One Premium, Two Checks: How Abortion Will Be Paid For Under The Nelson Compromise

It's still fucking stupid, getting tied in knots over this. The result will be the same as Stupak. Unless somehow the insurance companies are going to keep the premium the same for a plan that covers abortion and one that doesn't, nobody is going to pay an additional charge each month in case of one procedure. And it's likely that a lot of plans simply won't offer it. Either way, people will end up just paying for it out of pocket, which means fewer abortions, and more more-expensive births.

I think we have the perfect compromise. When you have Stupak and Planned Parenthood pissed off, that means it works.

Midnight, it appears to me that the insurance exchange will be able to have policies that include abortion in the benefits. If someone or their employer is going to pay the premium, then only a single check would have to be sent. Under the Stupak plan, policies that included abortion benefits could not be offered in the insurance exchange, even if federal money was not being used to pay the premium.

If the person that selected the policy with abortion benefits is getting a subsidy from the federal government to pay the premium, they would have to pay the additional $50 that covers abortion benefits separately.

I can accept this compromise. It reminds me of the supplemental Medicare insurance policies that many buy to increase coverage. We really do not know what the premium would be for the additional abortion coverage, that $50 number was just an arbitrary number used as an example. The abortion premium would likely be much less, $600 a year sounds a little high.

Pro-Life has been trying to decades to bump choice issues to the state level where they can try to pick off women's rights one state at a time. Some politicians on the national level have been arguing for the same so they can duck choice issues. Obama and company have been playing around trying to find a method to take the fight for women's rights off the polical agenda. They just committed suicide among pro-choice voters. I am voting for any polician who votes for any measure with this in it.

It is stunning to me that you are all sitting here staring the symptom in the face while failing to recognize the disease.

This is exactly what's wrong with turning "health care" into a political issue: Your health care becomes -- duh -- politicized. At the moment the issue is abortion. Tomorrow it will be something else, and something else a day later.

Passing this bill -- and the next one, and the one after that -- doesn't end any of this. It just starts it. This is how it will be from here out. You will have no more decisions to make concerning your own body. They will be in the hands of your neighbors and all the other human beings with whom you happen to share a map -- human beings who just five years ago proved capable of electing a George W. Bush.

I don't get it. I don't get why you want it. This is what we're in for now: an eternity of arguing with each other about what we get to do with our bodies.

It's not what the American experiment was meant to be about.

Oops. Now that Boxer likes it, look for LIEberman to find some way to oppose it. When will then learn to keep their mouths shut until cloture?

What I'd really like to see (short of getting the Hyde Amendment 86'd entirely): You know that check-off they have on tax forms to approve paying a buck of your refund into the election fund? If we had one of those for abortions--free and on demand (like every other medical service should be)--it would probably be running a surplus year to year, and Senator Nelson et al.'s dainty little dollars wouldn't be sullied by association with it.

Yeah, probably wouldn't happen. But I'd love to see how the "Not with our tax dollars" crowd tries to rationalize shutting it out.

Why not simply do "Medicare for all" and avoid the abortion fracas?

Because that would take leadership. These are Democrats, remember?

Let's tell the truth here: Abortion is Murder, plain and simple. No insurance plan should fund murder. Anyone who wants to use public funds to fund abortion, is sanctioning paid first degree murder.

Same BS, different wording. The more the government gets involved in matters, the worse things become. Health care is a joke, and its what the politicians have created with all these laws and regulations. This country is going down the toilet

This is nothing more than an attempt to "shame" the people who are pro-choice and not just pro-birth. It is based on religious convictions, not real-life.

Why? Pro-Birth means you want that baby born no matter what. Pro-Life means you want that baby taken care of from birth to death.

BIG DIFFERENCE.

If I'm reading this right, only prochoice women of child-bearing age who can afford it will choose the abortion coverage. Since it's not spread over a large population, the coverage will probably be expensive. Seems like the Operation Rescue folks might start targeting women who have this insurance as "potential murderers". This is gonna be a nightmare!

I wonder if they'll have policies that will cover men, when they father a child?

The common argument being put forth in this threat is that since "I am opposed to X, therefore I do not want my tax dollars paying for X" is ridiculous. Using public funds to pay for abortion coverage is just one of many "controversial" policies that the government spends public money on? If you oppose the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, should the government have to collect a separate portion of your taxes in order to satiate your desire for not spending your tax dollars on that particular policy? Suppose you disagree with the idea of national parks and public lands, should those monies be segregated as well? I could continue this argument ad infinitum but I think the point is pretty clear here.

Now, to speak to abortion specifically. I am a male, and I personally do not like the idea of abortion and would encourage any woman in my life not to have one. Ultimately, however, I vehemently support the right for a woman to choose simply because each person is lord of their own body and should be free to do anything with it as they please free from outside interference. Nobody should have the right to impose their personal morality upon another.