FixHealthCarePolicy

A Piecrust Promise from Pelosi and Reid?

A piecrust promise is one that is easily made and easily broken. The promise – more a rumor than anything else – that the U.S. Senate will use the reconciliation process to adopt a strong ban on abortion funding if the House passes the Senate-approved bill is flakier than most. Never before in the history of the 34-year abortion funding debate have pro-life members of Congress approved a bill containing abortion funding on the promise that a subsequent vote will fix the problem.

The scenario being discussed in the media requires some explanation. The House-passed version of health care reform includes the blanket provision known as Stupak-Pitts. (more…)

Tags: Hyde amendment, reconciliation, senate health care bill, Stupak-Pitts provision, taxpayer funded abortion

New But Unimproved: Abortion Funding in the White House Health Plan

The President promised that under health reform taxpayers would not be forced to fund abortion. Not true.

The new health care outline posted by the White House this morning appears to aggravate concerns about a new abortion funding scheme that is not covered by any limitation, including the traditional Hyde amendment governing annual appropriations to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Stupak-Pitts amendment adopted by the House of Representative last November in its version of health reform. Instead, the White House plan would invest $11 billion in an expansion of Community Health Centers, others known as Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), with no limitation at all.

This $11 billion price tag is $2.5 billion higher than called for by the Senate bill approved on Christmas Eve. That legislation provided for $7 billion in fresh appropriations for operating funds and another $1.5 billion in spending for construction of FQHCs (both sums over five years). Because this money would be directly appropriated if the Senate bill is adopted and signed into law, it does not need to be included in the annual Labor-Health and Human Services spending bill. As a result, the Hyde Amendment abortion funding limit would not apply to these FQHC funds. Nor would the comprehensive Stupak-Pitts funding limit, unless the House-passed language of that amendment is specifically included in the Senate bill updated by today’s White House proposal. (more…)

Tags: ObamaCare, President's proposal, taxpayer funded abortion

The Few Standing Between Current Law and Tax Payer Funded Abortion

In a Christmas Eve vote, the American people watched a U.S. Senator betray his pro-life principles for $100 million. The version of Obamacare that passed the Senate is the one to watch—it changes current law and allows taxpayer dollars to fund plans that cover elective abortions for the first time in years—and with the hair’s-width margin by which it passed, it may well emerge from the negotiations between the House and the Senate. The only thing that stands between Americans and a law forcing them to fund abortion coverage against their conscience, is a small group of House Democrats, who, led by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), dug in their heels for an amendment in the House version upholding current law limiting tax-funded abortions.

On November 9th, President Obama said, “I laid out a very simple principle, which is this is a health care bill, not an abortion bill… And we’re not looking to change what is the principle that has been in place for a very long time, which is federal dollars are not used to subsidize abortions.” (more…)

Tags: ObamaCare, Rep. Bart Stupak, Sen. Ben Nelson, taxpayer funded abortion

Morning Bell: The Six Key Issues the House Must Cave On Before Obamacare Becomes Law

This morning at around 8 AM, the Senate passed, again on a straight party-line vote, Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) manager’s amendment to the Senate’s version of Obamacare. This keeps the Senate on pace to pass the bill at 9 PM on Christmas Eve despite the fact that Americans overwhelmingly opposed the legislation. But even after the Senate gives President Barack Obama his $2.5 trillion Christmas present, the bill, assuming it is to be considered in regular order, still must go through a House and Senate conference.

President Barack Obama attempted to downplay differences between the House and Senate bills telling American Urban Radio Networks yesterday: “The Senate and the House bills are 95 percent identical. There’s five percent differences, and one of those differences is the public option. This is an area that has just become symbolic of a lot of ideological fights. As a practical matter, this is not the most important aspect to this bill.” We’ll let President Obama fight with his base abut how important a strong public option is to health reform, but a government run plan is just one of six key differences between the House and Senate bills:

Soak the Rich or Tax Everybody: The Senate bill relies heavily on a new excise tax on high cost health plans: a 40 percent tax on plan exceeding $8,500 for an individual and $23,000 for a family. The AFL-CIO and SEIU both call this a tax on working families. The Senate bill also includes a new premium tax on all insurers and the CBO confirms that the cost of this tax will be passed on to all Americans with private insurance. The House bill depends on a heavy new income tax targeted at top-earning taxpayers and small businesses. The 5.4 percent tax on individuals with incomes above $500,000, and on families with incomes above $1 million, is structured in a way that over time more and more Americans will be hit by this tax and small business owners would be particularly affected. (more…)

Tags: employer mandates, excise tax, individual mandates, Majority Leader Harry Reid, Medicaid Expansion, ObamaCare, public plan, senate health care bill, taxpayer funded abortion

Get Equipped on What’s at Stake with ObamaCare

After a sneak-through Saturday night vote to make Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s health care bill open for debate, the Senate comes back on Monday to decide how much more involvement the federal government will have over the private health care sector — one-sixth of the nation’s overall economy. With a record-breaking 2,074 pages, there are plenty of provisions in the Senate health care bill that most Americans probably aren’t aware of. Here are some of the highlights that Heritage has noted in the past week:

• The Senate bill breaks President Barack Obama’s promise not to impose new taxes on middle-class Americans.
• The legislation allows feds to micromanage all private health insurance plans.
• The bill creates the health exchange framework that allows for a government-run health plan to overtake the health insurance market. (more…)

Tags: employer mandates, government-run health care, individual mandates, Obama Health Care Plan, taxpayer funded abortion

The Senate Health Bill: Taxpayer Funded Abortions

Last night Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) released the version of health care reform he hopes will be considered on the Senate floor. The new bill devotes eight of its 2,074 pages to policy governing abortion in the structure of state health care exchanges and the public option it creates. Rather than retain the House-passed Stupak-Pitts abortion funding limitation adopted with 240 votes, Reid reverts to a variation on an amendment the House deleted that would both foster coverage of elective abortion and diminish the conscience rights of insurers that do not wish to cover elective abortion.

Nearly two dozen limitations on abortion funding have been enacted, many on an annual basis, for decades. The federal Hyde Amendment governing the Medicaid program has been enacted every year since 1978 as part of annual appropriations for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It permits Medicaid reimbursement to the states only when pregnancy poses a physical risk to the life of the mother and for instances of rape and incest. (more…)

Tags: Obama Health Care Plan, taxpayer funded abortion

House Democrat: Pelosi Plan Raises Taxes And Funds Abortion

Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK) tells the New York Times:

The worst thing we could do in a recession is raise taxes, and this bill does just that. … Finally, I do not believe that the possibility for taxpayer-funded abortion has been clearly and emphatically removed from this legislation.

Boren is dead on. The House bill raises taxes by $700 billion at a time when our unemployment rate is already 10.2%.

And contrary to the President’s promise, the current House bill also enables taxpayer funding for elective abortions.

No wonder Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) refuses to let House Democrats go home and listen to their constituents before voting on her health bill.

Tags: double digit unemployment, Obama Health Care Plan, taxpayer funded abortion