Blue Dogs Hold Insurance Subsidies Hostage Because Money Saved Might Be Used for Abortions.
By Susie Madrak Tuesday Sep 29, 2009 9:00am
These are Democrats, mind you. And the thing is, I don't even believe most of these amoral jerks give a damn about abortion. They're just playing to their audience, and it provides protective cover for their real agenda: Stop the public option at any cost.
And of course this means that women on Medicaid who already have abortion coverage would lose it. Our women's-rights president's bold stand?
"‘Look, try to get this thing worked out among the Democrats. We want you to work it out within the party,’ ” Mr. Stupak said, adding that Mr. Obama did not say whether he supported the segregated-money provision or a more sweeping restriction. “We got his attention, which we never had before.”
Isn't that nice. In a country founded on religious freedom, apparently some religions are much more equal than others:
WASHINGTON — As if it were not complicated enough, the debate over health care in Congress is becoming a battlefield in the fight over abortion.
Abortion opponents in both the House and the Senate are seeking to block the millions of middle- and lower-income people who might receive federal insurance subsidies to help them buy health coverage from using the money on plans that cover abortion. And the abortion opponents are getting enough support from moderate Democrats that both sides say the outcome is too close to call. Opponents of abortion cite as precedent a 30-year-old ban on the use of taxpayer money to pay for elective abortions.
Yes, God forbid that an unemployed couple who are struggling to get on their financial feet have abortion as an option. It makes a lot more sense to send them (and their offspring) further down the financial hole, don't you think?
Abortion-rights supporters say such a restriction would all but eliminate from the marketplace private plans that cover the procedure, pushing women who have such coverage to give it up. Nearly half of those with employer-sponsored health plans now have policies that cover abortion, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The question looms as a test of President Obama’s campaign pledge to support abortion rights but seek middle ground with those who do not. Mr. Obama has promised for months that the health care overhaul would not provide federal money to pay for elective abortions, but White House officials have declined to spell out what he means.
Democratic Congressional leaders say the latest House and Senate health care bills preserve the spirit of the current ban on federal abortion financing by requiring insurers to segregate their public subsidies into separate accounts from individual premiums and co-payments. Insurers could use money only from private sources to pay for abortions.
But opponents say that is not good enough, because only a line on an insurers’ accounting ledger would divide the federal money from the payments for abortions. The subsidies would still help people afford health coverage that included abortion.
You know what I see as the real issue? When we give high-quality, subsidized insurance to allegedly "pro-life" politicians, why, that means they have that much more cash to spend on their girlfriends' abortions (not to mention hookers of either gender), and that can't be allowed to stand.
The solution is obvious. Just to make sure we're not subsidizing immoral behavior, we need to stop paying for their health insurance. In fact, maybe we should cut their salaries so they're not led into temptation.
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Is there any wedge the health care industry and their whores won't use?
Next up: sex change operations.
They will stoop to the lowest possible level, and here I keep thinking that we already did that!
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/09/29/public-pl...
Senate Finance Committee votes 15-8 against Rockefeller amendment on public option.
- There should be no funding for AIDS and AIDS-related diseases, since that stems from immoral behavior.
- There should be no pre-natal care for unwed mothers, since that stems from immoral behavior.
- There should be no funding for STDs, neither education nor prevention, since that's a consequence of immoral behavior.
- There should be no funding for alcoholism-related illness, since that stems from immoral behavior.
But Mark Sanford should remain Governor of South Carolina, because fucking another woman outside of marriage is an opportunity to show character and moral fiber. What a bunch of hypocrites.
I wish I wrote this!
nice comment Shadowgm
Forget about treatment for STDs; forget about pre-natal care for the unmarried.
Stone 'em all! (except for King David)
... there's a shortage of rocks. Seems some Christian fundamentalists decided they'd make a great substitute for brains.
(That, and maybe it's a bit of insurance against the zombie apocalypse, because zombies don't eat rocks.)
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_lshBNsKGpbA/SPEgA_m6fmI...
And zombies don't eat brains either
That's more like ghouls:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrKKTpfU6_k&fe...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIaORknS1Dk
You choose to smoke -- you die...
wait -- that just may get rid of that TN rep...
You're going to have a fan club here.
Send this comment to your congresspersons.
He doesn't think of it as fucking a woman in Argentina ... he thinks of it as off-shore drilling. ;-) And you know how keen those Republicans are for off-shore drilling!
Screw them and their wedge issues. Regardless of ones personal feelings about abortion the fact remains that abortion is a LEGAL procedure in this country. For example, if a doctor determines that an abortion is necessary to save a mother's life, denying the woman's right to an abortion is against the law as well as discrimation because you are singling out a medical procedure
What these jagoffs seem to have trouble understanding is that Abortion is still legal in this country. You wouldn't know it from the discourse going on, but the fact remains that Abortion is legal. It is a personal choice. There are the occasional coercive abortions and the hypocritical protesters going in for their own abortions on the d/l, but for the most part the women who get the abortions are the women who don't feel that there is anything morally wrong with abortion. Women who feel that abortion is morally wrong are totally free not to have them. But abortions will not go away no matter how many people want to shake their heads and murmur about what a "shame" it is. Making abortions illegal, or impossible to get, will only increase health costs for everyone because the women who desperately do not want to be pregnant will turn to unsafe means of terminating a pregnancy. They will still "kill their babies," they're just likely to die themselves.
Assholes. Too busy feeling smug and superior to take a second to rub two brain cells together.
But it's quite common. I don't know that many people who've had open-heart surgery but about 1/4 of all the women I know have had abortions. It will never be rare. Abortion has never been rare. And it never will be because abortion is a necessary part of healthcare for women. It won't be rare ever because unwanted pregnancies aren't rare, because health complications from pregnancy aren't rare, and because horrific birth defects and congenital aren't as rare as we might want to imagine.
