The massively-costly health-care reform bills backed by Obama are riddled with provisions mandating “preference” for organizations that exhibit “cultural competency,” a politically-correct code word for a focus on minorities. So racial preferences, not cutting costs or expanding coverage, may end up being the top priority in some cases.

That’s true even for the version of the health-care bill recently passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the least liberal of the 3 House committees responsible for fleshing out the details of ObamaCare. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) says that the health-care bill may become substantially more liberal by the time it passes the House in Autumn.

Mickey Kaus, a Democrat and long-time supporter of universal health-care coverage, calls these affirmative-action provisions special “interest group time bombs” that will turn off moderate voters and may spawn unforeseen problems. John Rosenberg, an expert on antidiscrimination laws, calls them “the ACORN enrichment provision,” saying they will funnel money to left-wing community organizers like ACORN.

ACORN, a beneficiary of the economy-shrinking $800 billion stimulus package, helped spawn the mortgage crisis by promoting “liar loans.” It has also engaged in extensive financial fraud and vote fraud. The Obama Administration has chosen ACORN to help conduct the 2010 census, which will be used to reallocate seats in Congress.

Obama once represented ACORN, which pressures banks to make risky low-income loans. Government pressure on banks to make low-income loans was a key reason for the mortgage meltdown and the financial crisis. Obama’s recent financial-regulation proposals would create a new bureaucratic agency to pressure banks to make even more risky low-income loans.

One of Obama’s own advisers says the Obama Administration’s health-care plan will harm people with insurance while raising their taxes. CNN says Obamacare will take away 5 freedoms. It will also destroy many affordable health-care plans while breaking Obama’s campaign promises. And Obamacare will likely cost far more than predicted.

The health-care “reform” bills Obama backs wrongly exempt illegal aliens from the health-insurance taxes and obligations imposed on citizens, effectively giving them preferential treatment.

While America’s health-care system is very expensive, it is much better at treating and detecting common forms of cancer than most European health-care systems. The Administration’s health-care proposals put these successes in jeopardy, yet they would increase health-care costs even further, while failing to provide health-care coverage as cheap or as universal as in Europe.

Obama’s support for racial preferences isn’t limited to health care. The Administration is also winking at racist voter intimidation, by letting the racist, antisemitic New Black Panther Party get away with using racial epithets and physical intimidation to drive white voters away from the polls in Philadelphia.