MSNBC The Rachel Maddow Show - 9 Nov. 2009: "Government-Run Health Care (But Only For Women)" Excellent coverage of Stupak Amendment. Interview w/ Rep. Diana Degette, who is circulating a letter that has about 40 signatures of House Democrats who say they will oppose the health reform bill if it is used to suppress abortion rights.
MADDOW: "Since Barack Obama took office ten months ago, the Democratic Party went from having 58 seats in the U.S. Senate to having 60. Democrats went from carrying 257 seats in the House to now carrying 258. And this weekend, the house grabbed the brass ring, that President after President and Congress after Congress have wanted to grab and failed - health reform, at last; the kind of once-in-more-than-a-lifetime historic achievement that could brand the Democratic Party and inspire voter loyalty for a generation.
Even better for Democrats, they've done it in a way that has brought out the worst in the opposing party -the Republican House leadership last week speaking in front of a banner comparing health reform to bodies stacked up at a concentration camp. Despite reported chants of 'Nazis, Nazis,' not a single House Republican walks off the stage in protest. The chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee now equating medical for women to medical care for smokers. The former House majority leader organizing the anti-health care reform protests outside Congress saying Americans have too much health insurance, and some who don't have it, don't deserve it..."
DICK ARMEY (Video): "Because they eat like a pig, you must now insure them."
MADDOW: "And for women, the boorish behavior of Republicans against health care reform has been even worse. As Democrat women in Congress tried to speak on the House floor about gender disparity in health coverage, here's the treatment they received from Republican men..."
CONGRESSWOMAN (Video): "I ask unanimous consent that my remarks..."
CONGRESSMAN: "I object."
CONGRESSWOMAN: "I would like to revise my remarks."
CONGRESSMAN: "I object. I object."
- snip -
MADDOW: "In terms of the political impact of health reform, this is potentially a huge generational victory for the Democratic Party.
Or is it?
Snatching electoral defeat from the jaws of victory here, Democrats have decided to pass monumental sweeping legacy-building health reform inexplicably along with the biggest restriction on abortion rights in a generation.
It's called the Stupak amendment. Named for Democratic congressman Bart Stupak of Michigan, and if his amendment becomes law, if the bill passes as is, insurance companies across the country would likely stop covering abortions. Period. Stupak's language in the House bill says that anyone who gets a government subsidy to buy insurance through the new health insurance exchange would be banned from buying any insurance plan that covers abortion services. So if you're an insurance company that wants to participate in the new health insurance exchange, if you want access to this new pool of millions of Americans, tens of millions of Americans, choosing between insurance plans on the exchange, well, the CBO says about 90 percent of those people will be getting some kind of government subsidy in the exchange, and if they're getting any sort of government subsidy, they can't even choose your insurance plan if they want to - unless you drop abortion coverage.
The effect of this law isn't just no federal funding for abortions - that's the law now - the effect of this law is likely to be no insurance coverage for abortion in the United States period.
With a single amendment Congress is making a legal medical procedure potentially unattainable for a huge number of American women. All that conservative talk about the evil government gettting involved in which medical procedures are covered and which aren't? It's conservatives who now from Congress are ruling out coverage nationally for one specific medical procedure for political reasons.
Congressman Stupak apparently got this language into the bill by promising lots and lots of conservative Democratic votes for health reform, and what he got was lots and lots of conservative Democrats - 26 of whom voted for his anti-abortion amendment, but then against the health reform bill, anyway.
In response to the Stupak amendment passing, 41 House Democrats have now said in writing that they won't vote for any final health reform bill that includes Stupak's language in it or anything like that. Meanwhile, as the health reform vote approaches in the Senate, even supposedly pro-choice Democrats are now signaling that they're o.k. with the Stupak amendment..."
SEN. CLAIRE McCASKILL (Video): "We're talking about whether or not people that get public money can buy an insurance policy that has any coverage for abortion, and that is not the majority of America. The majority of America is not gonna be getting subsidies from the government ... so I'm not sure this is going to be enough to kill the bill."
MADDOW: "Yeah, we're only effectively banning abortion for people who get subsidies - people making less than $88,000 a year. Who cares about anyone making less than $88,000 a year, right?
