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Abortion didn't get much air time during the Sotomayor hearings, but it's become a flashpoint in the fight over Obama's health care legislation. Conservatives are saying that the various bills Congress is considering would increase access to abortion and subsidize the procedure with government funding. Meanwhile, a separate bill with support from both the pro-choice and pro-life sides designed to prevent unwanted pregnancy, with more money for contraception, could get caught in the crossfire. That bill, sponsored by House Democrats Tim Ryan of Ohio (pro-life) and Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut (pro-choice) was trying to stay clear of controversy; it includes no money for the morning-after pill, for example. But conservative groups are now coming out against it.
The Washington Post has a helpful overview. At the American Prospect, Dana Goldstein smartly goes at the conservative claims that health care reform will become a vehicle for government funding of abortion. She correctly points out that Congress barred Medicaid from funding abortion way back in 1976, in passing the Hyde Amendment. And she writes:
Far from cackling as they sneakily lobby for "abortion-on-demand" legislation, women's health advocates are actually rather anxious. In the Senate, anti-choice Republicans say they will oppose any health reform plan that subsidizes abortion coverage or even includes, in the proposed health insurance exchanges, private insurers that cover abortion. Currently, 87 percent of health plans offer some abortion services. That means if Democrats capitulate, the majority of women who currently have abortion coverage could lose it. The result would be a near-blanket restriction on women's access to insurance-subsidized abortion, one far more radical than the Hyde Amendment.
Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty Images.
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Here's what I heard about one proposed health care bill last week: It's "sausage". It's Soylent Green. "Page 16" outlaws my current health plan. Here's what I didn't hear: How it helps anybody who doesn't have health insurance get some. What health care reform needs is a poster child.
Of course, the way of the real poster child is fraught with peril—Hillary Clinton was tripped up by it last time around, and Joe the Plumber didn't do anyone any favors. But health care reform without the faces of our friends and neighbors attached is just so much policy babble. When I hear health care plan, I should think of the friend of a friend working a job that doesn't cover her childcare just to get the insurance while her husband fights cancer, or my talented artist buddy whose freelance work pays her rent and grocery bills, but still works a barista job for the health coverage. This month's PR blitz should bring our focus back to the people we know (like Sarah Wildman), who we know need help.
Photograph of a barista by Stephen Chernin/Getty Images.
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Here's what I heard about one proposed health care bill last week: It's "sausage". It's Soylent Green. "Page 16" outlaws my current health plan. Here's what I didn't hear: How it helps anybody who doesn't have health insurance get some. What health care reform needs is a poster child.
Of course, the way of the real poster child is fraught with peril—Hillary Clinton was tripped up by it last time around, and Joe the Plumber didn't do anyone any favors. But health care reform without the faces of our friends and neighbors attached is just so much policy babble. When I hear health care plan, I should think of the friend of a friend working a job that doesn't cover her childcare just to get the insurance while her husband fights cancer, or my talented artist buddy whose freelance work pays her rent and grocery bills, but still works a barista job for the health coverage. This month's PR blitz should bring our focus back to the people we know (like Sarah Wildman), who we know need help.
Photograph of a barista by Stephen Chernin/Getty Images.
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KJ, the Democrats may not have a poster child for health care reform, but they are getting a public enemy. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Sen. Arlen Specter got shouted down by anti-health care reform protesters at an embarrassing town hall meeting Sunday. (At one point, Sebelius had to threaten to walk off the stage.) But even though they had Sebelius and Specter temporarily tongue-tied, for Democrats, the protesters may end up being exactly what the doctor ordered.
Pundits are already predicting a backlash against the protesters, who have been wreaking havoc at town halls since the House went on recess last week. Even though there's a wave of populist anger at insurance companies and their "pre-existing conditions," the anger that's getting all the attention right now is that of right-wing protesters who think the government is going to encourage old people to die faster. To those who feel deep anxiety at the prospect of the government tampering with their health care, the protesters are heroic, for now. But they're going to become increasingly obnoxious to many who want to engage in a substantive debate about the merits of reform. Debates are hard to have when people are screaming, shouting, and waving Bibles around. The protesters have Democrats on the defensive for now, but if they keep up their antics through August, they're going to find themselves—not the Obama administration—the source of public frustration with reform.
