Folks, there’s much more to be concerned about with the current Senate health care reform bill than just federal abortion coverage. National Right to Life has an analysis:
State commissioners of the new health insurance exchanges created by the bill would be given power to deny people who are trying to obtain policies in the exchange the option of choosing health plans less likely to deny treatment, by limiting what they would be allowed to pay for such policies.
In response to public reaction over the summer denouncing efforts to encourage patients to agree to reject treatment as a way of saving costs, the Senate avoided including the “advance care planning” provisions still in the House bill. Instead, it has sought to achieve a similar result under a different name, Under the title “Shared Decisionmaking,” the bill funds and promotes “patient decision aids” to “help” patients make treatment decisions.
A Medicare Advisory Board is established to force Medicare payments below the rate of medical inflation.
Even more details and documentation can be found here: http://www.nrlc.org/healthcarerationing/reidsubstitute.html and at the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics blog
