Coughing Up Stupak's "Morning-After" Poison Pill

Bart Stupak (D-MI), the conservative Michigan back-bencher who has suddenly injected abortion rights into the health care debate, may have been acting on a sincere religio-moral impulse: after all, both he and his amendment's co-author, Joe Pitts (R-PA) belong to the secretive, conservative religious family called "The Family," and Stupak lodges at The Family's infamous C Street house when he's in D.C. (More here.) But Pitts hates health care reform itself -- he even spoke at Michelle Bachmann's "Teabagger" gathering last week -- and The Family, like many conservative religious organizations, exists largely to manipulate religious sentiment for political and economic gain. So, whether Stupak intended it or is merely a stooge, he has handed political conservatives -- not religious conservatives, again, but purely political ones -- a tremendous gift:

A poison pill that could cause the miscarriage of health care reform.

Stupak's amendment to HR 3962, which passed the House by just three votes late Saturday, wasn't necessary to prevent taxpayer dollars from being spent on abortions. The bill already contained such a provision. But conservative Democrats like Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), whose vote is indispensable to defeat a Republican filibuster, already are saying they will not support any reform without Stupak's additional provisions. Meanwhile, liberals are up in arms, and 41 House Democrats have signed a letter swearing not to vote for any health care reform that contains the abortion restrictions.

When both the Right and the Left are opposed to an already-precarious bill, that bill probably is doomed. Some will say that's not a bad thing: already, health care reform is so tentative in its vision, and has been so diluted by concessions to trade groups, that its value is questionable. However, the bills in both houses contain the so-called "public option," a federally-run, citizen-owned, nonprofit health insurance carrier that -- if well-run and well-liked -- could grow into a larger, broadly accessible, cost-effective competitor to private carriers and perhaps even into the single-payer system that many progressives want to see. If nothing else, the public option should be a good political science experiment: a test to see whether the government can run a decent health care system (validating liberals and boosting hopes for an eventual single payer system) or will fail miserably as conservatives predict (effectively taking single payer off the table for a generation). Both sides should welcome the small-scale experiment contained in the current proposals -- and both proposals are worth fighting for, for that reason if no other.

But Stupak's poison pill will kill the public option -- unless progressives react intelligently rather than emotionally, in which case they can actually turn Stupak to their advantage.

If progressives boycott the House bill over Stupak, health care won't pass. But if they are willing to accept Stupak's amendment -- grudgingly, reluctantly, hatefully give in -- they may be able to trade that concession for the support of conservaDems like Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Dem-caucusing (for now) Joe Lieberman (I-CT) on the Republican filibuster of health care reform itself. That would stop the cackling of the Cigna and Wellpoint executives who are having a very good day today, because they, and their minions in Congress, don't really care about abortion; they only care about stopping effective competition.

Does that sell women down the river? Yes -- if Democrats stop there. But if the White House and Congressional Democrats are willing, for a change, to be tough and savvy, they could save both healthcare reform and abortion rights by using the budget reconciliation process to reinstate the abortion protections Stupak's amendment removed.

Budget reconciliation isn't subject to the filibuster: only a bare majority in each house is needed to pass a reconciled bill. And while reconciliation can only be used to effect budgetary changes, not to change details of federally-administered insurance coverage, that's actually a plus, because it would allow liberals to pass a poison pill of their own: revocation of the Hyde Amendment and full federal funding of all abortions.

Few people actually want the federal government to go that far -- but, in reconciliation, it could be done; and once a provision that odious was made law, conservatives would have no choice but to make concessions to dial things back to a reasonable compromise -- concessions like removing the odious Stupak amendment in 2011, two full years before most reforms are even scheduled to go into effect.

Right now, liberals face a choice between health care reform that unacceptably restricts women's reproductive rights, or no health care at all. In essence, they're being asked to choose between mammograms for millions of women who currently can't get them, or insurance coverage of abortion. For advocates of women's health, that's a hellish choice. But by passing the reform bill now, and boldly forcing through abortion funding in the next budget, liberals could shift the painful choice to conservatives: outright use of your tax dollars to pay for millions of abortions each year, or statutory language allowing federally-administered insurance policies to contain the same reproductive health services that 90% of employer-provided policies do right now?

My guess is that, given the choice, conservatives would bow and the Stupak Amendment can be dead within a year -- again, long before health care reform even goes into effect. But to get there, Democrats need to be both savvy now, and gutsy later -- qualities that have been in short supply in both the White House and Senate. The question is whether they have the courage, discipline, and outside-the-box vision to do so.

 

Follow M.S. Bellows, Jr. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/msbellows

Comments

[PaiaGirl]

Good reasoning except you missed the most important effect of the Stupak amendment which would reshape ALL insurance to drop abortion coverage.

Instantly abortion would become unobtainable for millions of poor women.

[Artemis34]

Here is how everyone voted on the amendment in the house.

