Stupak’s language not only prohibits abortion coverage in the public insurance option included in the House bill. It would also prevent private plans from offering coverage for abortion services if they accept people who are receiving government subsidies.

That could end up being a whole lotta women. A lot.

^{"All men's gains are the fruit of venturing."}

-Herodotus

retroactively removes abortion coverage from private providers as it exists today. So yes, women will LOSE what some of them already have: financial help from many insurance companies who currently prefer to support pro-choice (for them an out-patient operationis much cheaper than a 9 month term pregnancy and possible complications.)

Stupak is an extremely noxious addition, Nancy Pelosi should be ashamed for letting it ever come to a vote and should be removed from her post come next election.

the issue:

Stupak-Pitts as now constituted affects the exchanges. The original version just affected the public option in the exchanges. This is much broader.

The federal subsidies affect the plan, not just the individuals in the plan. It is not just the individual who has subsides that can't get abortion coverage. It is that any subsidy from anyone taints the entire plan. So any plan that gets subsidies from anyone at all can not offer abortion coverage.

So anyone who now is getting some form of individual coverage - I am unsure of how the Cobra coverage would be classified -will not be able to get a plan that has abortion coverage. anyone who is self employed - from attorneys, to real estate agents to consultants to a vast number of people who now HAVE coverage will have to go to the exchanges and lose the abortion coverage they have now. It is not just the 47 million uninsured but the additional millions of people who have private coverage now.

Is that a compromise you're willing to live with?

^{"All men's gains are the fruit of venturing."}

-Herodotus

then it seems the amendment would disproportionately affect wealthier individuals. I don't know the numbers offhand, but I would suspect that the people who carry supplemental insurance are on the whole wealthier than most Americans. And this fact would seem to make it all the more unlikely that the bill would be signed in this form.

rights all you want, Scot, but it doesn't change my opposition. Stupak needs to be removed. Period. Otherwise, no support from these quarters.

^{"All men's gains are the fruit of venturing."}

-Herodotus

is that the mandate forces everyone to get coverage, even if they don't qualify for subsidies. For young adults or people just over the subsidy line (wherever you put it), this is a crushing burden. I remember being fresh out of college and if 15-20% of my income had to go to insurance premiums (by law), it would have been extremely tough to get ahead or even break even. So for those 50 million uninsured people you mention, how of them can afford to nut up 20% of their yearly incomes forever to have medical coverage? Plus the bill makes it harder for small businesses to carry insurance for employees, so if it passes many more people will be needing private insurance (with no real advocate.) It is a huge, hairy, fat regressive tax.

Personally, I'm right on the line. I like the changes this bill makes to cut down on waste (electronic shared medical files are a no-brainer), but the bad stuff is pretty fucking bad IMHO. If there is any more talk of triggers or whatnot, I'll be calling my senators asking them chunk this loser.

It's not that anyone here doesn't want people covered, it's that this bill does not do that and it might be time to start again from scratch. America will have health reform, it can't afford not to do it. But that doesn't mean we have to eat a shit sandwich to get it. And this bill is getting double-stuffed with fecal IMHO.

Haven't done much for my Kaiser Permanante costs, and Kaiser is a vertically integrated HMO, with Insurance, Doctors & Hospitals under one non-profit corporate roof.

I've yet to see at IT project actually cut costs as promised. I have seen many with (very) large cost overruns.

One major difference between Europe, at least in the countries I lived, is there are NO CLAIMS. No forms, no paperwork, no costs. In the UK doctors & hospitals are paid by a capitation system, dollars per head in their list for doctors, or area for hospitals.

So you weight

Yes, I do. If you are going to debate for months, you may as well put together something worth passing.

I'm "sorry" I only represent a little more than half the population, but there it is. Support for this bill is starting to mimic conservative sentiment following the Patriot Act: some sections of this bill may be unconstitutional but it will save lives! I don't want to zoom on the silver lining.

