Senate Bill Better, But Still No Pro-Choice Bonanza
Late last night the Senate released its health care reform bill. John Nichols, writing for The Nation, has an excellent summary of how the Senate bill is an improvement over the House bill, which included the dangerous and discriminatory Stupak-Pitts amendment. Still, the Senate bill is far from the overhaul of the Hyde Amendment we’d all hoped for in anticipation of health care reform:
In many respects, Reid’s “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” is a better bill than the House measure.
And it one respect, it is dramatically better.
The Senate plan does not contain the draconian “Stupak” language, which was written into the House bill with the intent of establishing radical new limits on access to reproductive health services.
As part of negotiations to secure passage of the House healthcare reform bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, agreed to a vote on an amendment by Congressman Bart Stupak, D-Michigan, that did not merely forbid a government-run “public option” from covering abortion services. It also barred private insurance plans that might participate in the exchange set up by the new program from doing so.
Republicans in the House aligned with 64 Democrats to attach the radical anti-abortion language to the bill, which was then passed by a narrow 220-215 margin.
Reid rejects the Stupak language.
That does not mean that his measure is a pro-choice bonanza.
It preserves existing limits on public-funding of abortions. But, as part of the exchange set up by the bill, families and individuals who participate in the new program could purchase insurance plans that provide abortion coverage.
“We’re basically going to keep current law, which is what we ought to do,” says Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, a pro-choice Democrat who participated in the session where Reid unveiled the Senate
By Tara Sweeney