Is the Price of Bipartisanship Eliminating Insurance Coverage for Abortion?
Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., ordered Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., to stop chasing Republican votes for the Committee’s health care bill. Reid’s leadership style doesn’t lend itself to direct confrontations and the Committee’s reluctance to include a robust public health insurance option, its lackluster affordability measures, dubious financing mechanisms and insistence on delivering a bill under $1 trillion, may have forced Reid’s hand. The truth is, despite attempts to “chase” down conservative votes, opponents of reform will continue to argue that greater government involvement in health care will lead to rationing of care and denial of coverage. Just listen to Finance Committee member Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who says that a government-run health care system would place a bureaucrat between “you and your doctor,” a claim he repeated at least four times during a recent interview on Fox News. Hatch isn’t just stubborn, he’s hypocr
