisted suicide are clear examples. If the government is prioritizing death, while simultaneously seeking responsibility over the financial bottom lines of hospitals, how will the central ethos of medicine be maintained?
HB 110 and 350 are now on their way to the House Floor, while HB 140 is on its way to the Senate. Let’s continue to be watching, prepared to speak, and in constant prayer.
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