Laura Flanders of GRITtv appears on MSNBC’s Ed Show to discuss the Stupak amendment to the health care bill and what progressives need to do next. Faced with a Heritage Foundation fellow claiming that the bill only preserves the status quo, Laura makes the point that amendment takes a huge step back to the days of back-alley abortions, and says that progressives need to “turn up the heat” on the pro-choice legislators and president that we elected last fall.
For some years, Democrats have denounced parodies that cast their party as utterly closed to the views of those who oppose abortion. Last weekend, Democrats proved conclusively that they are, indeed, a big tent -- and many in the ranks are furious.From the outraged comments of the abortion-rights movement, you'd think that Rep. Bart Stupak's amendment to the House version of the health-care bill would all but overturn Roe v. Wade.The truth is that even with the Stupak restrictions, health-care reform would leave millions of Americans far better off than they are now -- including millions of women. This skirmish over abortion cannot be allowed to destroy the opportunity to extend coverage to 35 million Americans. Killing health-care reform would be bad for choice -- and very bad for the right to life.No, it wouldn't. The Michigan Democrat's measure -- passed 240 to 194, with 64 Democrats voting yes -- would prohibit abortion coverage in the public option and bar any federal subsidies for plans that included abortion purchased on the new insurance exchanges.
Stupak argues that the federal government has stayed out of the business of financing abortion since passage of the Hyde Amendment in 1976 and that none of the policies available on the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program covers elective abortion. The structures that reform would create, he says, should carry the same restrictions, which do not apply in cases involving rape or incest or when a mother's life is in danger.
Supporters of abortion rights counter that, at the very least, individuals who pay part of the cost of their policies should be allowed to choose abortion coverage.
Whatever else is true, Stupak's amendment is unlikely to have a significant effect on the availability of abortion. And most abortions are not paid for through health insurance. The Guttmacher Institute, for example, reported that only 13 percent of abortions in 2001 were directly billed by providers to insurance companies -- although the institute has cautioned that the proportion of women whose abortions were covered by insurance could be higher because the figure did not include those "who obtain reimbursement from their insurance company themselves."
The odd thing is that everyone in this fight insists that the only goal is to maintain the status quo on abortion. But defining the status quo has been a legislative and negotiating nightmare.
Democratic leaders once thought they had found the middle ground with an amendment offered by Rep. Lois Capps of California. She proposed segregating the money paid in for health insurance. Abortion coverage could be purchased with the premiums paid by individuals, but not with government money.
Abortion opponents argued that this separation of funds was artificial and that all money paid to the government plan was, by definition, public. So Rep. Brad Ellsworth, a right-to-life Democrat from Indiana, suggested an alternative that became known as "Capps on steroids." It substantially strengthened the barriers between public and private funds, particularly in the public plan.
But a key group of Democrats who supported the rest of the House bill (roughly 10 by the best count I have been able to get) was still not satisfied, partly because the Roman Catholic bishops were not satisfied. These Democrats turned out to be essential on a bill that ultimately passed by five votes.
Last Friday night, Stupak put forward a final compromise to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that would have prohibited abortion coverage in the public plan but would have allowed an annual vote on the abortion ban for the private plans. Pro-choice Democrats rejected this, and the stronger version of Stupak's proposal then passed.
What happens now? Democratic supporters of abortion rights need to accept that their House majority depends on a large cadre of antiabortion colleagues. They can denounce that reality or they can learn to live with it.
There is also a challenge for abortion's foes, above all the Catholic bishops who have a long history of supporting universal coverage but devoted most of their recent energy to the abortion battle. How much muscle will the bishops put behind the broader effort to pass health-care reform? Their credibility as advocates for social justice hangs in the balance.
And if the Senate forces a change in the Stupak language, one obvious approach would involve a ban on abortion in the public plan -- if such an option survives -- and the application of Ellsworth's rules to the private policies sold in the insurance exchange. The alternative would be Stupak's original compromise offer to Pelosi. There are not many other options.
On Nov. 7, the House of Representatives passed by the slimmest margins the most sweeping progressive legislation since the Johnson Administration. The Affordable Health Care For America Act was passed by a meager five votes, the ayes coming in at 220 and the nays coming in at 215. Passage was made possible by an eleventh hour amendment proposed by Democratic Representative Bart Stupak of Michigan that forbids health insurance companies from covering abortions for any individual whose insurance is subsidized by taxpayer dollars. We lament that such a reactionary amendment was required for the passage of this landmark bill, but we also recognize its political necessity.If the Stupak Amendment is to survive into the final version of the health care bill—after the separate House and Senate bills are reconciled in conference—it would decrease the number of insurers providing coverage of abortions for women, since virtually all insurers would have an incentive to partake in the insurance exchange for individuals eligible for federal subsidies that the bill establishes. All insurance policies bought via this exchange would be prohibited from covering abortions in order to uphold the principle of the 1976 Hyde Amendment forbidding the use of taxpayer dollars to fund abortions.However, the process of creating the legislation Pelosi worked so hard to pass is less than perfect and in dire need of reform. The fact that few legislators had actually read the contents of the House bill prior to its passage and the sheer haste of the bill’s composition are detrimental to our system of governance. Legislation that as impactful and permanent as this ought to be carefully deliberated upon and debated, not hastily patched together to meet artificial deadlines.The Stupak Amendment, like the Hyde Amendment before it, is an outrageous curtailing of lower income women’s right to choose. As Democratic Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut stated it, “What they attempt to do here is just ban coverage, totally ban coverage, and that is a different mindset than maintaining current law. There’s people that don’t want to respect that reasonable approach.”