Photograph of protesters at a Texas town hall with Rep. Lloyd Doggett is a still from a video of the event.
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KJ, you asked for health care reform’s poster girls. This week a few have emerged. Our own Sarah Wildman was called to testify on the Hill about her health insurance nightmare during her pregnancy. And Regina Holliday, a Washington neighbor, is featured today in the Washington Post. Her husband died of kidney cancer seven weeks ago on the day the Senate took up health care reform. He couldn’t afford health insurance, so he never got the tests that would have detected the cancer early. She and her two young sons are about to lose their own coverage. Holliday is now painting a 20-foot-high mural of her husband on his deathbed, near a bookstore I pass almost every day.
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There’s a slim hope ventured by some in today’s articles about Senator Kennedy that perhaps his death might somehow help improve the prospects of health care reform by briefly relieving the partisan acrimony and serving as a reminder of the urgency of his signature legislative cause, which is, after all, about people’s lives and deaths. But no one is counting on it. And when you think about it, the ailing Kennedy’s own end-of-life decisions seem like every American’s ideal, hardly an advertisement for overhauling a system that makes such options possible. First, he got to choose the intensive treatment he wanted—surgery, chemo, and radiation—although his tumor was judged inoperable and lethal, and although he was diagnosed at 76. And then he got to die a dignified death, not trapped in a hospital, but saying farewell to family, friends, and dogs on Cape Cod. No one would dream of begrudging him his “good ending,” as the Times called it; it is inspiring. But perhaps the Senator wouldn’t mind if, as we pay tribute to the valiant close to an impressive career, we also note how much his “prudently aggressive” medical approach must have cost, and how unusually lucky he was in the way it played out.
Photograph of Ted Kennedy by Jim Rogash/Getty Images.
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Much about Obama’s health care speech was quite defensive. His voice was brimming with genuine anger when he talked about the “lies” and “misinformation” and “scare tactics” used to denounce his health care plan. “Lies, plain and simple,” he said. (It’s rare for a president to actually use the word “lies” outside a campaign.)
The majority of the speech was proddingly practical, in a dutiful debater kind of way. He did the same thing he’s done in the 28 speeches he’s already given on the subject—go point by point rebutting his critics on the questions of abortion, illegal immigrants, cost. And he comforted the main constituency opposing the plan—Americans already satisfied with their coverage—that nothing in their plan will change.
But then, at the end, came the rousing defense of liberalism I was waiting for. For a speech in which he was trying to forge a consensus this was a brave and risky move. You can say to that vast middle of Americans nervous about their own health insurance plans: “There, there, don’t worry, things will be good for you.” And just stop there. Or you can go one step further and move them to a higher plane, which is what he did:
“When fortune turns against one of us, others are willing to lend a helping hand.
This is the truth about health care reform. Its requires people to think in a communal way and recognize that a minor personal sacrifice will make things better for everyone. Compare this to what Ronald Reagan, then-candidate for governor of California, once said about Medicare:
“If this program passes, one of these years we will tell our children and our children's children what it was like in American when men were free.
Scare tactics never grow old.
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A couple of years ago, my very right-wing stepfather was giving me a ride from the airport, and he told me something I would have never thought he'd outright admit: He'd watched a documentary on TV that referenced a study that showed the inverse relationship between ethnic diversity and social welfare programs. "It seems," he mused, "that those little European nations with high taxes where everyone's on the dole are that way because everyone looks the same."
I didn't know how to respond, since I thought he was smart enough to see that this has personal implications—that he and everyone he knows that are opposed to social welfare spending might be, you know ... racist. But I left that can of worms laying there unopened. I was glad he told me, since it really informed my view of the way the health care debate unfolded. I've been saying since at least the late spring that the right wing would completely lose it if a black president pushed through legislation that is, in their eyes, an attempt to funnel white people's money to racial minorities. A few months ago, this theory tended to be treated like the ravings of a left-wing extremist. But now, you're actually seeing mainstream left publications and even mainstream news stations like CNN outright admit it. The Republican response to health care reform is about tapping racist anger, anger that's usually based in ignorance, too. As Michael Lind documents, it seems that the right wing actually believes America has something like a dole, and that illegal immigrants can get on it.
