Or if it is, its not an extension by the Stupak Amendment.
You can make a technical case for that. Except that the amendment is to a bill that will likely dump people from private to public plans and that was not an unknown at the time the amendment was negotiated.
Its just maintaining the idea of no federal funds for abortion.
Again, you can make a technical case. Except when the Act causes state programs to be switched to federal payment mechanisms. The more stuff you put under federal funds, the more pregnancies are affected. It doesn't change the Hyde terms. It just increases the size of the covered pool. I will grant you that as an unknown, though, at the time of the amendment.
By "that portion" do you mean 100% of the cost of the abortion?
I meant the portion of the premium that comes from abortion coverage, not the cost of the abortion. I don't see how that could be construed as federal funding of abortion. The share of the premium cost, paid out of private funds, in total would pay for 100 percent of the total cost of all abortions, assuming that the share were calculated correctly, which would be easy enough to do. (They could tack on an extra amount if they wanted to be absolutely sure not to dip into public funds during a banner abortion year.) The payment for any individual abortion would come from the extra premiums paid by all covered women, most of whom would not be having abortions. Abortions aren't like mammograms, after all, not something that every woman gets every year. Most women never need one but they would be paying the premium as insurance, (real insurance in the traditional meaning of the term <g>).
That's not much different from segregating the plans. With separate plans, though, there's more overhead, which means greater cost, and an easier political target meaning that such supplemental plans might not be readily available. |