While pro-life advocates are entitled to promote their cause of banning all abortions, it is unjust to render abortions luxury procedures by making them only accessible to those able to afford insurance without government subsidies or those whose insurance is publicly subsidized and who are willing to pay for abortions out of pocket.
Furthermore, while this amendment was politically imperative in the House, it could prove to be a Pyrrhic victory for Democrats and proponents of health insurance reform should the resurrection of the abortion question scuttle reform efforts in the Senate. Prior to Stupak, the controversy surrounding a potential public health insurance option was the primary cause for concern for moderate Democrats in both chambers of Congress. Now, however, abortion has also been added to the list of potential reasons for moderates to vote against the legislation, complicating reform’s chances of passing in the Senate.Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, who is considered to be the most conservative Democrat in the Senate and one of the primary “swing votes” whose whims shall dictate the fate of health insurance reform, said that “you could be sure I would vote against it” if the Senate bill does not contain language as strong as Stupak’s on the issue of publicly funded abortions.
Democrats Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, likewise, have also called for anti-abortion measures in the Senate bill, while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who is pro-life, has yet to come out in favor or against such an amendment. On the other hand, if the bill is moved too far to the right, it could begin losing support on the left. NARAL Pro-Choice America President Nancy Keenan, for example, has said that she “is not going to stand for a bill that has this kind of language in it,” referring to the language of the Stupak Amendment.
Even in the House, the amendment garnered only an additional six to ten votes, hardly proportional to their cost. Nonetheless, without those six to ten votes, the bill would not have passed, and, as President Obama put it, “this is a health care bill, not an abortion bill,” and in that vein, it must be recognized that reforming America’s health care delivery system is worth whatever reversible price must be paid to enact the required legislation.
Efforts to enact sweeping health care reform date back to the presidency of Harry Truman, and attempts have been made under presidents ranging from Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton, whose disastrous failure to enact reform in 1993 resulted in the Republicans regaining control of the House of Representatives for the first time in four decades. The House’s passage of health insurance reform thus marks the farthest that the reform effort has ever come, for which we congratulate Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her pragmatism and extraordinary political acumen.
Not only did the speaker demonstrate the savvy that garnered her the speaker’s gavel in the first place by wrangling the votes to pass a bill whose epitaph pundits had been composing since the notorious town hall protests of Congress’ August recess, but she also, as columnist Camille Paglia wrote for Salon, “conclusively demonstrated that a woman can be just as gritty, ruthless and arm-twisting in pursuing her agenda as anyone in the long line of fabled male speakers before her.”
This imperfect process lends itself to unnecessary politicization and the abuse of earmarks so rampant in Congress. One example of this includes the $10 billion allocated in the House bill for unions, a political earmark that has no place in a bill devoted to reforming our health care delivery system. Another example is the Stupak Amendment. The bill that the House passed is historic and should be considered a major victory, but it would be a tragedy for the Representative’s Stupak’s language to survive into the final version of what would be President Obama’s greatest domestic achievement.
Maybe so. The health insurance bill passed by the House isn't the bill I'd like to see, and as I expected, isn't one that's going to do a great deal for me. Being required to purchase insurance that I can't really afford and that, because of likely co-pays and deductibles, I can't really use, isn't anything like the single payer plan I've been advocating for decades.(2) "On Paying For Immoral Things, Or, Is Stupak On To Something?" (Washblog):Still, as The Littlest Gator says...I know we had some bad defeats in this. I know they beat up on women as usual, I know it is not single payer, I know that the "robust" public option is not going to be robust enough. But let's just remember-- WE GOT RID OF PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS! If nothing else were to have passed, this alone, this one thing, is going to save lives, heartache, family homes, family savings. Just that one change.Nope, it's not the bill I would have written, but it will save lives. It's not the bill the AFL-CIO would have written either, but they're on board because…It will end the national scandal of medical bankruptcy—the number one cause of personal bankruptcy—by eliminating lifetime caps on insurer payments and limiting annual out-of-pocket costs. Medical bankruptcies affect up to 4,000 families every day in the United States—and 78 percent of them are fully insured.It's also not the bill that the Human Rights Campaign might have introduced either, but they, too, find enough right to get over whatever's wrong, citing important gains for the LGBT community...
