12/19/2009

Copy of Harry Reid's Manager Amendment for the Senate Health Care Bill is available here

A copy of the 383 page amendment is available here. The word "tax" is used 64 times.

After reading about "NO LIFETIME OR ANNUAL LIMITS" on health care benefits and other regulations that will increase the cost of health care, you can read about how they are going to go about "BRINGING DOWN THE COST OF HEALTH CARE
COVERAGE" (p. 7). Anyway, I haven't done more than glance at this yet.

Who wants to bet that this will increase the cost of health insurance?

The provisions on abortion aren't supported by Stupak.

Stupak said that he has discussed the Senate’s abortion position with Nelson and Casey, and his opposition in spite of intense pressure from the White House to accept it could augur a challenge to the compromise in the House when the two versions of the bill are reconciled.

Stupak said that the Senate language represented “a dramatic shift in federal policy,” but that he was hopeful that the differences could be resolved in conference. Nelson, though, said Saturday that his support for the legislation was contingent on the abortion compromise remaining in it. . . .

The new abortion language solves none of the fundamental abortion-related problems with the Senate bill, and it actually creates some new abortion-related problems, he said.

The manager’s amendment, which emerged after hours of negotiations between Nelson and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, stops short of the total ban on health insurance plans that participate in a new exchange system offering abortion coverage. Instead, it includes a provision that allows states to prohibit abortion coverage in the exchanges. . . .


House Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner has this comment:

Fixed it is not. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) latest health care “manager’s amendment” would STILL levy a new “abortion premium” fee on Americans under the Democrats’ health care plan. Just like the original 2,032-page, government-run health care plan from Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) and the last version of Senator Reid’s 2,074-page bill, this latest 383-page amendment levies an abortion premium and does not fix the problem of government funds being used to subsidize elective abortions.

Under Reid’s “manager’s amendment,” there is no prohibition on abortion coverage in federally subsidized plans participating in the Exchange. Instead the amendment includes layers of accounting gimmicks that demand that plans participating in the Exchange or the new government-run plan that will be managed by the Office of Personnel Management must establish “allocation accounts” when elective abortion is a covered benefit (p. 41). Everyone enrolled in these plans must pay a monthly abortion premium (p. 41, lines 5-8), and these funds will be used to pay for the elective abortion services. The Reid amendment directs insurance companies to assess the cost of elective abortion coverage (p. 43), and charge a minimum of $1 per enrollee per month (p. 43, lines 20-22).

In short, the Reid bill continues to defy the will of the American people and contradict longstanding federal policy by providing federal subsidies to private health plans that cover elective abortions. The new language does include a “state opt-out” provision if a state passes a law to prohibit insurance coverage of abortion, but it’s a sham because it does nothing to prevent one state’s tax dollars from paying for elective abortions in other states. . . . .


The NRLC has this:

Douglas Johnson, an official at the National Right to Life Committee, a group whose staffers were looped on Smith’s email, released a statement Saturday afternoon calling the Senate compromise “light years” away from Stupak's amendment. . . .


Abortion rights advocates are claiming that this is a bad day for them, but I guess that this is all part of a strategy on their part to confuse voters and make it seem that those opposing abortion are being less than reasonable.

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