And abortion aside, this bill would essentially turn millions of people into criminals for choosing a roof over their heads, making car payments, buying groceries, paying college loans, etc., over insurance in the event they get sick. It's a new classification for victimless crimes, except you don't even enjoy a puff!

When isuring 50 million without insurance is nothing.

It is rated as bringing health insurance coverage to 96%, up from 83%. That would be equal to 40 million Americans, leaving 5 million. Those would also be those who under various circumstances basically voluntarily refuse to participate (hear that Don?).

doesn't do anybody any good. The only important thing is access to health care. I haven't seen anything that's convinced me that this bill does anything to improve access to health care.

In Massachussetts, with mandated insurance, the working poor pay huge sums of money for shitty insurance with big deductibles and hefty copays. In other words, they pay a few thousand dollars a year to protect them against catastrophic illness - a good thing, true, but a cost that would otherwise have been passed on mostly to hospitals that usually end up paying for emergency treatments and then sorting out the bills later. Poor Massachussettsians with crappy insurance still can't afford basic routine health care - dental, primary care, minor illnesses, exactly the things that young healthy people need.

I'm a med student; in 18 months on the wards, I've had dozens of patients with insurance who didn't show up for appointments, didn't fill their prescriptions, and delayed presenting to the hospital because they were afraid of the copays. Bad insurance does not appreciably improve access to healthcare.

So increasing the number of 'insured' to 96%, without completely guaranteeing what that insurance covers or how low the copays must be, does jack shit to make Americans healthier. Our more-developed peer nations skip insurance altogether and simply pay for health care. To do anything less, for example what the House just passed, does more for the insurance industry than it does for patients.

I am speechless. The one thing progressives do share with conservatives is their sense of victimhood.

Yep, those Massachusetts residents don't know how to be grateful for progressive legislation. They should show up for their appointments, pay their copays and skip dinner!

...says it better than I, here.

I did inhale.

Withdraw red dildo. Insert blue dildo.

Can I use this? :)

but I wouldn't recommend it.

I did inhale.

no one wants you to go away and you can be a 'regular' editor anytime YOU want :)

that the debate is rational, instead of idealogical. We will agree that the bill should be fair, and preferrably cost cutting.

Sooooo, in exchange for banning abortions for women, fairness demands banning prostate surgery for men. And Viagra. That's a significant cost saving, too. Obvious, eh what?

And while we're being mean-spirited about the consequences of voluntary behavior, let's not pay for those who run (arthoscopy), ski (broken legs), or play the piano (carpal tunnel syndrome). Let's drop in-vitro fertility treatment, and Bo.tox. Let's deny coverage to the obese, the drinkers, smokers, drug addicts. Let's pretend it can never be us.

Then let's really reform health care, so it isn't defined merely as the delivery and payment of medical services. Let health care policy include adequate food for all (35 million Americans have uncertain access to food, 700,000 children went hungry last year ), adequate jobs to keep desperate wage-earners from illicit drugs; and adequate justice to end the family poverty imposed by the highest rate of incarceration in the developed world. That's a bill I could support.

We need a NATION WIDE STRIKE for Real healthcare reform

Got any car insurance??

Ever had an assessment on your property to put in curbs and gutters, or upgrade your watermain?

Ever get a ticket that makes you go get your tail light fixed???

or a house, or any other real property. Mandatory insurance for those things, much as we might hate it, much as it might embody naked political corruption, is optional.

But you do have to own a body to participate in our world. This legislation would force you to pay to a particular profit-making business or set of businesses for the privilege of being alive in America.

No ethical acrobatics in the world can clean up that toxic shitpile. I ain't havin' any.

You did not have to drive, you do not have to own property, but last I checked - most everyone had to keep living through the occasional sickness.

Wedge issue raised for the purpose of killing reform.

who needs reactionaries?

