"The Protect Life Act simply extends these provisions to the new law by inserting a provision that mirrors Hyde-Weldon," the spokesperson added, referring to current federal law banning spending on abortion and allowing anti-abortion doctors to refrain from performing them while still receiving federal funds. "In other words, this bill is only preserving the same rights that medical professionals have had for decades."
A bit of backstory: currently, all hospitals in America that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding are bound by a 1986 law known as EMTALA to provide emergency care to all comers, regardless of their ability to pay or other factors. Hospitals do not have to provide free care to everyone that arrives at their doorstep under EMTALA -- but they do have to stabilize them and provide them with emergency care without factoring in their ability to pay for it or not. If a hospital can't provide the care a patient needs, it is required to transfer that patient to a hospital that can, and the receiving hospital is required to accept that patient.
In the case of an anti-abortion hospital with a patient requiring an emergency abortion, ETMALA would require that hospital to perform it or transfer the patient to someone who can. (The nature of how that procedure works exactly is up in the air, with the ACLU calling on the federal government to state clearly that unwillingness to perform an abortion doesn't qualify as inability under EMTALA. That argument is ongoing, and the government has yet to weigh in.)
Pitts' new bill would free hospitals from any abortion requirement under EMTALA, meaning that medical providers who aren't willing to terminate pregnancies wouldn't have to -- nor would they have to facilitate a transfer.
The hospital could literally do nothing at all, pro-choice critics of Pitts' bill say.
"This is really out there," Donna Crane, policy director at NARAL Pro-Choice America told TPM. "I haven't seen this before."
So, I'm failing to see how this proposed legislation protects life when it's based on allowing hospitals to say "Yeah, we'd rather risk your death than perform a medically necessary abortion to save your life. Sorry about that."
Talk about your death panels. These guys have no problem regulating the uterus of every woman in the country, but Obama's the fascist.
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10 comments:
Let me give you some free advice.
Pray with every fiber of your being that the Supreme Court throws out Obamacare.
Why? The first time a government panel decides to withhold treatment under Obamacare to a U.S. citizen and they die as a result, you will have millions of Americans take to the streets.
The first people to have their backs up against the wall will be the lawmakers that passed this atrocity.
The second group will be people like you who enabled this travesty to pass with your elitist advocacy.
I'd think long and hard about that.
This proposed law that would deny care isn't part of Obama's plan, it is diametrically opposed to it's most basic underpinnings. Take some comfort in the fact that EMTALA is enforced harshly. Minimum penalty for a first offense is $50k, and that's for not filling out some paperwork right. Something like what you're talking about here would be a very painful fine to whatever hospital tried to do it.
ZCP, are those threats? Really? I'm pretty sure that's a form of terrorism.
And yet they do not rise up when a private panel decides to withhold treatment because it would cut into the quarter's earnings.
Well, okay, they do, but it tends to be small, and nothing that would actually put the insurance industry's back to the wall. Sad that.
You are not a revolutionary, ICP, you are a moron. Especially when you have the gall to call anyone elitist while screaming about an attempt to move away from the "healthcare for all... who have the money" model.
I'd say "shame on you" for that, but you've made it clear that you have none.
How pleasant: a nearly veiled threat from Problem, who insists that 'millions' have his back.
So, here's the thing - where the hell were these 'millions' when corporations used rescission and other methods to deny millions of other Americans health care? That actually happened, after all. It is well documented, it is one of the reasons why there was such a push to get some sort of 'elitist advocacy' in the first place.
I have actually seen 'millions' take to the streets - but that was back during the run up to the Iraq War, and I don't recall that Bush had ever suffered a single wink of sleep for having committed us to that fiscal and moral sinkhole. But, I guess those millions don't count, and Tea Party rallies of 'thousands' have to be counted as 'millions' because they include their guns as people as well, which would explain a few things.
But, I assure you, that if these 'millions' somehow materialize and try anything like you said, Problem, then you will have finally unlocked your achievement goal to get the special edition Brown Shirt you've always wanted. Wear it with pride.
But, I guess those millions don't count, and Tea Party rallies of 'thousands' have to be counted as 'millions' because they include their guns as people as well, which would explain a few things.
Actually, it's not they count their guns, it is because they are such awesome, manly, godly, awesome, pious, awesome, normal supermen that they're equal to 100 of those filthy communist, muslim, pinko, leftist, hairy-legged, pansy leftists.
Did I mention that they're awesome too?
Keep telling yourselves that liberalism will survive much longer in an America where it takes a wheelbarrow of cash to buy a loaf of bread. That's where we're headed.
The government can only derive power from the consent of the governed. That consent will be revoked very shortly, I expect.
So, we have to do what you say, or we'll get swept away, is that it Problem? Apparently, my vote which counts in the real world, doesn't count in yours. I find it interesting that you would approve of such a turn of events, and yet call yourself a patriot. You may well be a patriot, but it's not to America, I think.
You just keep watching looney Beck and gravity denier O'Reilly and waiting for that 'first shot of the revolution' to be fired; I have no illusions that you'll do much more than make badly disguised threats and accusations of treason on a blog you hate so much that you post here CONSTANTLY.
Someone's pining for the Weimar Republic, I see. Sorry to disappoint you, Schicklgruber, but we don't actually have an inflation problem here.
You, Glenn Beck and Pat Buchanan just keep spanking each other in your lederhosen and dream of glories yet to come.
PS You'll be hearing from the FBI on Monday about those death threats.
FOX tries to pull a Breitbart on Planned Parenthood... and FAILs:
- http://www.politicususa.com/en/fox-acorning-planned-parenthood
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