Sebelius Explains Abortion Accounting Tricks in Senate Bill

Verum Serum has an excellent post and video that shows Kathleen Sebelius explaining the accounting tricks in the Reid bill to fund abortion through the insurance exchanges proposed in the legislation.  Sebelius is lauding the maneuver as a positive step from the restrictions in the House bill introduced by Stupak. Here is the clip:



The compromise between the Stupak amendment and the much weaker language agreed to by Senator Ben Nelson in the Senate requires all participants in the insurance exchanges, regardless of age or sex or circumstance to contribute an additional fee that will be held strictly for the funding of abortions. As Morgen at Verum Serum writes this is extremely offensive:

As far as I’m concerned all they’ve done is cut out the middle man. In fact, I find this compromise arrangement even more offensive since whereas tax dollars are pooled to pay for innumerable government goods and services, without any specific accounting, under this new arrangement participants in the insurance exchange will know beyond a doubt that their financial contributions are being used to terminate the lives of unborn children.

Senator Nelson and I must define the term pro-life quite differently.   I can't imagine how anyone who considers themselves pro-life would agree to such a provision.  I suppose the saving grace in Nelson's mind is that state exchanges have the ability to opt out of the requirement.  But as Morgen astutely points out this opt out clause will merely set off an endless round of battles between pro-life and pro-abortion activists.

The politically correct crew on the left is notoriously conscious of the slightest offenses toward  the beliefs of nearly every group but the Christians and the right.  I would not expect there to be some exception for those who morally object to abortion as a Christian and as a matter of principle.  I wonder, however, if they stopped to consider that other religious groups consider abortion equally offensive as the Christians.  Muslim teaching falls strongly on the side of life with the single exception being when the life of the mother is threatened.  Those who morally object to abortion must either deny their religious objections and contribute to a fund devoted solely for the purpose of abortion or refrain from participating the exchanges.

In light of the mandate to purchase insurance included in the bill, those who object to abortion would be required to find insurance elsewhere though the exchanges are intended to obtain better prices for individuals. The Democrats refused to lift restrictions that prevent insurers from selling across state lines so in many cases those who find abortion morally objectionable would be left with few other choices other than  the exchange  to  purchase the insurance they are required under law to buy.  I would expect that none of this was discussed during the session negotiating the price for Senator Nelson's vote.

Though I strongly doubt that Nelson would change his mind and vote against the bill when the final vote in the Senate takes place, I hope that he becomes increasingly aware of how his little deal with Harry Reid will affect the life of the unborn he claimed to protect.  If he does not, he should never campaing again while claiming to be pro-life, his concession mocks the title.

Live Stream Senate Health Care Debate

Via Memeorandum The Hill reports Harry Reid can't understand why anyone would be opposed to a vote opening the debate, in fact he thinks that is positively Orwellian:

"Now he said, anyone who votes for this is going to have a lot of explaining to do," Reid said during his floor speech today. "Now that is really Orwellian. That is Orwellian. Have a lot of explaing to do if they allow a debate to continue?"

Reid urged senators to support the motion to proceed scheduled for 8 p.m., saying that is only a motion to continue debate, not a vote for the legislation itself.
"All were asking today is to have a debate on it. I mean, why would anyone be afraid in supposedly the greatest debating society in the world to debate healthcare," he said. "What are they afraid of?"

They're afraid of the shark infested waters after they walk the plank Harry.  The people to watch according to  Politico:

 things were looking good at daybreak, as Reid can be reasonably confident of 59 votes, with Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) a yes vote and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) leaning yes. The holdout: Sen.Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), who has been a fan of reform generally but faces a tough 2010 re-election fight.

We'll likely see a number of Republican television ads in the making as this vote will surely be fodder in the coming midterms.  Here is the live stream of the Senate debate for those who want to follow along:

Free TV : Ustream

Say Hello to my Little Fed - UPDATE

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey reports the vote to proceed is on for Saturday. Rush reports 97% of bills that succeed in this vote become law.  Call your Senator; tell them to start over.  


