Barack Obama’s Health Care Plan Covers Abortion, Would Require Tax-Funding
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
October 30, 2008
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A leading pro-life group has uncovered a questionnaire the campaign of Barack Obama filed with a pro-abortion web site. The survey makes it clear that Obama’s national health care plan would include abortions and that they would likely be funded at taxpayer expense.
The Obama campaign responded to a question about health care from the pro-abortion RH Reality Check web site.
"Senator Obama believes that reproductive health care is basic health care," the campaign said, using the phrase that abortion advocates employ to refer to abortion.
"His health care plan will create a new public plan, which will provide coverage of all essential medical services. Reproductive health care is an essential service," the Obama campaign added.
The Obama camp also made it clear that any private insurance companies wanting to participate would also be required to provide abortion coverage.
"And private insurers that want to participate will have to treat reproductive care in the same way," the Obama campaign responded.
Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, says the answers make it clear to him that Obama would fund abortions with federal taxpayer dollars and make people in private insurance plans pay for abortions because insurance companies would pass on the additional costs to customers.
"While the health care debate has largely focused on whom the candidates’ plans will fund, more Americans need to understand exactly what they would fund," Perkins explains.
"According to these [questionnaire] excerpts, Obama’s plan would treat abortion as a basic health care mandate for both taxpayers and private health insurers to subsidize," Perlkins said.
Previously, the Obama campaign confirmed that his health care plan would cover abortions.
John McCormack, a writer for the magazine Weekly Standard, hoped to resolve the question of whether the Obama plan required abortion coverage in a recent conversation with the Obama campaign.
"During a campaign conference call about health care yesterday, I asked Obama-Biden surrogate Gov. Kathleen Sebelius if Obama’s health care plan would mandate coverage for all legal abortions," he wrote this month.
"I really don’t know the specifics of that," Sebelius replied.
"An Obama-Biden spokesman told me via email that he’d find an answer to my question. But subsequent emails and phone calls in the past 24 hours from me to Obama-Biden spokesmen have gone unanswered," McCormack adds.
"Apparently the Obama-Biden campaign doesn’t think it needs to provide basic factual information about their candidate’s health care plan. Will anyone in the mainstream media hold Obama accountable?" McCormack asks.
Without a specific answer, voters are forced to guess what Obama’s plan would do.
McCormack points to the speech Obama gave to Planned Parenthood activists in July 2007, where he pledged to cover abortions in any national health care plan.
"In my mind reproductive care is essential care. It is basic care, and so it is at the center, the heart of the plan that I propose," Obama said. "We’re going to set up a public plan that all persons and all women can access if they don’t have health insurance. It’ll be a plan that will provide all essential services, including reproductive services"
Mike Dorning of the Chicago Tribune followed up on the Obama speech and reported that an Obama representative said "reproductive services" included abortions.
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