As chairman of the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations, Bart Stupak held hearings last June on the practice of recissions, whereby health insurance companies cancel your coverage once they realize that you are sick. The hearings also covered the practice of putting lifetime caps on coverage in the fineprint of insurance policies, whereby a sick person can simply exhaust their coverage if their care is expensive enough. He knows well how badly our health care system needs reform. In fact, he’s been a leader on the issue during his career in Congress:
Stupak has never signed up for federal health benefits because he promised voters in 1992 that he wouldn’t until universal healthcare was enacted.
He also said was denied coverage for a pre-existing injury when he got his insurance from the Michigan Legislature: “I can identify with those people who have been before my committee.”
Despite this, he is opposing the passage of the only health care reform effort he’s likely to see in his time in Congress because he claims to think that the bill will help fund abortions. This is the opposite of the truth. The truth is that the current health care bill is a serious threat to abortion coverage in insurance plans not only in the newly created exchanges but in general. Why?
A report from George Washington University explains:
Taken together, the provisions of the [Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE)] amendment can be expected to have a significant impact on the ability or willingness of insurance issuers to offer Exchange products that cover a full range of medically indicated abortions. Furthermore, as with insurance laws generally, and for the reasons stated in our earlier analysis [ed. note: of the Stupak/Pitts amendment], the amendment could be anticipated to have considerable spillover effects. This is because companies that issue insurance products (or administered products in the case of sales to self-insured plans) obviously desire to sell these products in as many markets as possible. If one purchaser market places significant restrictions on one or more aspects of product design, it is likely that sellers will attempt to design their products to a common denominator, so that the product can be sold across all markets in which the company desires to do business. This is particularly true with modern health insurance coverage products, where the concern is not only the coverage but the provider network through which coverage will be obtained. Negotiating the elements of such a product is extremely difficult, and it is just as difficult to have to explain to providers that some of their patients will be insured for certain medical procedures while others will not.
Under the Nelson abortion provision, individuals who choose a health plan that includes abortion care are required to write two separate premium checks from their private bank accounts, one for abortion care and one for everything else.
Under the Senate bill, states are not obligated to offer plans that provide abortion coverage, and if they do offer such plans, they have to set up a complicated system of segregation overseen by their insurance commissioner. The risk is that insurers will simply avoid offering such plans because of the administrative headache. And, if they don’t offer abortion coverage on the exchange, they may not offer it in the employer-based plans either.
There is a further risk. If abortion coverage is dropped from most or all insurance plans, it has the potential to further limit the number of clinics that offer the procedure, thereby exacerbating an already growing problem of lack of access. Rather than Roe v. Wade being overturned, it may wither on the vine because so few people offer to perform abortions.
Now, a typical first trimester abortion costs about $300-$600 dollars, which is about the price of a health insurance premium payment for one month for most families. Anyone who is so cash-strapped that they might not get a wanted or needed abortion because of the cost is actually going to be in a better financial condition after health care reform is passed than they are now. People living at the poverty line will only have to pay 2% of their income for insurance premiums. The poverty line for a family of five is $25,000, so that family would pay slightly less than $600 a year for insurance under the new law. And, once insured, they would save a lot of money on prescriptions and doctor’s visits, making them healthier, more productive, and stronger financially. It’s not that people will be priced out of abortions if they can’t get insurance coverage that is a great concern, but, again, that it could result in diminished access.
Add to this that the two-check requirement creates a stigma because the decision to purchase separate abortion coverage will be known to employers and husbands alike, and you can see that the Nelson language is very damaging to women’s reproductive freedom and choices. You’d think that that would be enough to satisfy Bart Stupak, but it isn’t. Responding to a letter supporting the health care bill from “60 leaders of religious orders representing 59,000 Catholic nuns,”, Stupak said:
“When I’m drafting right to life language, I don’t call up the nuns.” He says he instead confers with other groups including “leading bishops, Focus on the Family, and The National Right to Life Committee.”
Focus on the Family? That’s James Dobson’s outfit. They’re a Republican front-group and a freak show. It’s galling to have to balance the aforementioned risks to women’s reproductive choice, not to mention the indignity of enshrining the Hyde Amendment into permanent law, against the provision of insurance to 30 million Americans and the end of insurance industry abuses. But to have Stupak oppose the bill because it isn’t anti-choice enough? That’s warrants a primary challenge. Stupak says the uproar over his actions has been a ‘living hell’ for him. I think he deserves that. I think he deserves worse. And, I know that the House of Representatives is anti-choice and we have to deal with that fact, but the Democrats need to keep a very close eye on downfield effects of this health care reform to make sure that it doesn’t do harm to women’s reproductive health.
