Sarah Kliff at Politico reports, "Obama seeks divine intervention on health care":
With nothing else working, President Barack Obama is asking religious leaders to help him sell the public on health care reform.(Read the full text of "Obama seeks divine intervention on health care". Link via David Catron.)
POLITICO listened in to an Oval Office conference call Tuesday, where Obama and top administration officials, beseeched thousands of faith-based and community organizations to preach the gospel on new insurance reforms, chiefly the Patients' Bill of Rights.
"Get out there and spread the word," Obama told leaders from across the religious spectrum on the conference call, organized by the Health and Human Services Center for Faith-Based and Community Partnerships.
His appeal to faith is not surprising, especially given that fact-based analysis of the law increasingly shows that "Obamacare is even worse than critics thought" (Washington Examiner, 9/22/2010).
Two quick comments:
1) I support the principle of separation of church and state. Hence, I think it's inappropriate for politicians of either major political party to attempt to enlist any kind of official religious backing (or opposition) to government policies.
2) I am also a supporter of abortion rights.
Hence, with respect to the Examiner OpEd, it is true that one serious problem with ObamaCare is that it compels people to pay for others' elective abortions against their will. But this is just an instance of the more fundamental problem -- namely that ObamaCare compels people to pay for all sorts of medical procedures (such as heart surgeries and colonoscopies) for others against their will.
