Action Alert: Send Pro Stupak DINOs a Coat Hanger

I found an interesting article about the practical effects of the Stupak-Pitts amendment.

Like most anti-choice efforts we've seen come out of Congress and state legislatures in the past 30+ years since abortion was legalized, Stupak's Coathanger amendment is another attack on the practical side of the issue: on access. Rather than going for Roe and actually proposing something that could result in it's being overturned, he's going the practical route of making it more difficult to obtain by stretching the limits of the Hyde amendment beyond the breaking point.

The Stupak amendment does not literally say that plans on the exchange can’t include abortion coverage, it just makes it completely impossible that a plan could for several reasons. To pretend that a reading of the Stupak amendment could not easily be used to stop the sale of plans covering abortion on the exchange is absurd. That is like claiming a law making it illegal to sell tubes capable of having a bullet pass through at high speeds would not be a ban on firearms. Nita Lowey is correct that this amendment could easily put new restrictions on a woman’s ability to buy an insurance plan that does include abortion coverage from a private insurance company, even with her own money.

Once the dust settles on the legal issues of what this bill does, you have to look at the practical results. Even if insurers participating in the exchange can find the needle to thread to offer abortion coverage, would they? No, says one industry expert.

"I really think it would be impractical," says Robert Laszewski, a health insurance industry consultant....

Laszewski says the problem is that by all estimates, the vast majority of people who will be shopping in the new exchanges will be getting subsidies, so they won't be allowed to get abortion coverage. Thus, if a health insurer did offer a separate plan with abortion coverage, it would only be available to a small universe of buyers, and it simply wouldn't make much business sense.

"It's not an ideological issue, it's not about abortion or not abortion," Laszewski says. "It's about what is administratively simpler, easier to administer. It just adds a level of complexity they will likely avoid."

Sara Rosenbaum, a health lawyer and professor at George Washington University, agrees that it's impractical to expect health insurance plans to cover abortion in the exchanges, even for people paying the full premiums without federal help.

"If you speak to insurers in the industry, they will tell you that they simply can't operate under these circumstances," Rosenbaum says. "They need to be able to offer standard products that get administered in a standard way for everybody."

For insurers, it's about the bottom line, and the bottom line is easier to maintain through standardized, streamlined processes. That means offering a standard product, in this case one that excludes abortion... [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Daily Kos>

In my last article on this subject, I said essentially the same thing, but did I did not reason it out as clearly as this does.  This is a Republican attempt to kill health care reform and a DINO attempt to win points with the theocon set.  Nothing we can do will influence the Republicans in Congress.  The only solution for them is to vote them out of office, but we should pressure the DINOs in every way possible.  I received a petition from Credo Mobile that I found most appropriate:

Sign this petition and send a coat hanger to the 20 formerly pro-choice Democrats -- all men -- who voted to pass the Stupak Amendment.

"We know what happens when women are denied access to reproductive health care including abortion. And we can't go back to an era of coat hangers and back alley abortions. Reconsider your vote on the Stupak Amendment. Tell House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that the final health care bill that emerges from the conference committee can't turn the clock back on women's rights."

To send a DINO a coat hanger, Click Here.