I hope his primary opponent, Connie Saltonstall, makes a commercial out of Stupak’s comments about the nuns. I have to imagine those comments won’t go over well, even in his district.
“When I’m drafting right to life language, I don’t call up the nuns.”
Shocking, a pro-lifer who doesn’t respect the opinion of women.
I don’t call the nuns, I call James Dobson. WTF?
What would women know about birth, womens’ health, and such? Only child molesters know about sexual matters because they’re real men.
I hope Saltonstall wins her primary. Apparently she faces some challenges due to where she lives in her district – south of the bridge to the upper peninsula, in a town known for yuppie transplants – as well as Stupak’s general popularity.
Saltonstall should get enough national support to make a real race of it. If she’s a good candidate and can handle the retail politicking, she deserves to have a shot after the mess Stupak has made. And it helps that he keeps shooting himself in the foot.
People tell me that the district is anti-choice, and it probably is. But I don’t know that that holds true among just the Democrats in the district. But, if I were challenging Stupak, I wouldn’t focus on the fact that he’s anti-choice; I’d focus on how extreme he is about it and his touting nutcases like James Dobson and living with serial adulteries from The Family.
But are they that rabidly anti-choice that they’d want the HCR bill killed over it?
You know, the Democratic Party is the Catholic Party. I believe a majority of Democrats in Congress are Catholic. Protestants are comparatively rare, unlike in the Republican Party where they predominate. So, obviously, there isn’t some monolithic attitude about abortion rights among Catholics. Stupak’s district is heavily Catholic, and obviously the protestants there are on the conservative side. It’s a real hard-scrabble working class sprawling district. You don’t win points there for being a liberal. But they aren’t crazy. When a lot of Catholic organizations are arguing for passing health care, there is room to paint Stupak as an extremist. Especially if you add in his associations with other extremists from the other party.
Actually, not quite. I looked it up at Pew, and while Catholic representation is significantly greater among Democrats than Republicans, it’s not a majority by any means:
Those percentages include both representatives and senators.
In the House alone, Democrats have 111 Protestant, 98 Catholic and 31 Jewish members. Republicans have 128 Protestants, 37 Catholic and 1(!) Jewish representatives.
http://pewforum.org/Government/Faith-on-the-Hill-The-Religious-Affiliations-of-Members-of-Congress.a
spx
What a terrible shame that assholes like Stupak make it necessary for this to even be an issue again. I’m so damn sick of crazies in high places.
I stand corrected.
And you do know who the one Jewish Republican is, right? Eric Cantor!!
Heh. Nope, I had no idea. Thanks. 🙂
I think that running against The Family will work better if the rent issue turns into a real ethics complaint, as it should.
Given that this is Michigan, I’m also guessing that what labor decides to do will be crucial. They’ve been great about primarying other anti-HCR incumbents, but Stupak’s been their friend in the past. Interesting situation.
i find it so depressingly ironic that the Democrats, who in their party platform state unequivocally “The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right”, are passing even more restrictive language that (despite their protests to the contrary) goes further than Hyde.
Also: “We will end health insurance discrimination against contraception” and “We will never put ideology above women’s health”
(source: THE 2008 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL PLATFORM.
You know what i call people that say one thing and do another? Hypocrites and liars.
but hey, hope and change we can believe in, right? unless you have a vagina.
Unless you have a vagina or know someone who does, because this is an issue of civil rights.
“civil rights”?
what are those?
those were thrown out by the Bush administration, and what little remained were thrown out by the democrats.
yeah good luck with those “civil rights”, whatever those are.
It makes me wonder why Ben Nelson is a Democrat and supported by DNC/DSCC money. If only we could cut him off and leave him to rot.
Ironically, it was Ben Nelson who saved HCR. Remember, the House is anti-choice and the Senate is pro-choice. The House passed Stupak, which was just ridiculous and wasn’t going to fly in the Senate at all. Unless Nelson and Casey came up with some compromise, health care reform was dead. What they came up with is shitty and dangerous, but it is enough to get the House to go along. It’s the price of not electing enough pro-choice members.