For all those with serious reservations about the form that "health care reform" has taken to date, how can we not be happy that the Obama Administration seems to be signaling that at least some stuff that was set in stone is crumbling? The experts on staff--and NRLC is blessed with incredibly knowledgeable staff--will winnow the wheat from the chaff, and clarify whether "changes" (if they actually occur) will redound to the cause of unborn babies and the medically dependent.

My task here is simply to remind us that often the most dangerous time, the moment most fraught with danger, is when proponents of really wretched proposals announce (even if they don't use the word) that they are "compromising." Why? Lots of reasons, beginning with the long established practice of stealthily sliding the same dreadful provisions in the back door. They simply "x" the provision out in the front of the bill and write it back in near the end. If I had a dollar for every time that has happened, I could make a serious dent in the deficit.

Another way the bad guys can ostensibly lose the battle and win the war is to focus on one potential abuse, maybe even making a nod toward abandoning it, but without addressing the larger issue of which the individual abuse is only one component.

Take the House bill provision reimbursing Medicare physicians for "advance care planning" consultations with senior citizens every five years, known as Section 1233. Many justifiably feared these consultations would become not-so-subtle efforts to push them into agreeing to reject "costly" life-saving medical treatment.

Pro-abortion Congressman Henry Waxman (D-Ca.)

The word now is that, at least in the (yet to be finalized) Senate Finance bill, this provision will be dropped. But even if this provision is dropped entirely (which obviously is unknowable at this juncture), it is essential that the concern it evoked---the fear of pressuring people into turning down lifesaving treatment when they are most vulnerable--be seen as part of a much larger issue: over-promising and under-funding from which rationing will follow as surely as night follows day.

(See the "Key Points on Health Care Rationing to Make to Legislators" at the end of this edition.)

Just one other way (there are many more) by which the bad guys can prevail even as they are supposedly shedding objectionable parts of the various "health care reform" proposals: our not doing our homework. We have to constantly keep up to date, not just periodically check in, and we have to see the Big Picture, not focus only on specific details, no matter how troublesome.

Switching to abortion, key pro-abortion lawmakers -- and their amplifiers in the mainstream media, who laughably sometimes refer to what they do as "factchecking" -- have already tried announcing that a great "compromise" has been reached on the issue. If you are reading this you probably know enough not to rely on the mainstream news media for your information about what is happening in Congress.

If you're tuned into this channel, you already know that the so-called "compromise," the Capps Amendment, was the work of Henry Waxman, a pre-eminent pro-abortion champion in the House of Representatives, and that it actually embodies the policy priorities of the pro-abortion lobby -- such as authorizing the Obama Administration to cover abortion on demand in the proposed big new federal health insurance program, the "public plan," plus big new subsidies for private pro-abortion plans as well.

Don't be fooled. Unless there is unambiguous language that explicitly prevents the bills from mandating coverage of abortions and prevents subsidies for plans that cover abortion--language that pro-abortion Democrats have vigorously rejected--all the guarantees that "health care reform" will not expand abortion are not worth the paper they are written on. Without that explicit clarifying language, the federal government will be running a nationwide abortion-on-demand insurance plan.

On abortion, keep up to date by visiting www.nrlactioncenter.com. To understand the dangers of health care rationing, go to www.nrlc.org/HealthCareRationing/index.html.

Key Points on Health Care Rationing to Make to Legislators

1. Unless there is sustainable, adequate financing, over-promising while under-funding health insurance for the uninsured will almost surely lead to rationing when, down the road, government has to face the shortfall.

2. The government must not be authorized, whether through "comparative effectiveness" research using "quality-adjusted life years" or other measures, to compel or encourage denial of lifesaving medical treatment, food, or fluids based on the patient's age, disability, or "quality of life."

3. Measures to promote living wills and other advance care directives, like funding for "advance care planning" consultations in Medicare, must not be used to pressure patients into rejecting lifesaving treatment as a means of saving money, nor provide for assisted suicide as an alternative.