The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    jollyroger's picture

    Medicare funds no abortions. Did the "Public Option" die to avoid a Hyde Amendment donnybrook?

    By jollyroger on Sat, 02/11/2012 - 3:28am |

    Watching in stark amaze as the issue of contraception coverage (contraception!) proves fraught enough with controversy that it troubles, still in the 21st century, the councils of the great and mighty, I am moved to reconsider some of my prior analysis of the great health care reform fiasco.

    I had diligently wrenched reality around to maintain through most of the excruciating process via which Prez (ostensibly) sold out both the policy and the politics of his professed position, a cheerful optimism grounded in the conviction that Prez was letting his opponents overreach so they would fall into his trap.

    Yeah, right.

    In my subsequent disappointment, once it became clear the the public option had been laid upon the chopping block before the ink was even dry on the big pharma checks, I figured that for some reason Prez simply couldn't get past the Ben and Joe clown posse.

    Perhaps, having thought the matter through with more thoroughness than I, Prez realized that a public option health care plan would inevitably run afoul of the Hyde Amendment.

    Unwilling to take on that pernicious restraint on Federal funding of an important women's health issue, Prez might well have decided that discretion in this was was the better part of valor.

    Considering the kerfuffle over contraception, imagine the war over a federally funded health plan that covered abortions.

    One thing about Medicare, no one comes seeking reimbursement for abortion services. The Hyde amendment's strictures are already deforming the delivery of health services in no less important an arena than Military medical facilities. Likewise Medicaid cannot spend federal funds on abortion services. We may safely say, whatever other motivations weighed in when Prez sold the public option down the river, he was probably not sorry to be ducking the shitstorm over abortion coverage.

    Comments

    When enough women learn to vote as a block on health issues that relate to their gender, which they feel are necessary, politicians will bend their way. Jolly you could be right about Obama figuring out the wall he would hit about abortion and national insurance. I give him credit for telling the Bishops that the insurance company still has to provide coverage for contraception even if you don't pay for it. Another words it is part of the basic package the insurers have to underwrite and paving the way from opposition in the future health care insurance battles.

    by trkingmomoe on Sat, 02/11/2012 - 5:47am

     

    When enough women learn to vote as a block on health issues that relate to their gender

       Perhaps the above sentiment is at the core of this matter?

      Since I'm unaware of any women who have used alternate methods to conceive, other than participatory male partners, who seek abortions to terminate; and since historically it has been males whose first choice is usually abortion when wanting the by product of their actions to 'go away', it's interesting that men aren't as passionate, vocal and proactive about securing the right to choose this option as they are when participating in the initial act. 

    Labeling this as a female gender issue, which the vast majority do, is part of the problem and akin to abdication of the male's acknowledgment of their responsibility in creating the base need for this healthcare option.  This is one healthcare issue, unlike ovarian and/or prostate cancer, when it truly is both gender's bodies, choices and actions that create the end result.  Thus, men have the responsibility to stand up and speak out in support acknowledging without their participation, this wouldn't be an 'issue' only for women to 'vote as a block'.  

    And yes, I acknowledge that women need to do more to ensure men are included in their speaking out and standing up with them when championing this cause. 


    by Aunt Sam on Sat, 02/11/2012 - 12:17pm

    Oh, dear, Auntie.

    You appear to have consorted with a better class of men than the norm.

    Or, at any rate, you have retained high expectations.

    The collapse of the patriarchy has, to date, seen very little few forward looking Gorbachavs, and lots more paranoid, flailing Stalins.


    by jollyroger on Sat, 02/11/2012 - 11:12pm

    Obama figuring out the wall he would hit 

    I wouldn't want to back off of my fundamental position of disappointment w/him, but it's possible that I overlooked some of the cross currents that characterized the dynamics of that whole fiasco.


    by jollyroger on Sat, 02/11/2012 - 7:10pm

    Good points, Jolly. Apparently one of the national health care lobbies issued a statement that Obama's solution was "troubling" and some suggested the reason might be that it -re-opened doors to the public option. I'm not sure of the logic behind it. But I don't think we've heard the last of it from the health care industry---this deal seemed too simple to me, left me a little suspect that some more shoes were going to drop.


    by Oxy Mora on Sat, 02/11/2012 - 3:00pm

    this deal seemed too simple to me

    Word.  If insurers were all standing in line to underwrite contraception as a means of avoiding paying for deliveries (or abortions....) why did this whole brouhaha erupt in the first place?


    by jollyroger on Sat, 02/11/2012 - 7:12pm

    Hypocrisy is a way of life for all politicians; hypocrisy is part and parcel of the definition of what it takes to become a politician.

    But the gap between actual behavior and proposed values by the repubs is just remarkable; truly a remarkable thing to behold.

    I just read that the individual who runs the corporation that publishes Penthouse sends monies to Mitt for chrissakes! I cannot wait till the repubs begin protesting masturbation as a form of birth control!

    That men walking around in dresses should be allowed to tell women what they can and cannot do with their own bodies in this day and age is criminal to the extreme and the Vatican should be ashamed of itself!

    And the Mormans? Are we really to believe that Mrs. Mitt never used some sort of birth control?

