Associated: Women Face “Tough Choices” If Anti-Abortion Language Stays In Health Care Bill
What kind of choices? Why, they’d have to pay for their own abortion coverage!
And, uh, that’s not fair or something.
NEW YORK – Millions of American women will face tough choices about abortion coverage if restrictions in the House health care bill become law, both sides in the abortion debate agree.
Divisions over abortion are a major obstacle in President Barack Obama’s push for health care overhaul, with both sides arguing over how to apply current law that bars taxpayer dollars for abortions in a totally new landscape. Under pressure from the Catholic Church and abortion foes, the House added tough restrictions to its version of a health care bill.
The measure would prohibit the proposed new government-run insurance plan from covering abortions except in cases of rape, incest or to save a mother’s life, and bars any health plan receiving federal subsidies in a new insurance marketplace from offering abortion coverage. If women wanted to purchase abortion coverage through such plans, they’d have to buy it separately, as a so-called rider on their policy.
“It forces insurance companies and women to navigate a series of chutes and ladders to get abortion coverage at the end of the day,” said Donna Crane, policy director for NARAL Pro-Choice America.
Chutes and ladders? They just have to get a rider on their insurance plan. We’re not talking about rocket science here.
Obviously, I’m not a liberal. I think people should have to pay for all of their own health care. I think smokers should have to pay extra for living unhealthy lifestyles. I think people who believe in alternative treatments like acupuncture should have to pay for that coverage. And I think women who might want to kill their unborn children should have to pay for that coverage as well.
This debate over whether or not abortion should be covered in government-backed health care plans is really a microcosm for problems with third-party health care in general whether it be through the government or even just employers. Right now most of us are carrying insurance coverage for things we may never need. For instance, I’m being forced to pay for alcohol addiction treatment on my insurance plan not because I abuse alcohol and may need that coverage one day but because my government has decided that I have to. In other states people are forced to carry coverage for things like tobacco addiction counseling, hair prosthesis and acupuncture treatments not because they actually want or need those coverages but rather because the government said so.
Or that was the coverage negotiated in their employer-backed plan.
At the end of the day, the debate on health care should be about creating a situation that would allow Americans to sit down and map out what coverages they want and then purchase those coverages from any company in the nation that cares to offer them. The debate shouldn’t be about squabbling over what constituencies to cater to with coverage mandates or exclusions.