Then again, the racist tone of the backlash is hard to deny when the 9/12 protesters had signs that said "Robbin' for the Hood" and "Señor Citizens Get Free Health Care/Senior Citizens Can Drop Dead."
Of course, the blatant race-baiting is coming from the Republican side of the aisle. The Democrats are using that level of nuttiness to smuggle in the idea that Americans should consider maintaining corporate profits for insurance companies a higher priority than our own health and well-being. If I die of some treatable but expensive disease, I suppose I should comfort myself by knowing that my death means that the returns for some very happy stockholders will be that much fatter this year. Perhaps that sort of comfort could be the 21st century version of the last rites?
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A couple of years ago, my very right-wing stepfather was giving me a ride from the airport, and he told me something I would have never thought he'd outright admit: He'd watched a documentary on TV that referenced a study that showed the inverse relationship between ethnic diversity and social welfare programs. "It seems," he mused, "that those little European nations with high taxes where everyone's on the dole are that way because everyone looks the same."
I didn't know how to respond, since I thought he was smart enough to see that this has personal implications—that he and everyone he knows that are opposed to social welfare spending might be, you know ... racist. But I left that can of worms laying there unopened. I was glad he told me, since it really informed my view of the way the health care debate unfolded. I've been saying since at least the late spring that the right wing would completely lose it if a black president pushed through legislation that is, in their eyes, an attempt to funnel white people's money to racial minorities. A few months ago, this theory tended to be treated like the ravings of a left-wing extremist. But now, you're actually seeing mainstream left publications and even mainstream news stations like CNN outright admit it. The Republican response to health care reform is about tapping racist anger, anger that's usually based in ignorance, too. As Michael Lind documents, it seems that the right wing actually believes America has something like a dole, and that illegal immigrants can get on it.
Then again, the racist tone of the backlash is hard to deny when the 9/12 protesters had signs that said "Robbin' for the Hood" and "Señor Citizens Get Free Health Care/Senior Citizens Can Drop Dead."
Of course, the blatant race-baiting is coming from the Republican side of the aisle. The Democrats are using that level of nuttiness to smuggle in the idea that Americans should consider maintaining corporate profits for insurance companies a higher priority than our own health and well-being. If I die of some treatable but expensive disease, I suppose I should comfort myself by knowing that my death means that the returns for some very happy stockholders will be that much fatter this year. Perhaps that sort of comfort could be the 21st century version of the last rites?
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One knows all's fair in love and war—unless you toss health care into the mix. Under the prevailing practices of American health insurers, getting punched by a lover makes you a liability. Ryan Grim has the details:
Under the cold logic of the insurance industry, it makes perfect sense: If you are in a marriage with someone who has beaten you in the past, you're more likely to get beaten again than the average person and are therefore more expensive to insure.
In human terms, it's a second punishment for a victim of domestic violence.
In 2006, Democrats tried to end the practice. An amendment introduced by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), now a member of leadership, split the Health Education Labor & Pensions Committee 10-10. The tie meant that the measure failed.
All ten no votes were Republicans, including Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming), a member of the "Gang of Six" on the Finance Committee who are hashing out a bipartisan bill.
It's appalling to see any opposition to this common-sense reform—especially the same week as the 15th anniversary of Joe Biden's Violence Against Women Act.
Here, the sexism is obvious, but it also heralds the fundamental unfairness of restricting individuals based on pre-existing conditions—and a big part of why the reform debate is not solely over a "public option" to hold profiteering companies accountable. President Obama has made it a priority to break down the system of repeatedly denying coverage to Americans, based on both trivialities like acne—as with the woman he mentioned in his Congressional address last week—and deadly serious issues such as domestic violence.
Over at TAPPED, Dana Goldstein also adds a crucial bit of info:
[I]t's important to point out that insurance company discrimination against domestic violence victims applies regardless of whether the woman is still married to or living with the abuser. In other words, women who have successfully left an abusive relationship and turned their lives around continue to be punished for a crime that was committed against them.
Right. I'll hold my breath for the news of men denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, like impotence, that actually have something to do with human physiology.
