Senate Passes Health Care Bill: Funds Abortions, Mandates Insurance Coverage
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
December 24, 2009
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — The Senate today passed the government-run health care bill that includes massive taxpayer funding of abortion and opens the door for the Obama administration to force insurance companies to pay for abortions. With passage, the two chambers of Congress have approved very different legislation.
It will now be up to a conference committee to work out the differences on a host of political issues related to the health care bill, including abortion.
Reacting to the vote, Americans United for Life Action president Charmaine Yoest told LifeNews.com of her disappointment.
“Americans don’t want taxpayer funding for abortions and are opposed to a first-ever, mandatory abortion tax. Knowing this, the bill’s proponents have rushed it through the Senate at a time when Americans are focused on celebrating Christmas with their families," she said.
During the Senate health care vote today, pro-abortion Vice President Joe Bidden presided over the Senate as lawmakers approved the bill on a strict 60-39 party-line vote with Democrats backing the pro-abortion, pro-rationing bill and Republicans opposing it.
President Barack Obama applauded the vote for a bill that violates he supposed pledge to not have health care legislation that funds abortions.
“With today’s vote, we are now incredibly close to making health insurance reform a reality in this country,” he said. “Our challenge, then, is to finish the job.”
Republicans, on the other hand, vowed to continue to fight the bill as the process moves forward.
"This fight isn’t over. My colleagues and I will work to stop this bill from becoming law. That’s the clear will of the American people — and we’re going to continue to fight on their behalf,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said.
Also, Sens. Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson — two of the final lawmakers to support the bill — said after the vote that their vote on the conference committee measure is not guaranteed.
As LifeNews.com has reported, the health care bill may now see a delay because of abortion and other contentious issues ranging from the public option to illegal immigrant.
The big fight will take place mostly within Democratic ranks as three groups may fight with one another — pro-life Democrats who want to see the Stupak amendment from the House bill remain, Senate abortion advocates who like the pro-abortion "compromise" language in the Senate, and House abortion advocates who want the Stupak amendment removed but have already suggested killing the Senate bill because it is not pro-abortion enough to their liking.
For the pro-life community, the House bill contains the right language to properly block taxpayer funding of abortions, but the Senate bill contains several problems — despite the guarantee of Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, who became the 60th vote for the bill.
In a letter to senators urging a no vote on the bill, the National Right to Life Committee pointed out how it promotes abortions.
The group said the abortion language in the bill — added in the manager’s amendment — "is light years removed from the Stupak-Pitts Amendment that was approved by the House of Representatives on November 7 by a bipartisan vote of 240-194."
"The new abortion language solves none of the fundamental abortion-related problems with the underlying Senate bill, and it actually creates some new abortion-related problems," the group added.
The changes allow the federal government to subsidize private insurance plans that cover abortion on demand, to oversee multi-state plans that cover elective abortions, and to empower federal officials to mandate that private health plans cover abortions even if they do not accept subsidized enrollees.
"The abortion-related language violates the principles of the Hyde Amendment by requiring the federal government to pay premiums for private health plans that will cover any or all abortions," NRLC indicated. "The federal subsidies would be subject to a convoluted bookkeeping requirement, different in detail but similar in kind to the Capps-Waxman accounting scheme that the House of Representatives rejected."
Right to Life explained that the manager’s amendment requires all enrollees in an abortion-covering plan to make a separate payment into an account that will pay for abortions, but the amendment also contains language [Section 1303 (b)(3)(A) and (b)(3)(B)] that is apparently intended to prevent or discourage any insurer from explaining the use of the surcharge. It says there is nothing in the language to suggest that payment of the abortion charge is optional for any enrollee.
Abortion advocates and Nelson claim the language in the manager’s amendment erects a so-called "firewall" between federal funds and private funds, but NRLC explains that this is "merely a bookkeeping gimmick "inconsistent with the long-established principles that govern existing federal health programs, such as the Hyde Amendment."
The firewall also exists only so long as the annual appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services continues to contain the Hyde Amendment — thus, if Congress or the president blocks renewal of it then "the Reid bookkeeping requirements would automatically evaporate, and insurers could pay for elective abortions with the federal subsidies without even bookkeeping requirements."
This is in stark contrast with the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, which would permanently prohibit the federal subsidies from paying any part of the premium of a plan that covers elective abortions.
To get the votes of moderate Democrats who opposed the public option, the Reid manager’s amendment establishes a new program under which the federal government (the Office of Personnel Management) would administer a program of "multi-state" health plans offered by private insurers.
The amendment says there must be at least one plan that does not cover abortions, but it implies that pro-abortion plans funding abortions with government funds are allowed, and possibly encouraged.
NRLC says the amendment "seems to envision a system under which the OPM director would administer multi-state plans that cover elective abortions, and perhaps even possess authority to require such plans to cover elective abortions, as long as the director also ensured that there was one plan that did not cover abortions."
The main section of the amendment that Nelson touted as the reason for his support for the manager’s amendment is the opt-out clause that allows states to opt out of funding abortions under the health care bill.
But National Right to Life explains that the clause is "defective" because it would only apply to laws enacted in the future, might be construed to conflict with some existing state laws and because it is unclear how the state opt-out clause would be interpreted in light of other provisions in the bill — such as the one granting authority to the OPM director to set the rules for the new national program of multi-state health care plans.
The House-passed bill contains language to prevent the federal government from requiring health insurance plans to cover abortions, but the Senate adopted the Mikulski amendment to allow HHS to require all health plans to cover all abortions by defining them as "preventative care."
While the manager’s amendment prohibits the federal government from defining abortion as an "essential benefit," it doesn’t mitigate the problems of the Mikulski amendment.
The manager’s amendment also creates a new taxpayer-funded abortion problem because it includes, by reference, the entire text of the Indian Health reauthorization bill (S. 1790) that does not contain an amendment (the Vitter Amendment) that was adopted by the Senate in February 2008 to make sure abortions on Indian reservations are not paid for with federal funds.
NRLC is also disappointed that the conscience protections for pro-life medical workers found in the House-passed bill under the Stupak amendment are not found in the Senate bill or the manager’s amendment.
Finally, the manager’s amendment does not contain any provisions to fix the rationing and assisted suicide promotion issues in the bill.
ACTION: Go to https://www.Senate.gov and contact your senators about their vote.
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