Roundup: The Slippery Slope of Abortion Coverage In Insurance

Feb 18, 2010, 11:09am

Rachel Larris

Kansas lawmakers are starting to use the same language about tax dollars to apply to private health insurance coverage of abortion services.

Last
week we pointed
out what may become the only "reform" imposed in the health insurance
industry, the removal of coverage of abortion services from both public and
private insurance policies.

Yesterday
there was a debate in the Kansas House over a bill that would prohibit
insurance providers from "covering most elective abortions under basic Kansas
healthcare policies."

An
amendment proposed by Rep. Peter DeGraaf, R-Mulvane, would require people to
buy an insurance rider in anticipation of an abortion after July 1. The
exception to the extra-coverage mandate on abortions would be to save the life
of the mother. A woman or child who is victim of rape or incest would have to
be covered by a rider to press a claim if she chose to abort the fetus. In the
alternative, a female would have to pay for an abortion with cash.

"I
don’t think the rest of society should have to pay for abortions," DeGraaf
said. "There are plenty of insurance companies that want to make
money."

His
measure, passed 73-45, would apply to all health plans in Kansas.

Notice
the shift in rhetoric around abortion and health insurance. When the debate was
about the federal healthcare reform bills, the argument for the Stupak-Pitts
Amendment was that the federal government shouldn’t force tax payers to
subsidize abortion coverage for women — even if in reality women would be
paying for insurance with their own money. This was an argument about the
use of tax dollars only.

Now
watch how Rep. DeGraaf is changing the debate for those who pay into insurance
as subsidizing others’ coverage – which under his reasoning should give them
some "right" to control other people’s insurance policies. Anti-choice
lawmakers are now using the same language for tax dollars and applying it to
private monies.

Rep.
Peggy Mast, R-Emporia, said Kansas policyholders opposed to abortion shouldn’t
be compelled to underwrite the procedure.

"For
those of us who believe it’s a moral issue," she said, "it’s discriminatory
to force us to pay higher insurance rates."

Thankfully other Kansas lawmakers knew exactly how to point out the absurdity of requiring
riders for individual medical procedures.

Two House members opposed to the abortion amendment responded by inserting
"poison pills" into the underlying bill to damage chances of passing
the final product.

Rep.
Barbara Bollier, R-Mission Hills, gained approval of an amendment requiring
smokers to buy supplemental insurance for treatment of heart disease, emphysema
and other ailments linking to tobacco. Not to be outdone, Rep. Ann Mah,
D-Topeka, obtained sufficient support for an amendment mandating insurance
riders for men requiring treatment for erectile dysfunction.

In the
end, perhaps because, as Republican Rep. Virgil Peck put it, the new amendment for
riders for erectile dysfunction "won’t stand up on its own" the bill was sent back to committee.

Bonus item: The
town of Apex, North Carolina, which recently voted to end coverage of elective
abortions for their employees, couldn’t even agree to get
an opinion from the state’s attorney general on their recent actions.

February 18, 2010

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