Dear CMF Friends:
The Christus Medicus Foundation (CMF) and Mike O'Dea, Founder and Executive Director, continue to provide unprecedented leadership in protecting conscience, parental rights and creating faith-based health plan options to all Americans. As officers in the CMF, we have worked with Mike over the past seven years, chiefly helping Mike with the mission of protecting conscience in health care. We have testified before legislative committees in Michigan on bills designed to protect freedom of conscience. We are pleased to stand with Mike in defense of a core American freedom - religious liberty. Mike speaks with passion and eloquence. It is clear that his knowledge of health care and its funding enables him to be a particularly effective proponent of freedom of conscience. We ask that you pray for Mike, and if possible, to make a much needed financial contribution so that he can continue this important mission to create a healthcare "culture of life." The financial situation for Mike is serious.
Please Make Your Donation Today!
Your donation of $50, $100, $250, $500, $1,000, $5,000, $10,000 or $20,000 is needed immediately. Since the inception of CMF, each of the above amounts has
been given by individuals and/or organizations. Everyone has different capabilities of giving, so we ask that you be as generous as possible before the year end in order that CMF can continue to find ways of giving Americans the freedom to finance a healthcare "culture of life".
CMF and Mike O'Dea are in immediate need of your prayers and financial help. We have known Mike O'Dea for many years and have been impressed with his zeal, persistence, and leadership in returning Gospel values to health care. Mike has the knowledge and the ability to bring a Catholic perspective to complex health care policy issues. He has the ability not only to explain the ways in which the current situation in health care represents an assault on the core beliefs of Catholics and other people of faith, but the ability to get others to join him in this most important work. When others say restoring Christian values in healthcare is too big and too complex, Mike says "If we leaders in faith-based organizations don't, who will?" Please take the time to read the enclosures describing the 2006 goals and accomplishments of CMF and our goals for 2007. You will see the significant progress the Foundation is making. With continued leadership from Mike, we can look forward to the day when the rights of conscience, parental rights in health care and faith-based health insurance programs are available to all Americans.
In this letter, we want to focus on two CMF 2006 Key Events and three Key 2007 goals.
Key Events
Dismissal of a lawsuit brought by pro-abortion group against the Weldon Amendment
CMF spearheaded and co-founded the Healthcare Right of Conscience Working Group in 2001. This group, under the leadership of Richard Doerflinger, from the USCCB and Mike O'Dea was responsible for The Weldon Amendment being signed by President Bush in December 2005. This Amendment is a federal law prohibiting federal, state and local governments, who receive certain federal aid from discriminating against medical professionals who refuse to perform or refer for abortions.
New pro-life health plans
Through Advantage Health Solutions, CMF made private market faith-based health savings plans available to federal employees and all employers in Indiana in the third quarter of 2006. In the 4th quarter, CMF also sponsored affordable pro-life health plans for the self employed, uninsured and underinsured in Indiana.
2007 CMF Goals:
Encourage price transparency in health plans so that the self employed, small employers, and the uninsured will have the freedom to participate in faith-based health plans and not be discriminated against by provider pricing arrangements. Price transparency allows patients to make intelligent choices about physicians and hospitals. Transparency in billing and pricing will significantly reduce cost shifting, discrimination, and other inefficiencies. It is time to give the small guy, the less fortunate, and the uninsured the same discounts in health plans as those available to big business. Of the 41 million people most discriminated against by unfair pricing, 14 million are eligible for government programs, but not signed up; 13 million have an income over $50,000 and have not purchased health insurance; and 6 million are short-term uninsured. If we subtract the three above, that leaves only 8 million that are truly uninsured. The solution to the uninsured is not universal government-run healthcare that finances a "culture of death". America needs a healthcare system that encourages more individual responsibility and allows for the creation of more affordable, faith-based health plans that have price transparency, conscience and parental rights protection, and freedom of choice.
Support cross state purchasing of health plans to eliminate state mandates that are costly, unhealthy and harmful to the health and welfare of children (i.e. contraceptive mandates). It is time to allow individuals and families in states with high premiums for health plans - states like NY and NJ that are excessively overregulated - to purchase lower cost health plans in other states like Indiana or Kansas.
Stop Contraceptive Mandates in Michigan by working together with Right to Life of Michigan, pro-life/pro-family legislators, healthcare professionals, and religious leaders to educate policy makers on the need to stop Governor Granholm and State Senator Hammerstrom's initiative to mandate contraception in health plans.
In order to continue with this work, CMF urgently needs your help in raising $100,000 by year-end. Please mail your donation in the enclosed envelope as soon as possible. We understand that everyone has a different capability of giving. If every one of our current contributors gives what they have in past years and our new contributors give $250, we will have the finances to achieve our 2007 goals. For those of you who can give more, please be as generous as you can to offset those that can't give.
Since CMF is an educational, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, your gift to Christus Medicus Foundation is entirely tax deductible.
Thank you in advance for your support. Please continue to pray for us. Our prayers are with you.
Have a very Holy and Merry Christmas,
Catherine A. Dowling, M.D.
Catholic Medical Association Member*
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Richard S Myers.
Professor, Ave Maria School of Law*
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*Institutional affiliations for identification purposes only.
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