Capps Amendment 'Best Approach' To Health Reform Abortion Coverage, Opinion Piece Says

Main Category: Abortion
Also Included In: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance;  Sexual Health / STDs
Article Date: 28 Sep 2009 - 0:00 PDT

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Although Republicans in Congress "don't have much hope of derailing health care reform at this point, they still have a shot at seriously limiting women's access to affordable reproductive health care," author Sharon Lerner writes in an opinion piece in The Nation. The "attacks on abortion" and health care reform "seem designed to divide and conquer, forcing pro-choice supporters of the bill to choose a team," Lerner adds. She asks, "But as passage of the bill seems increasingly likely, the question becomes, at what cost?"

Efforts in Congress to attach antiabortion-rights amendments to various versions of the reform bill "have narrowly failed," Lerner notes. However, advocates "fear results could be ... close" for proposed antiabortion-rights amendments to the Senate Finance Committee's bill, which is in the mark-up stage. According to Lerner, as many as four Finance Committee Democrats "could go either way on the issue," and even if the bill passes from the committee without the amendments, "they're almost sure to resurface when the legislation comes up for debate on the Senate floor in coming weeks."

The "best approach" to the issues of abortion and health care reform "would seem to be neutralizing them," which is what Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) "tried to do when similar anti-choice measures came up in the House over the summer," Lerner continues, adding that Capps' amendment "clarified that health reform wouldn't affect the status quo," which "already prohibits using federal funds to pay for abortion in almost all cases." The amendment's language has been "integrated into bills in both the House and the Senate," Lerner says. She adds that the language "promises not to loosen the existing ban on federal funding for abortions, proposing that insurance plans offering abortion coverage keep public and private funds separate and use only the private funds to pay for abortions."

Lerner reports that Judy Waxman, vice president of health and reproductive rights at the National Women's Law Center, said the Capps amendment caused "'great unhappiness'" for abortion-rights advocates, who "hadn't wanted abortion singled out at all." The advocates had preferred that abortion coverage, like coverage for other medical services, be decided by the HHS secretary, Lerner says. They also "worry, reasonably, that the headache of segregating premiums and copays from government funds could dissuade some insurance companies from covering abortion services," she continues. Despite these concerns, abortion-rights groups have "largely held their fire, seeing that, to the extent it circumvented the issue, the Capps language could allow everyone to move past abortion and on to the larger matter at hand," Lerner writes.

However, the Capps amendment was not seen as "a middle ground" by "key antiabortion senators," who rejected the amendment's "main premise: that segregating funds is enough to save the government from the problem of giving money to insurers that cover abortion," according to Lerner. Republican senators have proposed several antiabortion-rights amendments to the Senate Finance Committee's bill, including one that would "specifically invalidate Capps" and one that "declares that if a single dollar of government funds goes to an insurance plan, it shouldn't be able to cover abortions," Lerner says. Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) offered an amendment that "proposes that women obtain abortion coverage through separate riders," which "might seem a reasonable alternative until you consider that no one plans on having an unplanned pregnancy, let alone a dangerous one," Lerner writes, noting that insurance companies are unlikely to offer the riders if few people purchase them.

"Lingering on the question of federal funding for abortion is a politically astute move for desperate reform opponents, since it not only buys time for them but can also mean dividing congressional votes in a novel way," Lerner states. She notes that even some legislators who "consider themselves pro-choice may draw the line at public funding." With a handful of votes "hanging in the balance, the fate of these amendments -- and access to abortion care -- remains in question," Lerner concludes (Lerner, The Nation, 9/24).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.nationalpartnership.org. You can view the entire Daily Women's Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Women's Health Policy Report is a free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.

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