The "Yes" voters are the ones we need to get rid of:

http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/111/house/1/884

[Artemis34]

The Rachel Maddow Show: Bart Stupak's C-Street Gang (Video)
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rachel-maddow-show-bart-stupaks-c-street-g

Rachel Maddow runs down the list for us of C-Street "family" members who also voted for Bart Stupak’s anti-abortion amendment yesterday. Nothing like having what amounts to a secretive religious cult [The Family, a dominionist group] making health care policy for women in the United States. As Rachel noted that list includes:

Rep. Bart Stupak D-MI
Rep. Joe Pitts R-PA
Rep. Ike Skelton D-MO
Rep. Mike McIntyre D-NC
Rep. John Tanner D-TN
Rep. Lincoln Davis D-TN
Rep. Dan Boren D-OK
Rep. Heath Shuler D-NC

Effing radical Calvinists!

[Hawise]

Stupak does go farther than Hyde and enshrines the callous disregard for women without a sunset clause. The real question is whether after more than a hundred years of identical pleas to put aside "women's issues" for the greater good we should fall for that tripe again? Secret societies get their legislation passed but honest women get to be forced to stand at the back of the bus- again. i think that America should decide to honor its women for a change but it will be a cold night in hell before that happens.

[thnk4selfagain]

Fascinating and probably effective strategy. Problem is that the Dems are proving once again to be cowards and shortsighted, always seeming (wink, wink) to be outsmarted by the GOP. They have no political will and like the WH are flushing a super majority and a popularly-elected Prez with mandate down the drain. They cannot even call Wall Street to heel after buying it, after it nearly took down the global economy. Women and families' rights to medical care is not on the radar to these cosseted elites. Voting every incumbent I can out. Happy 2010 *guys*.

[AnnfromCA]

The issue brings into light the problem with government being so involved in healthcare decisions. That is the lesson.

[Citizen-Jane]

Canada, England, France, and Germany are better lessons rather have something like that than this. (Betting On the healthy system.)

[Artemis34]

Better lesson is to keep RELIGION, and / or pseudo-religion out of SECULAR government and out of secular health care!

[pdxpharris]

Great idea, Mr. Bellows -- and if the Democratic leadership proposes a 100% tax on incomes over $1 million dollars, they can compromise at the pre-Reagan rates. And a pony.

Since when have the bargaining skills of Congressional Dems, who give up their preferred outcome AND what should be a compromise position BEFORE bargaining even starts, seemed up to something like what you suggest?

[StephCaster]

The author presents no evidence that the Conservadems or Republidem Leibermann would accept such a "compromise". This seems to be an exercise in wishful thinking.

[smokesignals]

What everyone always seems to forget is that if abortions are not covered by federal funding, you and I will still pay the price for increased hospital emergency visits by those women who botch their own or get care that is horrifyingly substandard. And we will pay a much bigger price, as well, for even longer, if many of those women/girls are forced to conceive because the option does not exist and subsequently end up on the medicare, welfare rolls with their children. That is already a huge problem and a huge drain on our tax dollars already! Good grief, can't our congressman and senators see past their toes on this one? Which dollar amount would you rather pay? Now or forever?
It should never have been a part of this health care reform bill. And I resent it, after having fought for the right as a woman to choose, that it once again becomes the football for these old men to parlay around. Our futures aren't a bargaining tool! Go Diane DeGette!

[ESerafina42]

You don't understand the way these people think. Anything that happens to a woman or girl due to unavailability of abortions is something she brought upon herself, in their view. Their AIM is to punish women for having non-procreative sex.

[Artemis34]

Right. A child should be a punishment in their view.

That something bad can befall you proves to them that you deserve it. That you are among the damned Preterite* in their Calvinist view.

* "The basic principles of Calvinism, a doctrine held and promulgated by some of our earliest settlers, hold that all men are totally depraved, but some are saved and others damned, at God's pleasure and not necessarily with any explanation. Furthermore, this grace is irresistible and permanent, so if you're among the saved Elect, no action can place you among the damned Preterite. At its most extreme, this doctrine is known as antinomianism, the doctrine that the Elect are free of all constraint by laws." http://www.plastic.com/article.html;sid=04/05/18/12374288

[grooveygrover]

this is about control
abortion is just the hot button

[USAFree1]

Conservative, pseudo-religious groups know Roe V Wade won't be overturned, but they have sworn to chip away at women having reproductive freedom until the right to choose to continue or not continue a pregnancy is taken away. This is another chip. Talk about government coming between a person and their health care provider!

