Complete text of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act by the Senate is now available online. You can download the PDF here.
Video of the presser:
$127 billion reduction in deficit. 94% coverage. Includes an opt-out public option compromise. I’m still unsure of this one. Seems like you could opt yourself right out of any cost savings by diluting the strength of the pool of insured.
One of the most contentions provisions of late has been the Stupak-Pitts Amendment in the house. A pretty good compromise is being offered on this one:
The Senate version would require at least one plan within the health insurance exchange that the bill sets up to offer a plan that covers abortion and one that doesn’t. It would also authorize the Health and Human Services Secretary to audit plans to make certain that abortion isn’t being paid for with federal dollars.
Which begs the question of why men – whether they are religiously banned from marriage or merely popularly elected officials – feel they have the obligation (much less the right) to decide for women what they should and should not do with their bodies.
Someday, I expect a damn good answer…
Don’t hold your breath waiting for an answer.
I’ll agree with Modern who earlier said DMO doesn’t get read enough or enough credit as a great Ohio political blog. I’ve been a fan for a long time. You also have to read the link to Andrew Sullivan. Worth a click over to see the true face of the Catholic Church, if you didn’t already see it in the DC story.
The Republican National Committee’s health insurance plan covers elective abortion – a procedure the party’s own platform calls “a fundamental assault on innocent human life.”
According to several Cigna employees, the insurer offers its customers the opportunity to opt out of abortion coverage – and the RNC did not choose to opt out.
Spokespeeps say they are going to fix it. They were unaware. Blah blah blah. A policy that has been in place since 1991 was not scrutinized before? These are the people who want to win leadership in this country? Sheer incompetence. Maybe the RNC just wanted to offer sensible coverage to it’s employees. Afterall, they were given the chance to opt out of this provision and did not. Hard to call this a simple 18 year oversight.
Give American women the same coverage as your employees Republican Party!
Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy knows that the national Republicans have painted a big target on her back. She knows she’s likely facing a rematch from her ‘08 opponent in which she narrowly won thanks, in part, to a high youth turnout fueled by the presidential election that is unlikely to materialize in ‘10.
And yet, she not only voted for the House health insurance reform bill, but she also voted against the Stupak anti-choice amendment.
If you’ve got some spare change, give Kilroy some coin. If you live in the area and have some spare time, then give Kilroy’s campaign your time.
Kilroy is living proof that you don’t have to wear an uniform to show the courage of your convictions.
This Stupak amendment is going to have to get changed greatly or jettisoned all together. 41 Dems have now signed on to voting against a bill that contains Stupak. Greg Sargent has the letter:
November 7, 2009
The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Speaker
U.S. House of Representatives
H-232 Capitol
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Madam Speaker:
As members of Congress we believe that women should have access to a full range of reproductive health care. Health care reform must not be misused as an opportunity to restrict women’s access to reproductive health services.
The Stupak-Pitts amendment to H.R. 3962, The Affordable Healthcare for America Act, represents an unprecedented and unacceptable restriction on women’s ability to access the full range of reproductive health servicesto which they are lawfully entitled. We will not vote for a conference report that contains language that restricts women’s right to choose any further than current law.
Sincerely,
This shit really works me up. Either there is a Constitutionally protected right of a woman to choose how to manage her own body with respect to pregnancies or there isn’t. This continual chipping away at this right has to stop. This is a big problem for Obama as I know he wants to have a landmark health care bill. Doing so while eroding the civil liberties of women is not going to work. Patting the little wingnuts and blue dogs on the head at some point is going to poison the thing.
Stupak is going to have to go, or Dems have to reconcile it. This is going to be challenging. Expect to hear much more on this in the coming days.
Update 2:54pm
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz is confident that the Stupak Amendment will most likely not be in the final health care bill:
I read this post by Jason Linkins at HuffPo earlier today and meant to post and comment on it. I was reminded of it by ModernEsquire, who links to a previous PB post and – as usual – does a thorough dismantling of his target. in this case, our beloved Bizzy Blogger Tom Blumer.
Modern does as good a job as Linkins in bringing up the DHS report angle. Worth a read:
When militia commanders start calling someone a “fanatic” about abortion, the debate is over, Bizzy!
Why can’t he just admit that he was wrong and the DHS was right? How many security measures were quashed because the politicization of this intelligence summary which, sadly, has been proven deadly accurate?
The takeaway? Now that the DHS report – which raised concerns about home grown terrorism in the form of right-wing extremists – has been proven to be absolutely spot on, will the right admit they were wrong to blow a gasket over it?
In the rear window of the 1993 blue Ford Taurus that he was driving was a red rose, a symbol often used by abortion opponents. On the rear of his car was a Christian fish symbol with the word “Jesus” inside… Dinwiddie said she met Roeder while picketing outside the Kansas City Planned Parenthood clinic in 1996. Roeder walked into the clinic and asked to see the doctor, Robert Crist, she said. “Robert Crist came out and he stared at him for approximately 45 seconds,” she said. “Then he (Roeder) said, ‘I’ve seen you now.’ Then he turned his back and walked away, and they were scared to death. On the way out, he gave me a great big hug and he said, ‘I’ve seen you in the newspaper. I just love what you’re doing.’”
