I congratulate them, too. (4.00 / 1)

Well done, Speaker Pelosi!

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by: Joel @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 at 07:49:40 AM CDT

I'm sure she did the best she could (4.00 / 4)

... and things will get a bit better for more people, but I don't really feel like celebrating anything today.

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by: Natasha Chart @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 at 09:59:00 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

I'm celebrating (0.00 / 0)

that things will get better for more people.

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by: Joel @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 at 11:06:50 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Sixteen million poor people just got free healthcare through Medicaid (0.00 / 0)

paid for by a tax on the investment income of the wealthy.

I can celebrate that!  That is some seriously progressive shit.

I want to know more about whether the Nelson provisions are really likely to end all abortion coverage by health insurers.  I hope that that was a heat-of-battle claim, a possible outcome more than a likely one.  But that analysis is yet to come, I think.  We do know that the whole pro-choice caucus voted for this bill, and that Pelosi controlled the negotiations.  I think choice has survived.

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by: texas dem @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 at 12:47:38 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Per NOW's recent statement, (2.00 / 2)

"The bill contains a sweeping anti-abortion provision. Contrary to the talking points circulated by congressional leaders, the bill passed today ultimately achieves the same outcome as the infamous Stupak-Pitts Amendment, namely the likely elimination of all private as well as public insurance coverage for abortion. It imposes a bizarre requirement on insurance plan enrollees who buy coverage through the health insurance exchanges to write two monthly checks (one for an abortion care rider and one for all other health care). Even employers will have to write two separate checks for each of their employees requesting the abortion rider."

Link:   http://www.now.org/press/03-10...

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by: sb @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 at 13:48:51 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Choice, dying by inches, is already a near fiction for many (4.00 / 5)

If you can't get something, choice is meaningless. Right now, for example, 87 percent of counties don't have any facilities that perform abortions, and a third of US women live in them.

Because the required travel costs more, and takes more time to raise money for, women may require later term abortions. Both later term abortions and abortions with complications can run many thousands of dollars, which just isn't an amount many families can pay up front.

There's more about the Nelson language here, but the two-check rule, as well as the mandate that equivalent plans be made available that don't cover abortion, means that a lot of women will find themselves needing an abortion that their employer or male head of household already decided not to bother covering. That's two levels of approval a woman has to go through, as well as facing the social stigma of even wanting the option.

The administrative overhead will be such that it isn't even clear many providers will offer such coverage. And the likelihood that only a very small pool of people will even be willing to purchase it guarantees higher costs anyway.

The promise from the administration and Congressional leadership at the beginning was that this bill would be choice-neutral and that people could keep the coverage they had. It isn't choice-neutral, and it will strip abortion coverage from many women who have it. We were lied to and sold out.

Further, reproductive justice advocates were hoping to campaign against the Hyde amendment. Now, Obama has forestalled action on that until 2014.

And let's take on that class issue. Of the women who get abortions, 61% are already mothers who don't believe they can care for their families adequately with another mouth to feed. This bill has taken contraception coverage out of the required benefits, and IIRC, the expanded conscience clause would pre-empt state mandates for contraception mitigating this. Further, women with one child often find, or know already, that having a second child can mean extreme damage to her future income potential, with the pay and promotion discrimination extended to mothers increasing near exponentially with further children.

It's a recipe for permanent impoverishment of women and their families, so we can expect to see the number of poor people under that threshold go up. Instead of making it easier for women to delay childbearing, and many women who have abortions go on to have children later when they're better situated, this bill makes it more likely that they'll be stuck in a lifelong cycle of poverty that their children will inherit.

Reproductive health care and empowerment to determine their own family spacing is the core issue of female poverty, as well as the feminization of poverty. The president and Congress decided that didn't matter, though.

And as an aside, the bill also did very little for those 55-64, many of whom have been rendered all but unemployable by the recession and the higher costs of their coverage compared to younger workers.

So while there's help in it, while there's a team victory in it, this bill perpetuates both corporate rent-seeking and systemic discrimination against women. Being probably the only bite at the apple we'll get, yes, I'm angry. Having been defined as some wiggy, far left-wing thing, when it's the unholy love child of Romney and McCain's plans, yes, I'm angry.

This was handled badly and the 'center' has been pushed farther towards unapologetic misogyny. So no, I'm not happy.

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by: Natasha Chart @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 at 14:35:44 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Payback time for Larry Kissell (0.00 / 0)

Back in 2006, Larry Kissell in NC seemed to me to be a congressional candidate who was for the working man. And so even though I live in California, I donated nearly $2000 to him across the 2006 and 2008 cycles. Bigger fool me.

I'm one of those who got mail from Chris Bowers late in 2009 informing me that I am entitled to call his campaign and ask for my money back. Nothing is higher priority to me this week, but can someone provide me with evidence that I really do have the right to have the money returned ? Is there some FEC regulation that stipulates this ?  

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by: pfk001sm @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 at 08:55:46 AM CDT

Kick ass and take names (4.00 / 2)

The most important benefit of the vote may not have been even the bits of reform in it but the first partial shedding of the "wimp" coat Democrats have been wearing forever.  For good or for ill, we saw some courage.  Not as much as we wanted but some.

Now is not the time to let up the pressure.

Please note:

Every Republican and 34 Blue Dog Democrats voted last night in favor of keeping the "Cornhusker Kickback" and the "Louisiana Purchase."  If they try to obstruct the reconciliation in the Senate, they should be hammered to death with this.

sTiVo's rule: Just because YOU "wouldn't put it past 'em" doesn't prove that THEY did it.

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by: sTiVo @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 at 09:09:52 AM CDT

I would also very much recommend RH Reality Check's Kos diary, (0.00 / 0)

"Who is Bart Stupak?"
Link: http://www.dailykos.com/story/...

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by: sb @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 at 09:41:08 AM CDT

Good diary (4.00 / 6)

Especially this part:

If nothing else, the controversy generated by Stupak's agenda, and the loss of trust by pro-choice women in the Democratic party as a result of concessions to both Stupak and Senator Ben Nelson both should serve to illustrate to the Democratic leadership the implications for the party of supporting candidates who depart from the Democratic platform on sexual and reproductive health, if in fact it can be assumed these issues are more than nominally still part of the platform at this date.

Montani semper liberi

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by: Sadie Baker @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 at 10:14:23 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Me too (4.00 / 2)

I don't have much to say, except that I agree wholeheartedly with Sadie -- this is a good diary, pitch perfect for the morning after. I also agree with Paul's diary below. We don't really know what all the repercussions from this will be, but I think that it's safe to say that in engaging in this fight as heatedly as some of these cretins in the Congress did, they seemed to forget that people were watching them, and in watching them, had a much closer view of their real allegiances and priorities than the PR machinery of the corporate state ordinarily allows.

Yes, there will be repercussions. How can there not be, now that we know precisely who wears a toupee, who gets his pocket money from Big Pharma, and who hates women? It may be too soon to be hopeful, but I do think that the papering over process this time will have a lot more lumps in it than it would have had even a year ago.

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by: William Timberman @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 at 11:33:20 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Thanks, Natasha (4.00 / 1)

for telling it like it is.

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by: joanneleon @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 at 11:52:34 AM CDT