Another Saturday health care vote appears to be in the works, this time in the Senate. While the Senate may be may be taking its cue from the "success" of the House in its' Saturday vote, there are a few differences between the two bills that could push any resolution of the health care debate well into next year. Still conventional wisdom has it that if Reid is able to pull together the 60 votes he needs in this important opening vote, some 2000 page piece of legislation will eventually make its'way to the President's desk. Holdouts can be bought and the sky's the limit as far as Democrats are concerned to guarantee passage of their behemoth health care takeover.

Mickey Kaus may have uncovered what may well be the equivalent of the 11th hour reprieve after actually reading a key portion of the monster legislation that threatens to divide the House and Senate before all is said and done.  The Times buried this point of disagreement way at the bottom of their report:

The two chambers also disagree on whether to create an independent commission to help cut the growth of Medicare. Senate Democrats say such a commission could make politically unpopular decisions needed to put Medicare on a sound financial footing. But House leaders say it is the duty of Congress to make such tough decisions.

Kaus wondered whether the Senate bill, which was purported to actually go further than the House bill to contain costs had followed a "Fed" model detailed by Leonhardt in the Times:

A FED FOR HEALTH Twice a year, an outside advisory board sends Congress a list of suggestions for Medicare payment rates, based on the available evidence. Congress generally ignores them, in deference to the various industry groups that oppose any cuts to their payments.

We already have a wonderful model for how to avoid such interference. It’s called theFederal Reserve. The Fed is charged with setting interest rates based on economic conditions, not politics. The Senate bill would create such a commission for Medicare. Unfortunately, it initially applies to doctors and home health care providers but not hospitals, thanks to a deal between the hospitals and the White House. It expands to include everyone in 2019. The House bill has no such commission.

Whether one ends up in the final bill will be a good test of Mr. Obama’s endgame leadership.

Kaus had assumed the  IMAB,  short for Independent Medical Advisory Board, created in the Senate had been less powerful and threatening after reading Ezra Klein's analysis:

The idea isn't simply that a panel of experts gets to dream up interesting reforms to try out in Medicare. It's that they are charged with making sure that Medicare hits certain growth targets, and their package of reforms has to achieve that goal. Those reforms are then sent to Congress, where Senate debate is limited to 30 hours, and amendments must be both budget neutral and "germane." This report, in other words, is exempt from the filibuster. So far as anything is ever easy to pass, this is easy to pass.

Then he read the bill, or at least the relevant portion found on pages 1000-1053.  Here are the keypoints Kaus found:

--The new 15 member "IMAB" board makes cost-cutting recommendations if Medicare spending exceeds specific targets.

--Congress can disapprove these changes by passing a bill. But like other legislation, the president can veto that bill (and his veto can be overridden).

--The "fast tracking" provisions Klein discusses apply to the bill disapprovingthe changes. That is, they make it easier for opponents of the changes to block them without, say, being filibustered in the Senate. But they also sharply restrict what a "fast-tracked" disapproval can do--for example, it can't block spending cuts if that causes cost-reduction targets to be missed. To this extent it's an "up or down" vote, like a base-closing resolution

--Key point: If Congress doesn't pass the fast-tracked bill, the Secretary of HHS must implement the IMAB panel's recommendations

--And Congress loses even its fast-track disapproval power after 2020, unless, by a 60% supermajority, during a specific window in the first half of 2017, while standing on one leg and humming Battle Hymn of the Republic, it passes a joint resolution discontinuing the whole process. Correction: The part about standing on one leg and humming doesn't seem to be in the final bill.

Though its pretty complicated it looks as though the legislation empowers an unelected body as powerful as the Fed to do some of the dirty work cutting benefits etc that Congress is notoriously reluctant to make. It also makes it much more difficult for Congress to overrule the panel recommendations. Now wipe those two dirty words "death panels" from your mind, we all know how crazy that argument was right?

Still, Kaus wonders what Congress might do if the IMAB decided that the federal government won't pay for mammograms for women under 40? Could they stop it? What if government, as is often the case, is divided? It seems the power is on the side of the "Med" instead of Congress. Yes, there may be means for the Congress to pass a law overthrowing the panel recommendations or eliminating the board altogether. In reality, it is always much more difficult to eliminate or even "audit" such a powerful group once they have been put in action. While we already have one unelected board with power over our money, the Senate bill gives another unelected board power over our health and 1/6th of the economy. What could possibly go wrong?