The insurance companies are in a position to clean up on this bill. Every dollar of insurance overhead above 4% (the Medicare overhead rate) is a gift to the insurance companies at the expense of citizens in need of health care. That isn't reform, that's an additional transfer of wealth to a major corporate faction, one that doesn't perform that well lately.

The Stupak Amendment is simply outrageous. What if the bill excluded coverage for addictions? Would all the supposed benefits (few after eliminating the preexisting criteria) make the bill OK despite discrimination against one class of health care system users?

Abortion was legalized, in large part, because women were obtaining them regardless of the law and many were injured or died. Now we have a "health" bill that will cause women to forgo abortions, pay $300-$700 out of pocket, or seek lower cost and dangerous alternatives.

More will emerge from the stealth legislative process but this is enough to dump the whole thing.

The private companies don't have death panels; they use spreadsheets.

In theory, I think, if they only offer you expensive plans you cannot afford, then you should be eligible for the public option plan.

how "cannot afford" is defined.

to this, that's where Stupak's coming from. He's an ardent Catholic...not a born-again fundy. The end result is the same, true, but i thought that i'd point it out.

sigh

I hope the next wave of pedophilia scandals will wipe them out for good.

I'm a roman catholic and yes, they really do think abortion is murder (I don't personally) so they want to make it illegal any which way they can. They think it is murder, end of debate there (only thing we can do is agree to disagree - they ain't gonna budge.)

The other part of the declaration though is that the church has come out in favor of a much stronger and more robust public option, actually desiring single payer above any other plan. They believe this ties in with Christ's message to care for your brothers and to look out for the poor and sick. It's funny that we only hear about their stance on abortion, when their truly christian stand on a PO is never mentioned in the mainstream.

So in my mind, if Stupak is such a concerned Catholic, where was his support of single payer? Where are the street demonstrations to advocate for the sick and uninsured in our society? It is also viewed as murder (by inaction) by the church, so where are these congressional dicks on that part of the issue? Because they are not Catholics first, they are politicians at the start and end of the day.

Just want to insert this tidbit before we get too gung ho about tearing the church a new a-hole. You're focusing on only half their stance, the other part is quite good.

For a single payer system. If they had, we would have that in the crappy bill too, not just the abortion restrictions.

The Roman Catholic Church's "traditional teaching" on Abortion

Most Catholics assume that the soul is infused at conception. They may take it as an article of faith. In fact it is not. Vatican II deliberately left the issue aside and for a very good reason. For fourteen hundred years until late in the nineteenth century, all Catholics, including the popes, took it for granted that the soul is not infused at conception. If the church was wholly opposed to abortion, as it was, it was not on the basis of the conceptus starting as a human being.
From the fifth century, the church accepted without question the primitive embryology of Aristotle. The embryo began as a non-human speck that was progressively animated. This speck had to evolve from vegetative, through animal to spiritual being. Only in its final stage was it a human being. This is why Gratian was able to say: `He is not a murderer who brings about abortion before the soul is in the body.'
The characteristics of the foetus were attributed solely to the father. It (and it was correct to refer to the embryo as `it') became human at forty days for the male and eighty days for the female. A female resulted, said Aquinas, from defective seed or from the fact that conception took place when a damp wind was blowing. It followed that to abort a foetus in the early stages of pregnancy was wrong, since it was the destruction of a potential human being. It was not murder, since it was not the killing of an actual human being.

Most people believe that the Roman Catholic church's position on abortion has remained unchanged for two thousand years. Not true. Church teaching on abortion has varied continually over the course of its history. There has been no unanimous opinion on abortion at any time. While there has been constant general agreement that abortion is almost always evil and sinful, the church has had difficulty in defining the nature of that evil. Members of the Catholic hierarchy have opposed abortion consistently as evidence of sexual sin, but they have not always seen early abortion as homicide. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the "right-to-life" argument is a relatively recent development in church teaching. The debate continues today.