[jeanrenoir]

Stupak's poison pill only kills if the liberal Democrats are dumb enough to commit suicide over it as the C St. "Family" would like. In 1968, Boomers on the left destroyed Democratic liberalism, elected Nixon twice, and guaranteed forty years of conservative rule in America by idiotically turning against Hubert Humphrey because he was tainted with Vietnam. These Democratic "idealists" preferred to their own narcissistic moral "purity" to supported progressive liberalism, however compromised by a Vietnam War Nixon was hardly likely to do a better job with than Humphrey. If liberal Democrats now kill health care because they can't deal with the fact that a majority of Americans simply will not support a health care bill which provides government-funded abortions under any circumstances, these new Democratic purists will destroy Obama, return Congress to Republican control, and guarantee decades more of right-wing rule in America. Will such stupidity have been worth it, above all for the feminists threatening to kill Obama's pusch for health care reform if they don't get government-funded abortions in some form, if these people end up putting a conservative in the White House who packs the Supreme Court with people pledged to overturn Roe v. Wade and outlaw abortion outright? When will these "idealists" ever learn?

[Squirtapotamus]

You want me to compromise on my ideals and then you call me dumb if I don't?

The Democratic party is more interested in appeasing conservatives than they are fulfilling their campaign promises to the progressive base that elected them. That makes them worse than Republicans, because at least the Republicans are honest about their "Just say No" to everything policy.


Don't Ask, Don't Give.

[M.S. Bellows, Jr. - Huffpost Blogger]

Squirtapotamus: if you had to choose between getting half of what you want for America but would feel lousy because it was such a terrible compromise, or none of what you want for America but you would get to feel noble about having taken a principled position, which would you choose?

I'm not saying it's impossible to get both -- in fact, my post says just the opposite. I am saying, however, that IF the choice comes down to this, then real progress on the ground (passing a lousy healthcare bill that nevertheless saves the lives of many of the 45,000 Americans per year who die because they're uninsured) is better than a principled stand that lets those 45,000 people keep dying. Ideology and principle are completely trumped by one woman's life being saved by a mammogram that detects her breast cancer early.

[SagefemmeCollective]

The United States is the only industrialized country without a universal healthcare bill which covers abortion services. If we can agree that the foundation of universal healthcare is the premise that health is a basic human right, then abortion services must be covered under the universal healthcare policy.
Why? Women faced with restrictions to abortions, which may be legal, financial, or geographic, are often forced to look at more risky options for terminating an unwanted pregnancy. If you need evidence of this go to Yahoo answers any day and search for abortion, and you will find disparate underage women and poor women searching for abortion information. Teenagers in the USA, from Wisconsin to Delaware, are now using prostaglandin drugs designed for cows to terminate unwanted pregnancies with great risk to their own health because the drugs are cheap and widely available. Some women on public forums in desparation ask about rumored methods of inducing abortion from being pushed down the stairs, kicked in the stomach, to drinking bleach!

In this day and age when abortion is a simple and safe procedure. It is shameful! We should be rejoicing in the streets that the technology is available to provide safe pregnancy termination to our beloved daughters, sisters, mothers, and friends, instead we are debating whether women are worth the cost, and whether women can have the right to determine their fate. When will the focus of health in the United States be on providing for the health NEEDS of Americans?

[BalsterDl]

M.S.

You must be mis-informed. Without the Stupak Amendment, the health care would have used federal funds for abortions. Congresswoman Pelosi herself told planned parenthood that the language would require the federal funding of abortions. - She consulted with the House legal staff.

Therefore, I strongly agree with the House members who voted for the Stupak Amendment. This still allows Americans to have abortions. They just can't use my tax $ to pay for it.

DLB

[M.S. Bellows, Jr. - Huffpost Blogger]

Sorry, but you're wrong. The Hyde amendment barring tax $ from being spent on abortions applied fully to the healthcare bill before the Stupak amendment. Stupak went further by preventing citizens' own premium dollars -- not taxpayer dollars -- from being used to buy insurance policies that cover abortions along with everything else (>1% of all service $$).

Under Stupak, "public option" policies may not cover abortion at all -- not even if the insured pays the entire premium with her own money, and despite the fact that the public option plan (despite its name) is fully funded (including administrative overhead) with premium dollars, not tax dollars. The non-public insurance plans, under Stupak, can't cover abortions either, if the people buying them receive any tax writeoff or credit for their premiums -- ie, even if you're paying 95% of your premium, with a private carrier, it still will be illegal for that carrier to provide abortion services.

If Pelosi said anything contrary to this, I'd love to see a link. Otherwise, I'll stand by my assertion that Stupak goes further than Hyde.

[M.S. Bellows, Jr. - Huffpost Blogger]

Supplementing what I wrote: Here's a pretty good explanation of how the Stupak Amendment goes further than existing law. Hope it's helpful! http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/11/price-health-reform-abortion-rights

[mommadona]

I am thoroughly appalled that Nancy Pelosi allowed this to happen - do you believe her staunch Catholic faith forced this issue? If so, that would be the first time the leader of the House was manipulated by another nation/state (Vatican has only been recognized as such for about 60 years)