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By Catholic News Service
SAN DIEGO — The catechesis that personal trainer Jordan Friske provides during every workout session is no mere afterthought.
From his perspective, it’s “the main part of the program” that he offers through his ministry, Catholic Fitness Training.
“Anybody can … lead an exercise class,” said Friske, 29, a member of St. Margaret Parish in Oceanside. “I want to have a ministry that teaches you how to be fit spiritually, as well as physically.” Read more »
PHILADELPHIA — The U.S. District Court in Philadelphia heard oral arguments Dec. 14 in a suit that aims to take away the exemption granted in October to the Little Sisters of the Poor and other religious employers allowing them to refuse to cover contraceptives for their employees on moral grounds.
A similar hearing took place Dec. 12 in U.S. District Court in Oakland, California. Read more »
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON — A leaked draft rule from the Department of Health and Human Services exempting religious groups from the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act was welcomed by church officials and attorneys representing the Little Sisters of the Poor, one of the groups that challenged the mandate at the U.S. Supreme Court.
Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, said in a June 1 statement that the leaked draft has “yet to be formally issued and will require close study upon publication,” but it provides encouraging news.
“Relief like this is years overdue and would be most welcomed,” he said. Read more »
Catholic News Service
NORRISTOWN, Pa. — For immigrants in the country without legal permission, a routine doctor’s visit can be an occasion for panic. Without papers, immigrants fear deportation when they enter the waiting room.
Unwilling to take such a risk, they avoid seeking medical attention even in life-threatening cases. Read more »
If the winter days seem dingy and drab, I have a suggestion to perk things up: Read a book.
I recently attended a lecture that is part of the UCLA’s Alumni Association program about lifetime learning called “2nd Act.” Dr. Gary Small, a professor of psychiatry and director of the Longevity Center at UCLA, presented the latest research on neuroscience and aging, and touched on some activities that might improve cognition as we advance in age and (hopefully!) wisdom. Read more »
The routine of running a home with three children took on a new dimension for Makielah Conway when the Flint, Michigan, water crisis seeped into her residence. A full-time mom and part-time volunteer at Community Closet based out of Flint Catholic Charities, Makielah shares her typical day: Read more »
Catholic News Service
SAO PAULO — The president of the Brazilian bishops’ conference criticized a proposal by the U.N. Human Rights Commission that countries allow abortion in cases in which the mother was infected with the Zika virus.
“Abortion is not the answer for the Zika virus,” Archbishop Sergio da Rocha of Brasilia told reporters during a Feb. 10 news conference to announce the bishops’ Lenten Fraternity Campaign. “We need to value life in any situation or condition. Less quality of life does not mean less rights to live or less human dignity.” Read more »
They also serve who decide to pray and get out of the way
When we are ill, there’s often nothing more uplifting than an encouraging word from a friend or family member. But if we are very ill or we are caring for a loved one, the person who is a constant stream of questions, requests for updates and inquiries can unintentionally be exhausting and seem more hurtful than helpful.
Recently, two of my friends fell gravely ill, alerting me to their hospitalizations (separately) via emails. Of course, I immediately offered what support I could. I visited one them in the hospital days before she died. I kept in close touch with the other one via email as her condition improved. Read more »
Catholic News Service
NEW ORLEANS — An Obama administration proposal to pay doctors for “advance care planning” for Medicare patients is fraught with dangers for the elderly and those facing serious illnesses, according to the National Right to Life Committee.
Congress needs to act quickly to protect those patients from making uniformed decisions about their care, Burke Balch said during the organization’s annual convention July 9-11 in New Orleans.
Balch, director of the NRLC’s Powell Center for Medical Ethics, said an Obama administration proposal to institute “advance care planning” is designed to “nudge” patients to forgo life-saving treatment and even assisted feeding by giving them “unbalanced, distorted and even inaccurate information” about their condition and the effectiveness of treatment options.
Citing a 2013 Health Affairs article titled “Decision Aids: When ‘Nudging’ Patients to Make a Particular Choice is More Ethical Than Balanced, Nondirective Content,” Balch said advance care planning is touted as a means of drastically cutting health care costs.
Balch said the NRLC favors advance medical directives, it has developed its own “Will to Live” document, and supports alternatives that “provide truly informed consent to decisions about medical treatment.”
The 2013 Health Affairs article offered advice on how doctors could persuade men with prostate cancer to agree not to undergo expensive surgery.
“If incontinence and impotence are presented as plainly stated, that is, with no detailed description of these risks, men with early stage prostate cancer may be swayed toward the option of surgery,” the article said. “If instead those possible side effects of surgery are presented vividly via personal stories, men may be swayed away from the surgery option.”
The Powell Center report, available at www.nrlc.org, cited other widely available advance care planning materials that violate the principle of informed consent by presenting unbalanced facts so that patients might be convinced to forgo cardiopulmonary resuscitation, IV fluids and medically assisted feeding.
Other materials paint disabilities and illnesses in such “an inaccurately repugnant way” they may convince people that a low “quality of life” is not worth living, Balch said.
Balch said Aetna hired the “Center to Advance Palliative Care” in preparing its advance care planning program. The center reported that its program had resulted in a $12,000 average annual reduction in medical benefits.
Balch said using taxpayer money for Medicare advance care planning was so controversial in the original House Affordable Health Care measure that the proposal eventually was dropped.
But July 9, the Obama administration opened a 60-day “notice and comment” period to re-establish the proposal. It was contained in a large set of Medicare regulations. The administration said it plans to finalize the rule on advanced care planning by Nov. 1 and implement it Jan. 1.
Dr. Patrick Conway, the principal deputy administrator and chief medical officer of the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said in a statement that the administration’s proposal “supports individuals and families who wish to have the opportunity to discuss advance care planning with their physician and care team, as part of coordinated, patient- and family-centered care.”
The proposal says Medicare patients will not be required to have that discussion with a physician or sign any directive.
But, Balch said, “we are concerned about the rationing of health care through government action.”
“We support advance directives,” he continued. “We believe patients ought to have the right to make decisions about what medical care they receive. Our ‘Will to Live’ starts with a presumption for treatment, although an individual can indicate specific treatments that he doesn’t want,” he said.
“Tragically, however, there is considerable evidence that in practice, advance care planning is being used deliberately to nudge patients toward accepting a denial of life-saving treatment.”
Balch said many private insurance companies have hired organizations to “cold call” beneficiaries “to talk them into rejecting treatment,” and they usually “report how much money they are saving per beneficiary.”
“In this context, we greatly fear that this advance care planning will not be balanced,” Balch said. “Despite giving lip service to balance, it will be used deliberately to try to reduce health care spending. We are calling on Congress to block this rule.”
Finney is executive editor and general manager of the Clarion Herald, newspaper of the Archdiocese of New Orleans.
WASHINGTON (CNS) — The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling that upheld federal subsidies to keep health insurance premiums affordable regardless of whether the state or federal government runs the exchange system was welcomed by the president as well as by several religious organizations and stockholders in health care systems.
The June 25 decision in King v. Burwell said that “Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them,” and upheld the federal tax breaks that have made it possible for an estimated 6.4 million people in the 34 affected states to be able to afford health insurance because of subsidies averaging $272 a month. Read more »
