ABORTION/GOP/HEALTHCARE/OBAMACARE(ACA): “Abortion flared up Wednesday [6-21-17] as the latest hot-button issue to complicate passage of a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, which Senate Republican leaders hope to unveil on Thursday and pass next week.
The repeal bill approved last month by the House would bar the use of federal tax credits to help purchase insurance plans that include coverage of abortion. But senators said that provision might have to be jettisoned from their version because of complicated Senate rules that Republicans are using to expedite passage of the bill and avoid a filibuster.
If that provision is dropped, a bill that has already elicited deep misgivings among moderate Republicans — and stiff resistance from Democrats, health care providers and patient advocacy groups — could also generate concern among abortion opponents, as well as conservative lawmakers.
Further complicating the measure’s prospects, insurance companies, which took a leading role in the health care fights of 1993-94 and 2009-10 but have been conspicuously quiet this year, released a blistering letter objecting to Republican plans to remake Medicaid and cut its funding.
The changes being considered in Congress could ‘amount to a 25 percent shortfall in covering the actual cost of providing care to our nation’s neediest citizens,’ the top executives of 10 insurance companies wrote this week. ‘These amounts spell deep cuts, not state flexibilities, in Medicaid.’ “
-Robert Pear and Thomas Kaplan, “Abortion Adds Obstacle as Republicans Plan to Unveil Health Bill,” The New York Times online, June 21, 2017