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Two stories: A health care bill [Affordable Health Care for America Act, HR 3962] has passed the House of Representatives, which is supposed to offer some hope for health care reform. And, some people are shocked with an amendment about abortion in the bill which The Center for Reproductive Rights is calling a “stunning assault on women’s health and rights.”
(excerpt from) The San Francisco Chronicle
Democrats win key victory on health care
Carolyn Lochhead / Saturday, November 7, 2009
(11-07) 04:00 PST Washington – — President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi achieved a stupendous – but still incomplete – victory Saturday, winning House passage of the biggest expansion of health care coverage since Medicare’s creation in 1964, in the face of nearly unanimous Republican opposition.
As a matter of policy and politics, the 10-year, $1.05 trillion legislation, which passed 220 to 215 late Saturday night, is among the most complex and difficult Congress has ever considered…
Yet for all its significance, House passage would be but one step along a path to a White House signing ceremony that remains fraught with uncertainty. Senate action has stalled, and if it restarts, a long debate could widen already deep differences between the two chambers over new taxes and mandates on individuals to buy coverage and employers to offer it.
The House bill promises to expand coverage to 96 percent of Americans, but many key provisions, including a new insurance exchange where those without insurance could choose between a government option or private plans, would not take effect until 2013, after next year’s midterm elections and after the 2012 presidential election.
In the interim, those denied insurance due to pre-existing conditions would have access to a government-subsidized high-risk pool. A potentially unpopular requirement that individuals buy insurance would also not begin until 2013..
(excerpt from) The NY Times
The Abortion Debate Flares Again
By Kate Phillips / November 7, 2009, 8:46 pm
Updated: The House voted 240 to 194 in favor of a restrictive abortion amendment that signaled a shift in the political center on abortion rights. Opponents of the measure — including many Democratic female lawmakers — called it the most regressive provision on the issue of reproductive rights since the Henry Hyde amendment.
The Center for Reproductive Rights called it a “stunning assault on women’s health and rights.”…Representative Diana DeGette of Colorado called the amendment a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” that would deny women access to care. Representative Lois Capps of California argued that the underlying bill already prohibited federal financing of abortions. The amendment, she said, “Actually restricts coverage of a legal medical procedure.”
“Not one other medical procedure is singled out for rationing” in the larger bill, she said.
Others contended that this amendment would result in women having to go out and buy insurance that would cover such a procedure, a prospect one lawmaker scoffed at, saying a woman does not plan for an unplanned pregnancy.
Representative Nita Lowey, Democrat of New York, called it “a disappointing distraction” from the main event. Representative Barbara Lee, Democrat of California, said the amendment would take women “one step back” toward the dark days of back-alley abortions…
Filed under: Barack Obama, health, health care, Healthcare, News, politics, US Politics Tagged: | abortion, Affordable Health Care for America Act, congress, health care, HR 3962, pro-choice, pro-life, reproductive rights, Women, women's issues
One step at a time.
Yes. First they step on my vagina. Then, they will step on my neck. People like you will be telling me I should have patience.
-Kimberly
Would you rather not have any reform at all? As it is, it still may not pass the Senate.
Partly because of things like the abortion measures, I have no trust of the Democrats or Republicans in Congress, or of Obama. Citizens like myself cannot even dream up the games they play, the loopholes they leave in.
Also, I don’t even believe in most of the medical profession. I think a lot of what is practiced as medicine is dangerous. I have insurance, but go to two different holistic/outside practitioners I have to pay for myself, anyway. So, I don’t even have that much interest in people pretending that I can get for cheaper or free more of the crap they call medicine.
But, what is really important to me, is that the evil, corrupt, corporate government we have, does not take steps to oppress me. And, with the abortion amendment, and the way it makes rules about insurance covering abortions even more difficult, I have been oppressed.
I would rather the greedy, corporate, over-powerful idiots who have let me down, leave me alone, then pretend to give me something, while kicking me in the teeth – or the vagina, as it were in this case.
I wonder what the new “health care reform” bill has to say about: vasectomy; prostrate cancer screenings and treatment; and other conditions unique to men? Before men like you tell me what I should stand for, maybe someone should try to change your life with their laws, too.
The house has passed a health care bill.
There will be a revolt, one way or another.
Best Regards
PoliticalPen