Also contrary to popular belief, no pope has proclaimed the prohibition of abortion an "infallible" teaching. This fact leaves much more room for discussion on abortion than is usually thought, with opinions among theologians and the laity differing widely. In any case, Catholic theology tells individuals to follow their personal conscience in moral matters, even when their conscience is in conflict with hierarchical views.

The campaign by Pope John Paul II to make his position on abortion the defining one at the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development in 1994 was just one leg of a long journey of shifting views within the Catholic church. In the fifth century a.d., St. Augustine expressed the mainstream view that early abortion required penance only for sexual sin. Eight centuries later, St. Thomas Aquinas agreed, saying abortion was not homicide unless the fetus was "ensouled," and ensoulment, he was sure, occurred well after conception. The position that abortion is a serious sin akin to murder and is grounds for excommunication only became established 150 years ago.

A brief chronology cannot do justice to the twists and turns of theological thinking through the centuries. It can, however, put the abortion debate within the Catholic church into historical perspective and show the importance of continued debate and of open hearts and minds.

Also interesting is that the emphasis contra sex has been around for a long time... (Though it probably started with St. Paul, way back).

St. Augustine: Early Abortion Is Not Homicide

St. Augustine (354-430) condemned abortion because it breaks the connection between sex and procreation. 1 However, in the Enchiridion, he says, "But who is not rather disposed to think that unformed fetuses perish like seeds which have not fructified" — clearly seeing hominization as beginning or occurring at some point after the fetus has begun to grow. He held that abortion was not an act of homicide. Most theologians of his era agreed with him.

In a disciplinary sense, the general agreement at this time was that abortion was a sin requiring penance if it was intended to conceal fornication and adultery.
The Middle Period: 600 -1500

circa 675: Illicit Intercourse is a Greater Sin

The Irish Canons place the penance for "destruction of the embryo of a child in the mother's womb [at] three and one half years," while the "penance of one who has intercourse with a woman, seven years on bread and water."2

R.I.’s Tobin welcomes tussles with politicians

The Boston Globe, By Noah Bierman, November 12

PROVIDENCE - The bishop from America’s most Catholic state, and increasingly one of the church’s most provocative prelates, has provided a rather concise explanation for his willingness to clash with politicians: Christians are not supposed to be nice, at least not all the time.

“In confronting moral evil, Jesus wasn’t nice, kind, gentle, and sweet,’’ Thomas J. Tobin, the bishop of Providence, wrote in his diocesan newspaper column earlier this year. “He lived in a rough and tumble world and He took His message to the streets.’’

Tobin has followed his interpretation of Jesus’ demeanor most devoutly, and he is quickly positioning himself at the national forefront of a renewed debate over the role of Catholic orthodoxy in the public square, most recently in a very personal feud with Representative Patrick Kennedy. As the abortion issue has taken on prominence in the national health care debate, Tobin has insisted Catholics get involved in the rough world of politics - even if it means tangling with prochoice Catholic legislators. And he has led by example.

Since his installation in 2005, he has challenged the Republican governor’s crackdown on illegal immigration, inserted himself into last year’s Republican presidential primary with a rebuke of Rudolph Giuliani on the abortion issue (in which he addressed him familiarly as “Rudy’’ in a commentary), and took on President Obama in a mock interview published in another of his columns (in which he facetiously quotes Obama advancing the rights of foreigners “to kill their children and use abortion as a form of birth control.’’)

His commentary, published regularly in the Rhode Island Catholic, is titled, not surprisingly, “Without a Doubt.’’

[...]

Tobin and Kennedy, a member of one of America’s most prominent Catholic families, have been exchanging fiery words for weeks. But the rhetoric may have reached a climax in Tobin’s most recent column, in which he disputes Kennedy’s contention that disagreeing with church hierarchy makes him no less of a Catholic.

“Well, in fact, Congressman, in a way it does,’’ Tobin wrote. “Your position is unacceptable to the church and scandalous to many of our members. It absolutely diminishes your communion with the church.’’

Some money is taken from your paycheck and goes to the government, who runs a national health care system.