Must the Abortion Debate Also Shape the Future of our Nation’s Health Insurance Reform bill?
I am sure that there are things about health care that you are mad about, disgusted with, and want fixed.
I am sure that you know someone who cannot afford the prescription medicine she or he needs. It might be your mom or dad, who is on a fixed income and even tries to go without their pills in order to make them last longer. It might be your child, who could benefit from a new drug that you can’t afford. It might even be you, struggling in this economy to make ends meet.
I am also sure you know someone who needs health insurance and cannot afford it. Cannot. They may be hardworking people with jobs – it often doesn’t matter. My sister is an RN and her husband is a roofer. For years, they could not afford insurance for themselves or their children. The term “co-pay” was foreign to them; they paid full price for doctors’ visits and medicine.. They lived with their fingers crossed that nothing catastrophic would happen to one of the kids.
Know this: Regardless of how you feel about abortion – whether you support a woman’s right to choose, oppose it at all costs or fall somewhere in between – that issue will affect how your health care future is formed.
Saturday night, realizing that she would not get the votes she needed without it, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi allowed an amendment to be added to the health care reform bill that would harshly restrict the availability of coverage for abortions that some insurance plans now offer. The House passed its version of the bill with a vote of 220 to 215 with the amendment, which goes beyond even existing laws that prohibit public funding for abortion. The amendment will limit coverage even for women who pay for abortion without government subsidies.
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Add a Comment2 Comments
From what I understand, the issue at hand is federal funding for abortion and nothing else. Federal funding for abortion is not legal now. The original bill would have gotten around the current restrictions, hence the concern of the Bishops (representing a significant portion of the hospitals in the US who do not and will not perform abortions).
The original bill would have, for the first time, made federal funding for abortion the law of the land. So, in answer to your question... no, abortion need not shape the debate. It wasn't those on the pro-life side who chose to make it part of the issue but those on the pro-choice side.
Finally, the bill you have posted is not the entire bill.
November 9, 2009 - 7:49amThis Comment
Anon,
The link I posted is from house.gov and contains 1,990 pages of the bill. Is there a better link?
November 9, 2009 - 8:07am