There are two questions that have come up frequently lately during phonebanking for health insurance reform. The first is about abortion-related elements in the Senate bill and the other is how the deficit-reductions are achieved. After the jump are some simple explanations that you can use to address these concerns.
ABORTION-RELATED ISSUES
Thanks to Bart Stupak and conservatives across the board, there is are a great deal of misconceptions about how the Senate bill affects the law of the land with regards to the federal funding of abortions. This is covered explicitly in pages 118-124 of the Senate bill. I have excerpted these specific pages and you can download a pdf of just that section HERE. I also wrote about it yesterday HERE.
Here are the bullet points that you can use to talk about this:
- Current law (under the Hyde amendment) prohibits the use of federal funds for abortions and the Senate bill preserves this.
- There is a section of the bill, pages 118-124, that specifically maintains the current ban on the use of federal funds to pay for abortions. There are two specific sections. One is called "PROHIBITION ON FEDERAL FUNDS FOR ABORTION SERVICES IN COMMUNITY HEALTH INSURANCE OPTION" and the other is "PROHIBITION ON THE USE OF FEDERAL FUNDS" which specifically refers to abortions for which the use of federal funds is currently prohibited.
- Bart Stupak's amendment changes the current ban by expanding its reach. It does this by expanding the prohibition on the use of federal funds to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion, even if the patient is required by law to pay for the abortion with their own money. In other words, the vast majority of health plans currently available would be made ineligible which has the effect of making safe LEGAL abortions unavailable to low-income women participating the in the health insurance exchange. It is an expansion of anti-abortion rulings that affects only poor women.
- Current federal law permits the use of some federal funds for abortions but only in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is at risk. This applies only in states that allow for it. References in the current Senate bill to "ABORTIONS FOR WHICH PUBLIC FUNDING IS ALLOWED" refer to these types of special cases and this legislation does not change current law at all.
DEFICIT REDUCTION
With regard to deficit reduction, here are the facts:
How the bill is paid for and why it reduces the deficit over the next ten years:
- Increases in government spending due to the Senate bill: $848 billion
- Offsets to increased government spending, mostly from a fee on inefficient and costly "Cadillac healthcare plans": $249 billion
- Savings from Medicare/Medicaid waste & fraud reduction: $491 billion
- Increased revenue/taxes (mostly on health insurance companies and device manufacturers): $238 billion
Grand total: $130 billion in SAVINGS over the next ten years.
(Data from the Congressional Budget Office [CBO])
In other words, this legislation:
• Reduces the deficit over the next decade
• Is mostly paid for by reducing inefficiencies, waste and fraud in the current system
• Does not raise taxes on individuals or small businesses
I have written about this in more detailed on my blog HERE.
If you would like a Word document with this material in it, email me (see my profile) and I'll email it to you.
Good luck with your phonebanking. We're almost at the end of this very long and tortured road.
I'm just sayin'...