Just another way to sabotage health
insurancecare reform.also insisting that no federal money be used to finance filling Viagra prescriptions?
OOH! YA!!
So denying funding for a LEGAL procedure makes zero sense.....
The true agenda of the anti Choice crowd is to push their repellant Christian cult on everyone else...
A medical abortion costs a lot less than the alternatives (childbirth or the complications from a back-alley abortion). I think somebody should actually take these people seriously for a change, propose that anybody who wants a plan that does not cover abortion should have the opportunity to get the government to pay extra money to cover their non-abortion plan. There should only be a small copay for the privilege of having overpriced non-abortion insurance. See how many people vote for that, and if it passes, how many people sign up. It wouldn't be 0, but at least we'd be living in reality.
I'm a vegetarian. Yet I wouldn't in a million years propose that insurance not pay for the meat in the hospital food. Because it would just be an extra bureaucratic cost to keep track and charge people separately for that, and so it would end up costing me more in the long run.
Do blue dawgs play with blue balls?
.
Q U E S T I O N:
If abortion is murder...
... Then why don't these Christianists insist on arresting the mothers?
Sure, we all know how they enjoy a good abortion doctor murder as retribution...
... But why let the mothers, the deciders, go free?
.
Because if they charge they're prostitutes?
then we'll talk. Until then, fuck 'em.
This is how you make abortion legally illegal.
I think someone should do some research into how many of these fools have close relatives, even daughters or sons, who have, at any time in their lives...had abortions or were instrumental in arranging or paying for an abortion.
There's not a snowball's chance in hell that some of these people have had to face the music when it came to such an event...and climbing on their high horses like this is hypocritical.
perhaps they should pass a law that makes women wear clothing that covers their entire bodies (figures and faces) and not allow girls to go to schools.
already tried that. Didn't work so well for them, did it?
Hmmm...didn't someone named L&P say before the summer that abortion was going to bog down healthcare reform?
Just askin.
They can stop government funding for abortion when they stop the out-of-control funding for the military, end the war on drugs and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and stop the asinine sabre-rattling on Iran.
I could list more government policies that I find morally reprehensible, but we'd be here for days if I did.
Abortion is legal, and since it is, I have the right to it if I so choose. You see there is no person pointing a gun at my head telling me to get an abortion or to not get one. I have the choice -- I have the power. These people want to take away that power. It's always about power politics with these loons, isn't it?
And for the record, no one is pro-abortion. That's a bloody misnomer there.
Edit: Like others, the reason why abortion is brought up is to derail healthcare legislation. But, do you think there might be a motive even more nefarious than derailing health(insurance)care reform? Single mothers suffer the most from unplanned pregnancies, and women of color even more based on statistics. It hinders social mobility, education, income, and a host of other things. And, generally, the children born have the most difficulties in these same areas as well. Forcing low-income and middle-class women to carry to term, by not allowing them financial aid for abortions, would be a way to keep entire generations of women and children in a cycle of poverty and powerlessness. I'm just thinking out loud on this, and I am sure this is not the case. But, still...
Lying sack DINOs
like susie mentions, i think this has almost nothing to do with abortion. it is yet another obstacle the corpora-dems are throwing up to block reform of an industry that has paid them off.
"These are Democrats, mind you." they sure are. and we shouldn't forget that in '10.
Any suggestions for who we call to put pressure on this issue? The White House?
*
Holding up health care reform over the issue of federal funding for abortion is wrong.
Starting a C& L post with a FOX news clip offered to support the author's premise is a clue the post itself is not good either.
They cling to their antichoice and progun stances. If only there was a way to pit them agianst each other, like giving away a free shotgun with every abortion.
throw out the Blue Dogs, other right wing Dems and Rethugs in 2010 and get REAL reform in 2011??
which has the added benefit of making me immune to threats of waterboarding.
Why does it matter whether or not it pays for abortions? These anti-choice thugs in Congress and on the street need to realize that a woman may not be emotionally ready to have a baby, or can't afford to keep it. An abortion is a better alternative than giving a kid a miserable life in the inner cities because after it's born, an overwhelming percent of Republicans don't give a damn about it's life after birth.
love the fetus
hateabandon the childhow many bills or legislation do you remember them attempting to pass to limit or make abortion illegal? NONE
Abortion (Roe vs Wade) is still legal even though GOP had control of the White House, Congress and a conservative Supreme Court. Anti-choice people who solely vote for Republicans because of abortion are being used because the GOP leadership has no intention of making abortion illegal. Wedge issues are the glue that keeps the majority of the GOP in lock step.
about the fact that the insurance premiums they are paying now DO help pay for abortions?
And all the dems that vote republican! I know the people in there states are stupid enough to vote republican so what can you do about it! Can you say gitmo girls and boys? They don't think waterboarding is torture so they would love it. Besides we let them waste the money for it already, we might as well put it to good use.
republicanism is a mental illness! so we don't have to worry about their mental state. Sounds like a win win situation to me!
how much does an abortion cost these days?
30 years ago, mine was about $200...
i'm guessing the cost is outlandish now...
Living as I do in the midst of the most ignorant conserva-fundie cesspool in the nation, I'm still shocked at how they violently oppose anything related to abortion, yet instantly jump to the idea of forced sterilization anytime the issue of poor people having babies comes up.
I'm not joking. Forced sterilization for the 'unfit'. That's their solution to all our problems.
if I want an abortion, I'll use a coathanger or die!
If these people succeed in banning abortion funding, then doctors will simply call the procedure something else. Dilation and curettage (D&C)is one term that comes to mind. Or they might call it removal of uterine cysts. Another possibility: do the procedure and claim it was necessary to save the life of the mother.
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