    Oh well that is enough out of me!

     


    by Richard Day on Sat, 02/11/2012 - 3:30pm

     the corporation that publishes Penthouse

    From the originator of the "Hard R" man's mag to the namesake of the purveyor of "Hard R" in- room on demand entertainment.  What's to wonder.


    by jollyroger on Sat, 02/11/2012 - 11:06pm

    There was a post around here that I was looking for.  It was cloudy but I swear I saw it here.    Damn.

     


    by Saladin on Sat, 02/11/2012 - 8:01pm

    Check the desktop--there's better light.

     


    by jollyroger on Sat, 02/11/2012 - 11:07pm

    The President didn't sell the public option down the river. 

    It needed 60 votes. He didn't have 60 votes because that would have required  Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Baucus and Conrad..

    End of story

     

     


    by Flavius on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 9:43am

    I am given to understand, and will return with a cite, that he agreed in one of his early meets with the industry that the public option would be short circuited.  Given the totally manufactured brouhaha over the Stupak amendment, even where the only additional funds would be under medicaid or as subsidies to private coverage, I imagine that a frank public option would have demanded confrontation with and repeal of the Hyde Amendment.

    Not a bad idea, but more of a fight than we have learned to expect from Prez.

    That said, it could have been brought in under reconciliation, particularly as it has obvious budgetary implications.


    by jollyroger on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 3:13pm

    Prolly I got it from FDL, and there is some controversery around the actual analysis.


    by jollyroger on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 3:20pm

    TPM says yes, there was a deal

    http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/t/r/truthseeker77/2010/0...


    by jollyroger on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 3:23pm

    Of course. Since he didn't have the votes  to pass the public option he agreed not to do something he couldn't do and in exchange got something else he wanted.

    Wouldn't you?

     


    by Flavius on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 4:51pm

    Didn't have the 60 for cloture or the 50 for reconciliation? (You could be right on both points--there was no lock on reconciliation getting past 46 at first.)


    by jollyroger on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 9:42pm

    For cloture.

    I don't know enough about reconciliation to rebut the argument that it could have been used to create a public option.

    There was a lot of discussion at the time and I know that Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein jointly took a position that it could have been used to a greater degree than it ultimately was. ( I've no doubt  there were intellectually respectable counter arguments to Mann/Ornstein )

    So while I could be right , equally  I could be wrong . At a minimum I should stop  being so adamant that Obama just didn't have the votes for the public option.Pity. I liked being adamant and now I'll have to go back to being wishy washy.

    Advantage jollyroger.


    by Flavius on Tue, 02/14/2012 - 6:35am

    "Reconciliation rules" which for practical purposes are most germane in their impact upon the order of debate: Bottom line, you only need a majority to end debate when a budget resolution has carried with it a "reconciliation instruction"

    That said, the public option was a perfect candidate because the Byrd Rule (of reconciliation procedure) requires a clear budgetary impact of the items subsumed, and without the public option (as we have learned) there is no hope of containing medical costs or their budget busting impact. 


    by jollyroger on Tue, 02/14/2012 - 7:16am

    One thing about Medicare, no one comes seeking reimbursement for abortion services

    You bringing this point up to make another point got me wondering whether it is 100% accurate, as I know disabled under 65 are on Medicare (if they qualify for SSDI, rather than SSI-those on the latter usually are only eligible for Medicaid.) Of course, as always, a lot depends upon a discrete doctor knowing how to code procedures, i.e. dilation and curettage for dysmenorrhea or fibroids or whatever.


    by artappraiser on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 4:56pm

    You're right--it crossed my mind after I had posted, and decided to adhere to the keep it simple stupid rule.

    I am, on the broader issue, bemused by the alacrity with which we cater to the anti-choicers disinclination to pay for dead babies in utero, while giving no respect to my disinclination to pay for the incineration of babies ex utero

    Where is the Kucinich Amendment, forbidding the expenditure of federal funds to blow up kids with drone strikes? 


    by jollyroger on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 9:41pm

    My first inclination with the Catholic bishops' lobbying re: "we don't want to be paying for birth control" came up was to think along similar lines, i.e.: "yeh  well but how come you don't bitch about paying for war?" But then I thought again: doh dummie, they don't have to, the Church ain't paying those taxes.


    by artappraiser on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 10:48pm

    In my Jesuit high school the Church's position was clear cut:freedom of religion meant that it should be allowed to promulgate its views.  Naturally we asked

    :does that mean that a Catholic controlled government should allow non Catholics to act in ways that the Church considered sinful e.g.abortion.? 

    We got a clear answer.

     Certainly not. Error does not have equal standing with the Truth.

    I heard Catholic theologians say that the Vatican conference under John the 22nd  in some way undercut this view. Undercut, possibly. But I believe that the US bishops essentially still hold it.

    If you

    hadn't expected the 'spanish inquisition'

     

    you're probably not a US bishop.

     


    by Flavius on Tue, 02/14/2012 - 6:53am

     the Church ain't paying those taxes

    When you live in a Christian Theocracy, it's good to be a Christian Church.


    by jollyroger on Tue, 02/14/2012 - 7:21am