Take It Serious – Mika Miko (who broke up a few weeks ago. Drag)
So health care passed the House. On one hand, this is an absolutely historic occasion. Health care reform has never (literally never) gotten this far along the path toward enactment. And while the House obviously functions with a lot less roadblocks (see my complaints about out Madisonian veto-ridden system elsewhere), it’s still not exactly a cakewalk.
My thoughts:
First, I completely agree with the litany of folks who have argued that the final margin (220-215) makes it look a lot closer than it might actually be. Pelosi is pretty good at this sort of thing and presumably was not going to force the folks in the middle to come down on the ‘yea’ side and be forced to support the more ‘liberal’ bill. I’d wager that a fair number of the Democrats who fell on the other side of this vote will end up voting yes on the more watered down bill that comes out of conference when it all comes down. They may not want to get tarred with x, y, or z provision if it’s just going to get stripped out later but I think they also may want to be on the right side of history.
Second, now we get to see what the world’s greatest deliberative body can do with this. The idea that the fate of literally millions of people rests in the gnarly hands of people like Lieberman and Ben Nelson is pretty depressing. But what are you going to do, eh?
Third, the Stupak amendment. This is one of the more infuriating elements of the whole health care process so far. Bear in mind that the bill was ALREADY loaded up with a ‘compromise’ position on abortion which mirrors the Medicaid one. Which means that even if it had passed without this amendment, it would have been pretty crappy as far as reproductive rights go. Now, the version with this amendment will not merely fail to expand coverage it will actually DECREASE it by preventing any private insurance firms who offer coverage to those who are subsidized from covering abortion. It’s just horrible.
Of course, as is always the case with abortion, it’s important to remember that the single biggest driver of public policy on this subject is the idea that POOR people don’t deserve reproductive rights. It’s the invetiable ‘compromise’ position between one side trying to ban abortion and another side who wants rich white folks to have safe and easy access but doesn’t care much about anyone else. As Ezra Klein points out, even while this amendment reduces abortion access for those who are relatively poor and need subsidies, it does absolutely nothing to the massive subsidy for employer-provided coverage:
That money, however, subsidizes the insurance of 157 million Americans, many of them quite affluent. Imagine if Stupak had attempted to expand his amendment to their coverage. It would, after all, have been the same principle: Federal policy should not subsidize insurance that offers abortion coverage. But it would have failed in an instant. That group is too large, and too affluent, and too politically powerful for Congress to dare to touch their access to reproductive services.
I know I spend a lot of time cautioning people against drawing lines in the sand. Even if no public option is included, I say, it’s still a very good bill overall and worth supporting. And I still think that’s true in this case.
But it makes me feel oily to even think about it. I didn’t expect health care to also take on the utter injustice of the Hyde Amendment – that’s a battle for another day – but the idea that it’s going to accentuate the imbalance in reproductive health coverage is really offensive.
There’s a part of me that thinks some enterprising Senator on the left should actually propose an amendment to do precisely what Klein says above: remove the tax exxemption for employer-provided coverage that pays for abortions. Just to see how people will vote.
As for William Saletan: surprise, surprise, he’s saying that Democrats need to be willing to sell out reproductive rights:
There’s something poignant about the last-minute outrage of the pro-choice groups. The complaints they’re leveling—that people had more choices in the private market, that the House bill radically upsets this market, and that it violates Obama’s promise not to deprive anyone of their existing coverage—are hardly novel. Republicans have issued such warnings all year. But liberals didn’t pay attention until the coverage in jeopardy was abortion.
There’s an intuitive appeal to that argument. But it fades when you ask yourself what precisely this bill was going to force on people that is remotely equivalent to being forced by the state to carry a fetus inside their body for nine months, suffering the accompanying health complications, and then having to pass the baby out of their uterus. Oh, and costing their insurance company a LOT more than it would have cost to have an abortion in the process.
Apart from that, the situations are pretty similar I guess.