Abortion Deal Breaker

Some pundits are already saying that the ONLY reason the Health Care Bill squeaked through the House on Saturday was because there was language that prevented abortion in the piece of paper.

Well, that's not the only reason it passed. There were a lot of dollars, Nancy's Pride, and a toilet plunger working in unison to make it happen, but I'd rather not dredge in that crap any longer.

What I noticed this morning in the New York Times Editorial was this:

The Ban on Abortion Coverage
The House health care reform bill passed with a steep price. The Senate should work to preserve a woman’s right to abortion services.

See, now this is why the "Left" doesn't get it. The headline alone is misleading. The second sentence is a slippery slope argument. The reality of it is, I don't want to pay for your abortion. I don't want to pay for your angioplasty either, fatass, but that's Social medicine for you. But for some folks believe that terminating a baby in the womb is murder - if you do it with State or Federal dollars - that's State sanctioned murder. In other words, that person who believes it is murder objects to paying to kill a baby. For some reason they don't like that. (We'll discount the irony of these same people not fussing about funding of the Military and prisoner executions with their tax dollars for the sake of this discussion, because it's been my experience that these same people dismiss this discussion as well.)

But back to the editorial:

Under pressure from anti-abortion Democrats and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, lawmakers added language that would prevent millions of Americans from buying insurance that covers abortions — even if they use their own money.

The restrictions would fall on women eligible to buy coverage on new health insurance exchanges. They are a sharp departure from current practice, an infringement of a woman’s right to get a legal medical procedure and an unjustified intrusion by Congress into decisions best made by patients and doctors.

What? You sound kind of Libertarian right there... you're actually agreeing with me? Except, I think that of this entire discussion - not limited to just the abortion debate. Let's go on.

The anti-abortion Democrats behind this coup insisted that they were simply adhering to the so-called Hyde Amendment, which bans the use of federal dollars to pay for almost all abortions in a number of government programs. In fact, they reached far beyond Hyde and made it largely impossible to use a policyholder’s own dollars to pay for abortion coverage.

So, you can't buy insurance to pay for your abortion, but you could pay out of pocket for the entire procedure? Or, you could [in insurance speak], buy a rider to supplement your coverage. Yeah, now see - it's kind of funny how the paper FINALLY sees my argument for why we shouldn't have Federal Health (Insurance) Reform in the first place!

Is it not just a tad hypocritical that many of the same Representatives who voted for this amendment have objected to health care reform on the grounds that it "puts legislators between patients and their doctors!?"

Sigh

But I'm under the newer impression - that it's how we pay for medical services should be reformed. Single payers -- meaning you and I and everyone else is the consumer and we pay as if we were at the grocery store. Why would you expect your car insurance to pay for your tune up or oil change? You pay for those in addition to the insurance that pays for catastrophic damage.

As I understand the abortion clause in the bill that passed the house, isn't that all they're asking the women (and men) who decide, nay, Chose, to have an abortion procedure? No one is stopping you from having all the abortions you want. Go nuts. Just Not On My Dime - is all that has been said.

How Libertarian...

I told you no one would be happy. The Democrat base was thrown under the bus by Pelosi just to 'get 'er done' and the Republicans - well, all but one - are completely out of it.