· It ends abusive insurance company practices, including the denial of coverage based on pre-existing conditions and “rescissions”—the practice of canceling coverage when patients file claims.
· It provides subsidies to help middle-class and lower-income families afford coverage.
· Through an exchange, it offers people a wide range of choices of insurance, including a public health insurance option that competes with private insurers.
· It narrows the “donut hole”—the gap in Medicare coverage for prescription drugs.
· It creates incentives to increase the number of doctors and boosts funding for community health centers.
· It allows young people to be covered by their parents’ insurance up to age 27.
· It creates a new fund to help employers give health coverage to early retirees.
· It provides for efficient, computerized medical records and other tools to streamline medical care and increase quality.
· It cuts costs to the federal government as well as to families, reducing the deficit by more than $100 billion over the next 10 years—thanks, in part, to the existence of a public health insurance option, which lowers costs across the system.
· Ad it’s fairly funded—through employer responsibility and a surtax on the very highest earners, not a tax on middle-class health benefits.· Health Disparities - the bill specifically designates LGBT people as a health disparities population, opening up health data collection and grant programs focused on health disparities related to sexual orientation and gender identity. With collection of data and funding of research, we can better address the specific health issues facing LGBT people.
· Unequal Taxation of Domestic Partner Benefits - the bill ends the unfair taxation of employer-provided domestic partner health benefits, incorporating the language of the Tax Equity for Health Plan Beneficiaries Act. Without this tax penalty, more people will be able to afford employer-provided coverage for their families, and more companies will be able to offer these important benefits.
· Early Treatment for HIV under Medicaid - the bill also incorporates the Early Treatment for HIV Act, which allows states to cover early HIV treatment under their Medicaid programs, instead of withholding treatment for Medicaid recipients until they develop full-blown AIDS, This will dramatically improve the quality of life for low-income people with HIV, as well as saving taxpayers money and reducing the transmission of the virus.
· Comprehensive Sex Education - the bill provides funding for comprehensive sex education programs that focus not only on abstinence, but also reducing teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. After more than $1 billion wasted on failed and discriminatory abstinence-only programs, this funding will provide youth, including LGBT students, with the tools they need to live healthy lives.
· Non-discrimination - the bill prohibits consideration of personal characteristics unrelated to the provision of health care. HRC worked with a coalition of civil rights groups to develop and lobby for this language and we believe it will help protect LGBT people from discrimination in the health care system, where there are currently no federal protections for our community.There's going to be a lot more to do - including moving the discussion from insurance to care - as we go forward, but first, let's get this done. It's worth doing, no matter what it doesn't do. It's not time to stop, but this is a place to start.
There has been a great wailing and gnashing of teeth over the past day or so as those who follow the healthcare debate react to the Stupak/Some Creepy Republican Guy Amendment.Howie P.S.: The Washblog post has this helpful poll to help decide what other immoral activities need to be de-funded, but you have to go back to the post for your vote to get counted.
The Amendment, which is apparently intended to respond to conservative Democrats’ concerns that too many women were voting for the Party in recent elections, was attached to the House’s version of healthcare reform legislation that was voted out of the House this weekend.
The goal is to limit women’s access to reproductive medicine services, particularly abortions; this based on the concept that citizens of good conscience shouldn’t have their tax dollars used to fund activities they find morally repugnant.At first blush, I was on the mild end of the wailing and gnashing spectrum myself...but having taken a day to mull the thing over, I’m starting to think that maybe we should take a look at the thinking behind this...and I’m also starting to think that, properly applied, Stupak’s logic deserves a more important place in our own vision of how a progressive government might work.So whaddaya think, Congressman Stupak?
It’s Political Judo Day today, Gentle Reader, and by the time we’re done here it’s entirely possible that you’ll see Stupak’s logic in a whole new light.
So let’s go back a moment and reconsider what Stupak wants: his religious beliefs are offended by the concept of abortion, and he is taking steps to ensure that the government is not using his taxpayer dollars to pay for the procedure.This precedent is fascinating—and what I’m inviting you to do today is to consider, for a moment, what our government might look like if we take his logic and...extend it a bit.
“...In the game of life, the house edge is called Time. In whatever we do, Nature charges us for doing it in the currency of time...”--Bob Stupak, “Yes, You Can Win!”
I always try to find common ground with those I oppose, and the most logical place to start would be to consider the fact that Stupak and I are both morally offended by the idea that we use taxpayer dollars to go around killing people.
So where do we differ?
