It appears that Stupak isn't going away:
I was pleased to see that President Obama’s health care proposal did not include several of the sweetheart deals provided to select states in the Senate bill. Unfortunately, the President's proposal encompasses the Senate language allowing public funding of abortion. The Senate language is a significant departure from current law and is unacceptable. While the President has laid out a health care proposal that brings us closer to resolving our differences, there is still work to be done before Congress can pass comprehensive health care reform.
He's still trying to pretend that his Coathanger amendment is really just a reiteration of Hyde, rather than a a proposal that goes far beyond current law. He's not budging, and the question now is how many can he take with him? He says he has as many as 15-20 votes.
The White House hopes the House will take up the Senate version of the health care bill, approve it, and then quickly approve a separate measure making changes to the Senate health legislation that answer House concerns. But Stupak, appearing on Fox News, called the president’s abortion language “unacceptable.”
He said well over a dozen House members will likely balk, not just on abortion but on the residual tax on so-called Cadillac health plans, which he said the House had already rejected. The delayed implementation of that tax – to 2018 in the Obama version – only makes matters worse, Stupak said. Now, some House Democrats are wondering why they should vote at all on legislation that would not take effect even during a second Obama term.
Last night on The Rachel Maddow Show, Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky reiterated that the Stupak language would kill the bill in the House.
"[Stupak's amendment] went way past the current law," Schakowsky told Maddow--adding that Stupak talked several Democrats into thinking his plan was the status quo. "The pro-choice members [of Congress], 42 of us who signed a letter that said we want to maintain the status quo and will not vote for [the bill] if it has the Stupak language."
When Maddow asked Schakowsky whether the pro-choice members of Congress would vote down the health care bill if it included the Stupak language, Schakowsky said they "absolutely" would.
"That is the understanding of those that are working [on the final bill]. It's not going to pass if it has the Stupak language in it."
Impasse? Quite possibly. There are some back up potential plans. For example, BTD has a radical approach to solving Stupak: give up on the exchange structure.
I've discussed this before, but one clear way of addressing the Stupak problem is to replace the subsidies and the exchanges with a further expansion of Medicaid. Remember, the Stupak Amendment is all about preventing subsidy monies from being used to fund private health insurance policies that cover abortion services. Expand Medicaid further, eliminate the subsidies and exchanges, expand the exemption from the individual mandate and you can eliminate the Stupak problem while still meeting the objectives of the current Senate bill. And all of this is doable with a reconciliation fix.
That would maintain the status quo on Hyde, which does restrict access to abortion services for poor women except in cases of rape, incest, or life-endangering illness in the mother, but it wouldn't allow abortion restrictions to bleed into private insurance.
The Stupak problem isn't easily solved. You can get rid of it, as BTD argues, by killing the exchanges or alternatively by not using federal subsidies within it. That would keep the federal funding of abortion issue out of private plans. It might also allow the bill to actually pass, and insurance extended to 31 million more Americans--Stupak would no longer have a basis to fight it. It would still, however, subject many more women to the Hyde restrictions, if Medicaid was the mechanism to extend coverage to them.
It's an intriguing idea, as hard to imagine its adoption is--too much of the foundation of the entire package has been structured on top of the exchange idea. It's hard to see anyone letting go of that one, even for all its Rube Goldberg qualities and the fact that the exchange idea was weakened considerably by the Senate's multiple state-based exchanges, which the Obama plan maintains. Another option would also mean scrapping the exchanges, and going for Medicare buy-in, Medicaid expansion, and more community health center funding in reconciliation. The anti-trust and federal rate review board could be passed as standalones.
The best solution isn't going to happen in the confines of this debate. That's getting rid of Hyde altogether, something neither this administration nor the current Congress has the stomach to do, poor women usually being the least of their concerns.