Comparing the health-care-reform plans
November 19, 2009, 1:17 pm
Posted by Mollie Wilson O'Reilly
The New York Times has a helpful interactive chart comparing the various provisions and stipulations of the House and Senate health-care reform bills. Here’s how they break down the abortion issue:
HOUSE VERSION
- Health plans could choose whether to cover abortion.
- Low- and middle-income people who receive federal subsidies to buy insurance could not choose a health plan that covers elective abortions.
- The public plan would not provide abortion coverage.
SENATE VERSION
- Health plans could choose whether to cover abortion. In each state, there would have to be at least one plan that covers abortions and one that does not.
- Low- and middle-income people who receive federal subsidies to buy insurance could enroll in health plans that cover abortion. But insurers would be required to segregate their federal subsidies into separate accounts and use only the premium money and co-payments contributed by consumers to cover the procedure.
- The public plan could provide abortion coverage but would have to segregate federal dollars, just like the private plans.
P.S. Does anybody know why American Indians are exempted (alongside “people with religious objections and people who can show financial hardship”) when it comes to the individual mandate to have health insurance?
No abortion coverage in public option seems like a compromise that pro-life senate Dems could live with. Abortion coverage in public option is too expandable in the future so that’s a nose to keep out of the tent. As noted many times on this blog.. subsidy money is fungable with all other insurance plans now and in the future. Will Dem pro-life senators hold the line? Is there any hope at least one Republican pro-lifer would stand with them by promising to vote for a senate health plan if there is no abortion funding in public option or are they all more republican than pro-lfe?
“Is there any hope at least one Republican pro-lifer would stand with them by promising to vote for a senate health plan if there is no abortion funding in public option or are they all more republican than pro-lfe?”
I don’t understand how a Republican not voting for such a plan would be any less pro-life than a Republican voting for the plan. It’s not like voting for it or against it changes the status quo on abortion.
Why are Indians exempt?
Because they are covered under the Indian Health Service.
Government-provided health care widely regarded to be a disaster, by the way.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/11/the-health-care-america-refuses-to-provide/
Mark:
i did like the article. It is important to note that Obama was supported by many First Nation people. The federal government has a unique responsibility to First Nation communities by virtue of treaty agreements. I agree that forced sterilization and the use of health as an assimilationist ploy is dangerous. However, the responsibility for health care, education, financial remuneration pursuant to treaty rights is something the US government has failed at for far too long.
It is very important to note that First Nation people have a unique set of rights as a result of their being original inhabitants. Health care is (or at least should be) a human right.
The larger point, however, is that funding for health care for First Nation communities is way too low and should be increased. Certainly they should not be forced on to insurance rolls (btw nobody should and I am in favour of “socialized” medicine).
I think American Indians already have insurance via various tribal agreements with federal government. In fact I seem to recall the BIA has a medical function or department. When I have time, will check on this.
By “First Nation” communities George; I assume you mean Native Americans, or American Indians.
I sometimes wonder though, about that “first” business. When the original Indians who migrated to North America via Berrings Straits ice from those ancient areas of Northern China, I wonder if they found anyone living here then? They did discover years ago a blond man preserved in the ice. He was given back to the tibes however, and I think was subsequently cremated.
If the original Chinese travellers (later to become American Indians) found anyone already here, they would have either had to join up with them via marriage, or conquered them. In any case there is no physical evidence of those times so long past.
An interesting subject – very much off the topic of health care reform however.
Ken–
I’m thinking George D may be Canadian. “First Nation” communities/peoples is the Canadian equivalent of “Native Americans” in the U.S.
Mark is right that Gov’t-provided health care to Native Americans is often substandard.
Ken:
Be that as it may, it was the teaching of the Roman Catholic church that the original inhabitants had dominion over the land based on natural rights/natural law. As such they could not be enslaved and had to be negotiated with on a nation to nation basis. Michael Stogre argues this in a good book enticed “That the World May Believe: The DeVelopment of Papal Though on Aboriginal Rights”. Recall also thatBartolomé de las Casas was a fierce supporter of aboriginal rights and did not hesitate to criticize the Spanish government in the strongest possible terms.
Also, it is important to note that King George in the Royal Proclamation of 1763 agreed that negotiations with native people would proceed on a “nation to nation” basis. Canada maintained the British tradition and the communities are properly, legally referred to as First Nation.
In the United States, I am confident that the weight of Roman Catholic teaching would support the notion that as original inhabitants, deserve to be treated on a nation to nation basis.
This is important for the health care debate because, I am not familiar with the treaty negotiations but aboriginal people should be entitled to “free” education and health care as a result of the original negotiations.
Much of the debate on health care and so many other issues revolve around money. How about this solution suggested by someone in the St. Petersburg Times:
The Fix
There recently was an article in the St. Petersburg Fl. Times. The Business Section asked readers for ideas on: “How Would You Fix the Economy?”
I think this guy nailed it!
Dear Mr. President,
Please find below my suggestion for fixing America ‘s economy. Instead of giving billions of dollars to companies that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan. You can call it the “Patriotic Retirement Plan”:
There are about 40 million people over 50 in the work force. Pay them $1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:
1) They MUST retire. Forty million job openings – Unemployment fixed.
2) They MUST buy a new American CAR. Forty million cars ordered – Auto Industry fixed.
3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage -Housing Crisis fixed.
It can’t get any easier than that!!
P.S. If more money is needed, have all members in Congress pay their taxes…
Mr. President, while you’re at it, make Congress retire on Social Security and Medicare. I’ll bet both programs would be fixed pronto!
First Nation?? First Nation (singular)?
As a part French-Canadian descendent of the Mohawk (albeit very remotely), I can assure you, my distant ancestors were not any part of any nation with the Seminoles or Apache or Blackfoot or Utes or any other “indigenous” people. They got their nations, we got our nation. Don’t lump them all into one group.
Bender:
Yes First Nation. First Nation refers to the notion that the British colonial government recognized all the original inhabitants as having dominion over particular terrirtories. Of course there were and are many First Nation communities which each have particular treaties signed that are recognized as binding on governments.
However, the Royal Proclamation which established the basis of negotiations as nation to nation still remains the interpretive guide (at least in Canada) for all subsequent land claims and negotiations even in the Quebec, the Yukon and British Columbia.
See:http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0006990
The Royal Proclamation tends to come under close scrutiny whenever there is cause to examine the legal character of aboriginal land title. In the St Catharine’s Milling case, for example, which became in 1889 the vehicle for the settling of a constitutional dispute between the governments of Ontario and the young Dominion, lawyers for the former argued that the Royal Proclamation was of no force in the legal elaboration of Indian rights. In handing down the opinion of 3 of 7 Canadian Supreme Court judges in 1973, however, Mr Justice Emmett HALL expressed quite a different view of the Proclamation. Responding to a case involving the territorial rights of the Nishga nation, he found that the basic principles of the Royal Proclamation were generally applicable in British Columbia, where most of the land remains uncovered by Indian treaties. If Mr Justice Hall’s view is technically correct, the implications of this are that aboriginal land rights are legally enforceable over other large areas of the country such as the Yukon, the eastern Arctic, parts of Québec and the Maritime provinces. In these regions the treaty-making provisions of the Royal Proclamation have never been implemented.