A new study by the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services adds some expert imprimatur to what many progressives have been saying all along: The Stupak amendment to the House health care bill--which will prevent millions of women from buying health insurance policies that cover abortion--is likely to have consequences that reach far beyond its supposedly intended scope.And anyone who still thinks this wasn't the original intent of the language with the intent of using it as a poison pill to kill Obamacare outright is either naive, in denial, or both. Stupak's decided that this is the best way to kill health care reform, to make it so poisonous that the status quo, as horrible as it is, will still be better.
The report concludes that "the treatment exclusions required under the Stupak/Pitts Amendment will have an industry-wide effect, eliminating coverage of medically indicated abortions over time for all women, not only those whose coverage is derived through a health insurance exchange."
In other words, though the immediate impact of the Stupak amendment will be limited to the millions of women initially insured through a new insurance exchange, over time, as the exchanges grow, the insurance industry will scale down their abortion coverage options until they offer none at all.
"As a result, Stupak/Pitts can be expected to move the industry away from current norms of coverage for medically indicated abortions. In combination with the Hyde Amendment, Stupak/Pitts will impose a coverage exclusion for medically indicated abortions on such a widespread basis that the health benefit services industry can be expected to recalibrate product design downward across the board in order to accommodate the exclusion in selected markets."
I honestly don't think Bart Stupak could give a damn one way or the other, he's just using abortion coverage as a wedge issue to destroy the entire bill.
This is rich with irony. I wonder if you grasp it. You're own logic on healthcare plus the prevailing opinion on taxpayer funded abortion would end insurance paying for abortion.
ReplyDeleteIn a free market, abortion being legal even though it's murder, abortion is covered. But because people, even those ambivalent about sucking a baby out of his mother's uterus through a straw and flushing him down a sink, don't want taxpayer dollars to pay for it taking over the healthcare market effectively ends paying for abortions.
It's almost worth the disaster that nationalized healthcare would bring to see you gnashing you teeth like this.
Go. Kill the bill. If the lefties can't support it without paying to kill babies, no one else can support it with paying for abortions.
And you still don't get it. Rep Stupak doesn't care about abortions one way or the other, he's just trying to use it to stop reform. Nobody cares in the "pro-life" movement because they'd rather see the status quo of our healthcare kill off 40,000 plus a year because of lack of insurance coverage than see a single abortion procedure performed.
ReplyDeleteHe's an even bigger hypocrite than you.
Kudos to Stupak for using the tool at hand tho kill this monstrosity.
ReplyDelete_IF_ 40,000 die every year from a lack of health insurance, this bill is not going to fix that.
Better would be to find ways to allow people to separate their insurance coverage from their employer and for us to stop expecting health "insurance" to be pre-paid medicine. Only then will we see downward pressure on medical costs.
Of course, actually giving people choice is not in your vocabulary.
And, don't forget that a government task force has already put women more at risk from breast cancer by recommending they get mammograms later and that they not self exam.
ReplyDeleteAnd HHS sec. Sebelius says the government will not adopt those findings and continue to keep the existing ones, and insurance companies will continue to cover mammograms at 40.
ReplyDeleteTry again, Sev. You're beginning to bore me.
But who decides when government is paying the bill?
ReplyDeleteThis panel? That panel? Sebelius? You?