Industry-wide impact that will shift the standard of coverage for medically indicated abortions for all women: In view of how the health benefit services industry operates and how insurance product design responds to broad regulatory intervention aimed at reshaping product content, we conclude that the treatment exclusions under the Stupak/Pitts Amendment will have an industry-wide effect, eliminating coverage of medically indicated abortions over time for all women, not only those whose coverage is derived through a health insurance exchange. As a result, Stupak/Pitts can be expected to move the industry away from current norms of coverage for medically indicated abortions. In combination with the Hyde Amendment, Stupak/Pitts will impose a coverage exclusion for medically indicated abortions on such a widespread basis that the health benefit services industry can be expected to recalibrate product design downward across the board in order to accommodate the exclusion in selected markets.
"In other words," explains Brian Beutler for Talking Points Memo, "though the immediate impact of the Stupak amendment will be limited to the millions of women initially insured through a new insurance exchange, over time, as the exchanges grow, the insurance industry will scale down their abortion coverage options until they offer none at all."
Supporters argue that the amendment wouldn't change the status quo, but this study concludes that's just not true. In any case, since the Hyde Amendment bans federal tax dollars paying for abortion, Stupak's provision is unnecessary to preserve the status quo. The argument for his amendment is stupid on it's face; that using tax dollars to pay for abortion has to be more illegal -- and illegal in new and interesting ways.
As it's written, his amendment is designed to kick the insurance industry out of the abortion business. When supporters say anything different, they're either just plain wrong or just plain lying.
1 comments:
Stupak is stupid and dishonest, because it's trying to use abortion as a wedge issue to kill the whole reform bill.
Think about it. For people who really, truly believe that abortion is murder, "insurance" is a distraction, because performing the act in itself should be criminal. It goes without saying that paying for someone else to do it would make you, at best, an accomplice or conspirator to first-degree murder.
If they had any honesty in them, that's the case they'd be making. But they know if they pushed it to that point in a democratic forum, they'd lose.
What they're really objecting to is democracy. If the US were an old-fashioned monarchy, they'd render their taxes unto Caesar like good little Christians, and if Caesar went on to buy abortions with it - well, that's between him and God, and not their problem. But because it's (allegedly) democratic, they are made to feel responsible for (or complicit in) what the government does.
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