Nothing to see here. Lone gunman. Please move on. Amen.
_ May 31, 2009: Prominent late-term abortion provider George Tiller is shot and killed in a Wichita church where he was serving as an usher. The gunman fled but a city official said a suspect is in custody.
_ April 2007: Authorities say Paul Ross Evans placed a homemade bomb in the parking lot of the Austin Women’s Health Center in Texas. A bomb squad disposes of the device, which contained two pounds of nails. There are no injuries.
_ Oct. 23, 1998: Dr. Barnett Slepian is fatally shot in his home in a suburb of Buffalo, N.Y. Militant abortion opponent James Kopp is convicted of the murder in 2003 and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
_ Jan. 29, 1998: A bomb explodes just outside a Birmingham, Ala., abortion clinic, killing a police officer and wounding several others. Eric Rudolph later pleads guilty to that incident and the deadly bombing at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. He justifies the Alabama bombing in an essay from prison, writing that Jesus would condone “militant action in defense of the innocent.”
_ Jan. 16, 1997: Two bomb blasts an hour apart rock an Atlanta building containing an abortion clinic. Seven people are injured. Rudolph is charged by federal authorities in October 1998.
_ Dec. 30, 1994: John Salvi opens fire with a rifle inside two Boston-area abortion clinics, killing two receptionists and wounding five others. Sentenced to life without parole, he kills himself in prison in 1996.
_ Nov. 8, 1994: Dr. Garson Romalis, who performs abortions in Vancouver, Canada, is shot in the leg while eating breakfast at home.
_ July 29, 1994: Dr. John Bayard Britton and his volunteer escort, James H. Barrett, are slain outside a Pensacola, Fla., abortion clinic. Barrett’s wife, June, is wounded in the attack. Paul J. Hill, 40, a former minister and anti-abortion activist, is later convicted of murder and sentenced to death.
_ Aug. 19, 1993: Dr. George Tiller is shot in the arms as he drives out of parking lot at his Wichita, Kan., clinic. Rachelle “Shelley” Shannon is later convicted and sentenced to 11 years in prison.
_ March 10, 1993: Dr. David Gunn is shot to death outside Pensacola, Fla., clinic, becoming the first U.S. doctor killed during an anti-abortion demonstration. Michael Griffin is convicted and serving a life sentence.
So now the drumbeat from the right is going to be “Hey! This Scott Roeder character is not “Pro-Life”, he’s “A rightwing extremist!”. Hah. Good luck with that political alchemy! It seems unlikely that you can separate the two. The anti-abortion crowd has been pretty firmly affixed to the right-wing for some time now. You don’t use the issue as a political club in your bag of tricks and then just quietly exorcise yourself from it. Nice try, though!
It does beg the question though whether there is a “pro-life’ movement that is distinct from the “anti-abortion” movement. I’m sure those on the right really want to be able to claim there is. To win this argument, though, you’d have to actually BE “pro-life” consistently. You’d oppose the death penalty. You’d oppose war. I doubt such a movement exists in the right. Highly doubt it.
The question of whether or not Scott Roeder is “part of the pro-life” movement is probably one of semantics. Anti-abortionists surely are freaking out and trying to create distance between the killer and themselves. Our boy Bizzy is certainly pushing this angle. The problem here, of course, is that this just won’t wash. Roeder clearly was part of the movement against abortion, whether you label it “pro-life” or “anti-abortion”.
Those who know Roeder told The Kansas City Star that he believed killing abortion doctors was an act of justifiable homicide.
“I know that he believed in justifiable homicide,” said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City abortion opponent who made headlines in 1995 when a federal judge ordered her to stop using a bullhorn within 500 feet of any abortion clinic. “I know he very strongly believed that abortion was murder and that you ought to defend the little ones, both born and unborn.”
Is Regina a part of the “pro-life” crowd or “anti-abortion” crowd. It’s a distinction without a difference. The scary thing is that Roeder sounds like a real homegrown terrorist and his ties to the “anti-abortion pro-life” movement is a very bad thing for them politically. You know it. They know it. Hence the quick “hey this dude is not one of us!” statements.
Of course, this also begs the other long asked question, “What IS The Matter with Kansas?”
PS – Joe C’s comment over at Bizzy’s place is probably precisely where most of the right is privately, if not publicly said or blogged, on the issue:
Tiller’s murder, regardless of who did it, means nothing to me — sort of like when terrorists or drug dealers get killed. I’m not going to feign remorse just to make my views more palatable to the leftists who are responsible more for more innocent deaths than any abortionist.
President Obama recently announced that he plans to change some crappy Bush-era policies allowing doctors and pharmacists to refuse care to female patients who need contraceptives or want to terminate their unwanted pregnancies.
Anti-choice nutjobs are, of course, pissed off. But this time they are taking a new approach. Instead of their normal accusations that The President supports killing babies, they are accusing him of giving women breast cancer. Seriously.
