Continuing with The General Welfare in Project 2025.
Chapter 14: Department of Health and Human Services (p. 449). First a quote from page 298: “There are more than 89 current means-tested welfare programs … siloed and administered in separate agencies … .” I assume this chapter will talk about merging, eliminating, and otherwise streamlining federal welfare programs at some point. If so, this post doesn’t get that far, because P25’s evangelical anti-woman, anti-LGBTQ+ agenda is loud and I have to be loud too.
“If the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were a separate country, its approximately $1.6 trillion budget would rank as the world’s fifth-largest national budget.” Eleven operating divisions with some practical independence plus 15 staff divisions directly under the Secretary of HHS. Recommendations are to address five goals.
“Goal #1: Protecting Life, Conscience, and Bodily Integrity. The Secretary should pursue a robust agenda to protect the fundamental right to life, protect conscience rights, and uphold bodily integrity rooted in biological realities, not ideology (p. 450).”
Translation: Ban abortion; deny nonbinary & trans identities and personhood; permit religious exemptions from providing services to whomever the religious claimant doesn’t want to serve. I say again, if you don’t want to serve all citizens equally, go get a job in a church; you don’t belong in any government position.
“Goal #2: Empowering Patient Choices and Provider Autonomy. … Health care reform should be patient-centered and market-based … . States should be the primary regulators of the medical profession … . The federal government should focus reform on reducing burdens of regulatory compliance … ceasing interference in the daily lives of patients and providers … (p. 450.”
P25 points out that America’s health insurance system is labyrinthine and inefficient. We’ll see if they have anything constructive to suggest as an alternative. Otherwise, translation: the free market should rule healthcare; when we say ‘ceasing interference’ we mean for every patient except people with uteruses and people who don’t identify as binary cis male or cis female.
“Goal #3: Promoting Stable and Flourishing Married Families. Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society … . HHS should prioritize married father engagement in its messaging, health, and welfare policies (p. 451).”
Translation: nontraditional family units are to be marginalized and unmarried mothers are to be demonized. Will P25 have any suggestions for improving the quality of America’s men, thus making them more attractive as husbands and fathers? We’ll see.
“Goal #4: Preparing for the Next Health Emergency.” P25 claims that the million+ American deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic were caused not by the disease, but by the vaccines, isolation, and economic disruptions. “[T]he threshold for what constitutes a public health emergency – how many cases, hospitalizations, deaths, etc. – was never defined (p. 451).”
Translation: we didn’t believe in it, so all the emergency measures trampled on our freedom.
“Goal #5: Instituting Greater Transparency, Accountability, and Oversight. … “All National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Food and Drug Administration regulators should be entirely free from private biopharmaceutical funding (p. 452).”
I actually don’t disagree with that. But when they say greater oversight, they mean by political appointees, who I guarantee you will be neither transparent nor accountable.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. P25 wants the epidemiological data function separated and firewalled from public health, which latter function should be severely limited as to policy recommendations (pp. 452-453). “[H]ow much risk mitigation is worth the price of shutting down churches on the holiest day of the Christian calendar and far beyond as happened in 2020? What is the proper balance of lives saved versus souls saved? (p. 453)”
THIS IS UTTERLY IRRELEVANT IN A GOVERNMENT POLICY PLATFORM.
However, if the 67% of Americans who identify as Christian care more about saving their souls than saving their lives, I for one say Fine! Go ahead! A lot of them went to church, caught Covid, and died. The same thing will happen in the next plague. Meanwhile, Christian churches will continue to shed members who are sick of child abuse, sexual abuse, profiteering, and other forms of blatant hypocrisy – or who have simply found the social connection they need in other ways.
Around 56% of Americans say they rarely or never go to church. In 2020, less than half of Americans said they even belonged to a church, synagogue, or mosque. Churchgoing is, I say again, irrelevant in a discussion of public health, especially when you offensively call out a single religion’s “holy day” as something the public health apparatus should work around.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed the disastrous public health consequences of the CDC’s failure to follow multiple congressional mandates to modernize its data infrastructure (p. 454).” Just wondering, were those mandates funded at all? If yes, then fire the people who didn’t spend the money. If not, then shut up.
P25 next calls for new studies about the risks and complications of abortion (to support the abortion ban it wants) and claims that people were encouraged to abort fetuses so the CDC could use fetal cells in research on the Covid vaccines. Y’all … I cannot.
“CDC should update its public messaging about the unsurpassed effectiveness of modern fertility awareness-based methods (FABMs) of family planning … (p. 455).” OMG LOL.
You know what has unsurpassed effectiveness? Informed and consistent use of the birth control pill plus condoms. Which also, in combination, magically prevent not only STIs but abortions! Gee, we should be handing that shit out to everyone capable of menstruating! But no, let’s test our cervical mucus to find out when we’re less likely to get pregnant if we allow a penis anywhere near us. All those ‘your body, my choice’ guys are definitely gonna wait for the all-clear.
“CDC abortion data are reported by states on a voluntary basis … . Because liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism, HHS should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method. … Miscarriage management or standard ectopic pregnancy treatments should never be conflated with abortion (p. 455).”
Except in those states with complete abortion bans or bans after 6 weeks, where doctors will decline to provide care because they don’t want to be prosecuted. Hmm, wasn’t there something earlier about ceasing interference in the patient-provider relationship? Yeah. Except when it comes to pregnant people. Then we’re all about interference.
And we want that data so we can interfere, up to and including putting women on trial and in jail for ending an untimely, untenable, or unwanted pregnancy.
Finally (for this post): “The CDC should immediately end its collection of data on gender identity, which legitimizes the unscientific notion that men can become women (and vice versa) and encourages the phenomenon of ever-multiplying subjective identities (p. 456).”
First of all, IDENTITY IS SUBJECTIVE. For everybody.
Second of all, how is this the government’s business at all? How does an individual’s subjective identity, even if that happens to be a nonbinary identity that may disregard physical genitalia in developing a mental and emotional relationship to the self, harm any other person on Earth in any conceivable way?
It doesn’t. Identity is not action, or even speech; it is a mental and emotional relationship to the self, and therefore to be protected as the most private, most sacrosanct of characteristics.
Speech and actions may be regulated by a civil society, because speech and actions affect other people. Identity does not.
So by all means let’s stop asking people how they identify. Let’s stop collecting that data. It’s none of our damn business. But let’s not stop collecting the data simply because we don’t believe in it.