For starters, I find it morally offensive that my taxpayer dollars are used, on a daily basis, to fund the actual killing of actual, living, people by my Government...so, Congressman Stupak, in the name of finding common ground, how about if the same day your Amendment goes into effect we also stop funding any military activities that might reasonably be expected to, as I hear people say, “stop a beating heart”, so as to prevent offending my religious sensibilities?
John Allen Muhammad, the so-called “Washington Sniper”, is scheduled to be executed today. Are you prepared to support legislation, Congressman Stupak, which will prevent his “post-term abortion” and the potential abortions of all those other human lives on Death Rows around this country if those state-sponsored abortions are as much of an affront to my religious beliefs as they should be to yours?
During the more or less four months worth of slow-walking and stalling that we have seen so far in this process 15,000 Americans have died...or, if you prefer, five 9/11s...simply because they have no health insurance—and unless your religion is a lot more bloodthirsty than mine, the abortions of 15,000 people because of the...what’s the word I’m looking for here...let’s see...could it be...sloth...of your colleagues should be an act as reprehensible as the greatest of blasphemies ever recorded in The Bible.
With that in mind, are you prepared to join me in cutting off the use of my taxpayer dollars to fund the salaries, the “public option” health care, and the office operations of those legislators who are behind these killings?
What else do we do that’s aborting lives on a daily basis that I’m sure Congressman Stupak would be glad to allow me, as a result of the offense to my conscience (and, presumably, his), to “negatively fund with extreme prejudice”?
There’s that Drug War, of course, and whatever we're doing in those secret prisons—and public ones—and subsidies for those who clear mountains and poison lands...not to mention the tax dollars I’ve been providing for a company who did electrical work that’s aborting soldiers.
Since you’re so proud of your pro-life credentials, are you ready to stand up with me and defend the principle that all human lives deserve to be protected, and that we have the right to withhold funding for all those activities that are morally repugnant...or are you just another one of those “enablers” who helped kill 15,000 people this past few months?
Enquiring minds want to know.
Eli Sanders (SLOG), with video (02:41):So said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, talking this afternoon in Seattle about the controversial abortion amendment that was added at the last minute to the House health insurance reform bill.Which is not to say she likes that the amendment had to be added.Here's the video:"I myself do not really think this issue should be part of this legislation," Pelosi said, flanked by two Washington congressmen, Jim McDermott and Jay Inslee. "But others thought differently... I voted against it, as did all of the members of the leadership and the chairs of the committees of jurisdiction."
McDermott and Inslee also voted against the amendment, which passed 240 to 194.
The amendment vote had to be allowed, Pelosi said, because Republicans were determined to force the issue one way or another, and letting them do it via the amendment process was the best way to avoid derailing the entire health insurance reform effort:
The major parts of this bill do so much to provide quality health care, and bring many more people into the loop. And, by the way, under this legislation, being a woman is no longer a pre-existing medical condition... The provision that you're talking about would have been in the bill one way or another. The Republicans would have put it as a motion to recommit—not to get too much into this—we thought it was better to have it as an amendment that could be voted up or down, rather than a provision in the motion to recommit, which would take down the whole bill.That's a pretty technical answer, but again, what Pelosi was saying is that the amendment process was the least bad way she could think of to contain this explosive issue.
Will the Senate be able to strip about the amendment and its limits on abortion funding, now that the bill is in its hands?
Pelosi dodged that question.
In a move that will intensify the coming war over how to treat abortion in the health care bill, more than three dozen House Dems have signed a letter to Nancy Pelosi firmly pledging to vote against the bill if it contains an anti-abortion amendment.A source sends over a working copy of the letter without the signatories, and the source says it currently bears the signatures of 41 House Dems. They’re all vowing to vote No on a bill if it contains the Stupak amendment — enough to sink the bill:The Stupak amendment, of course, would sharply curtail the availability of abortions, which many insurance plans now offer, and was added in order to win the support of moderate Dems. That pro-choice Democrats are now drawing such a sharp line against the amendment will make the politics considerably more difficult going forward.As Members of Congress we believe that women should have access to a full range of reproductive health care. Health care reform must not be misused as an opportunity to restrict women’s access to reproductive health services.
The Stupak-Pitts amendment to H.R. 3962, The Affordable Healthcare for America Act, represents an unprecedented and unacceptable restriction on women’s ability to access the full range of reproductive health services to which they are lawfully entitled. We will not vote for a conference report that contains language that restricts women’s right to choose any further than current law.
That’s unequivocal, with no wiggle room. The Washington Post reported this morning that Rep. Diana DeGette had collected 40 signatures vowing a No vote, without noting the language of their vow or how this would be communicated.
Now we know — at least 41 House Dems are writing directly to Pelosi, telling her that they will not vote for anything “that contains language that restricts women’s right to choose any further than current law.”
I’m told that the letter is still being circulated for even more signatures, and I’ll bring you a list of signatories when I have it.