According to Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer (and noted wingnut):
Basic medical texts acknowledge that women can help prevent breast cancer by having more children, starting at a younger age, and breastfeeding them longer. The woman who chooses not to have a baby (i.e. abortion), therefore, has a higher breast cancer risk than the one who has a baby. Additionally, the World Health Organization classified combined (estrogen + progestin) hormonal contraceptives as Group 1 carcinogens in 2006. Why aren’t women being told**?
Instead, the government is physically abusing women through its determined pursuit of an antiquated population control policy. The Obama Administration is sacrificing scientific integrity and women’s health in order to pursue an ideological agenda.
A half-century of research shows that abortion further increases risk by leaving the mother’s breasts with more places for cancers to start.
I suggest Karen spend ten minutes talking to a group of sexually active teenage girls. I have a feeling she would … uh… you know… like… totally change her mind.
Tony Perkins, the christofascist, homophobic asshat who runs the Family Research Council, is thoroughly fucking confused as usual. And he isn’t the least bit embarrassed to share his confusion with the rest if us.
In his God-as-Santa-Claus fantasy, there is a God with a big, white beard who personally tracks the actions and thoughts of every person in the world. When those people do what God wants, they are rewarded. When they don’t, they are punished.
While the economy clearly is at the forefront of voter priorities, conservative Christians also draw a connection between traditional social issues like abortion and gay marriage and the economy, said Tony Perkins, president of the Washington-based Family Research Council.
“As there’s a breakdown in the family and the family weakens, it’s only logical it will hit Wall Street,” Perkins said.
I have a pretty simple way of testing his theory…
Let’s do a quick survey:
1. Do you support abortion rights?
2. How much value has your 401K lost in the past year?
If Tony is right, then people who support abortion rights should have lost tons of cash while those good, anti-choice Christians can expect divine intervention to protect their investments.
I have a feeling the numbers are going to be pretty close.
UPDATE:
I just thought of something else… we might have to add another question:
1.5: do you have a 401K?
a. Yes.
b. No. I don’t need to save for retirement because the Rapture is coming.
So the McCain/Palin camp announced that Sarah Palin will FINALLY sit for an interview on Thursday.
I would like to suggest a few choice questions she should be asked…
Ms. Palin…
Modern screening processes for genetic disorders like down sydrome are safe and effective and available to most women who are at risk.
Because abortion is currently legal and safe, 90% of pregnant women who receive a down syndrome diagnosis choose to have an abortion.
This has led to a large drop in the number of children born with down syndrome are each year- down to around 5,500.
Once you outlaw abortion this number will grow ten fold.
Are you planning to increase federal funding by at least 1000% to help families and institutions deal with the large increase in the number of mentally disabled individuals who will, in many cases, require support for their entire life?
This story of Bristol Palin being pregnant and the Palin camp trying to cover it up was the first thing I heard in relation to Palin and her daughter. Then the rumors that Sarah lied about giving birth to her son, and was instead covering for Bristol having done so.
Who knows what will come of the Trig Palin story. It certainly is more plausible that Sarah gave birth to him – as Downs Syndrome is more likely in older mothers giving birth. What still does not make sense is the lack of real evidence that Sarah was pregnant. Bristol’s absence from school for “mono” is also still a mystery.
My guess is the rumors were intended to flush out the true story of an abstinence only wingnut woman having a teenage pregnant daughter. Appears to have worked.
Now the McCain/Palin camp will have to admit that abstinence-only education does NOT work. It failed the Palin’s miserably. But that’s not all. They’ll also have to explain these “pro-choice” comments:
We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents
So it’s a “decision” to make. A “choice”. If there was no choice to make between giving birth at age 17 and terminating the pregnancy, there would be no reason to congratulate someone on a decision. There simply would be no decision to make. The Palin’s are admitting that the choice is indeed with the pregnant woman and NOT with the government or others who may disagree with a woman ever terminating a pregnancy.
If you think Bristol made this decision on her own without the intense pressure of not only parents, but the entire right-wing Republican ideology, you are either crazy or not paying attention. The kid was under enormous pressure and does not have the support of parents who really care about her self interests. In fact, so power hungry is her mother that she once even went so far as to suggest that if Bristol were RAPED, she would not support her decision to terminate THAT pregnancy.
It’s sick.
That’s not the entire story either. In their press release, they indicate there will be a teen wedding. Thus completing the fantasy that is family in right wing Amurica. There is absolutely no wonder that half of all marriages end up failed. This one is set up to do precisely that.
So this Palin daughter pregnancy is as good as the rumor if not better. It accentuates the weakness that is the family values argument from the right and puts an end to extremist right wing thought related to a woman’s right to choose to terminate or carry a pregnancy to term.
When the left argues that we should limit both unwanted pregnancies and abortions through complete sex education and good parenting and the right argues we should close our eyes and plug our ears then force children to give birth to babies, the distinction between the two sets of ideas couldn’t be more stark.