This apparent lack of concern among supposedly pro-choice Democrats is made all the more relevant given the news tonight that a pair of anti-choice Senate Democrats are already preparing similar language as what's in the House bill for the Senate version. And Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, the man ultimately responsible for whether the anti-abortion language goes in or stays out, he doesn't exactly have a great record on supporting abortion rights. Sen. Reid is personally against abortion rights. And the National Abortion Rights Action League gave Sen. Reid a whopping 20 percent voting rating last year.
The White House, for it's part, has shifted its position on this issue as the day has gone on. While White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs hedged earlier in the day on the issue, President Obama told ABC News tonight 'I want to make sure that the provision that emerges (isn't) restricting women's insurance choices ... There needs to be some more work before we get to the point where we're not changing the status quo.'
Democrats not only want to pass health reform because they're interested in the policy change, but also because it is supposed to come with a lot of electoral spoils. Leaving us to wonder what the electoral spoils will be for Democrats if they don't get women or anybody who's pro-choice to ever vote for them ever again.
Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Diana Degette of Colorado, co-chair of the Congressional Pro-choice Caucus. She is circulating that letter, which now has about 40 signatures, of House Democrats who say they will oppose the health reform bill if it is used to restrict abortion rights.
Congressman Dieette, thanks very much for joining us tonight. In terms of the substance of the Stupak amendment, how big a set-back is this for access to abortion services in this country?"
REP. DEGETTE: "Well, you said a part of it, but there's even more, even more. In the public option, nobody in the public option would be able to get an insurance policy that offered abortion coverage. And we need to remember that the public option is not funded with public money, it's funded with private insurance premiums. So let's say you have a small business owner who goes into the public option 'cause they can't get
insurance any place else, and they want to buy a policy with their own private money, no federal money. They would be banned from doing that. And as you said, the people in the exchange, who get some kind of premium assistance, could not use their own private portion of their health care premium to buy abortion coverage.
So we think that in the public option, definitely, and, almost for certain, in the exchange, no insurance companies would offer abortion coverage. This is, you know, Congressman Stupak and others said 'well, we're simply codifying the Hyde Amendment, but the Hyde Amendment says no federal funding for abortion. We reached that compromise this summer in the committee, and that was in the base bill. So we already agreed to what the President says, let's keep the status quo.
This would be the most far-ranging abortion restriction, certainly in my political career."
MADDOW: "Congressman Stupak and others who support him are suggesting that women who would like their insurance coverage to include abortion services should buy abortion insurance, specifically."
REP. DEGETTE: "I was, you know, Rachel, I was so appalled by that. I thought that was the most outrageous thing they said, because it what it shows is a fundamental misunderstanding of what exactly happens when a woman needs to have an abortion, because nobody ever gets pregnant thinking they're going to have to terminate the pregnancy. Either it was an unanticipated and unwanted pregnancy, or it was a wanted pregnancy that went terribly wrong. So to say to somebody, you have to pay extra money in anticipation of this horrible event, I think is just appalling."
MADDOW: "I know that you're currently collecting signatures of House Democrats who will oppose a final version of health reform if it restricts abortion rights. What kind of support are you getting now?"
REP. DEGETTE: "Well, let me put it this way. That letter that we're sending, it says that we will not vote for a conference report that extends abortion restrictions beyond current law. We think that's fair. That's the compromise we reached this summer.
I got those 41 signatures in one hour. I put the letter out after we lost the amendment. I had collected those signatures before the final vote on the bill, so we're still continuing to get more signatures this week. And what we want to say to everybody is 'look, we're willing to work, we're willing to work on language, but we're not going to accept language that vastly restricts a woman's legal right to choose."
MADDOW: "The President today voicing some support for your position in saying that the goal is to not change the status quo in terms of abortion laws and funding for abortions. Have you had any response from the White House? Are you at all encouraged by those words from the President tonight?"
REP. DEGETTE: "I just found out about the President's statement about an hour ago, and I'm enormously encouraged, because the President is really saying what the rest of us think. This is a health care bill. This bill is designed to expand health care to 36 million Americans, and all of us have worked so hard to pass this bill for months and months. To have it torpedoed by this extraneous but very dangerous amendment is wrong, and I'm hoping that the President will sit down with us in the next few weeks and really start to hammer out some language that we can all accept."
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