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PolitiFact adopts odd premises to
dispute one NRLC statement about the
abortion-related effects of the Baucus health care
bill,
while approving of another NRLC statement
WASHINGTON (September 22, 2009) -- On September
21, 2009,
PolitiFact released two "Truth-O-Meter" ratings on two
statements made by the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) about
the new health care restructuring bill, the "America's Healthy
Future Act," proposed by Senator Max Baucus (D-Mt.). Both
statements appeared in
the same September 16 NRLC press release. This is the NRLC
statement that
PolitiFact rated as "true":
The Baucus bill "contains provisions
that would send massive federal subsidies directly to both
private insurance plans and government-chartered
cooperatives that pay for elective abortion."
"Under the Baucus bill...federal funds
would subsidize coverage of elective abortions."
PolitiFact reached these seemingly contradictory
conclusions by buying into the fiction that the federal
government can use federal funds to help purchase private health
insurance plans that cover elective abortions, and yet not
"subsidize coverage of elective abortions." This is the kind of
argument that most journalists and policymakers would not accept
for one minute if it was advanced by a private entity that
wished to receive a federal subsidy while continuing to engage
in activities that are contrary to federal public policy with
respect to, for example, race discrimination (e.g., the
federal tax exemption at stake in the famous Bob Jones
University case) or sex discrimination (e.g., Grove City
College, in another famous case in which the federal subsidy
consisted of individual students who had received Pell grants).
Likewise, the Hyde Amendment and similar laws
embody a policy view that abortion is a bad thing, to be
discouraged. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that no
constitutional principle is violated when the
government advances "a value judgment favoring childbirth over
abortion, and . . . implement[ing] that judgment by the
allocation of public funds" (Maher v. Roe), and "by
means of unequal subsidization of abortion and other medical
services, encourages alternative activity deemed in the public
interest" (Harris v. McRae, upholding the Hyde
Amendment).
We believe that when the federal government pays
for insurance, the federal government pays for what the
insurance pays for. Therefore, since the Baucus bill would
spend federal funds to pay part of the premium cost of private
plans that cover elective abortion, the federal government would
indeed be subsidizing "coverage of elective abortions,"
regardless of how the insurer keeps his books.
The various PolitiFact articles about the
abortion-related controversies in the health care bills are
consolidated on one page
here. If you read them all you may get vertigo, because
PolitiFact's understanding of these matters is sophisticated on
some points, but shallow and muddled on others. Even now, it
appears that they have not completely grasped that under the
House bill (H.R. 3200), as amended by the Capps Amendment, the
"public plan" would be explicitly authorized to cover elective
abortions, and that
the funds
used to pay for the abortions would be legally and in every
ordinary use of the term "federal funds" -- thus, the
"public plan" would be engaged in direct federal funding of
abortion on demand.
In other words, the House bill explicitly
authorizes direct federal funding of elective abortion, through
the public plan, and this problem is entirely separate and
distinct from the problems that arise from the premium-subsidy
program. Since PolitiFact still doesn't fully recognize that,
it is not too surprising that they are confused about the more
complicated Baucus arrangement.
Part of PolitiFact's ongoing confusion may be the
product of a faulty and arbitrary premise, found in this
statement in the next-to-last paragraph in this
article: ". . . we think the court of common sense says
that if someone claims abortion would be subsidized with federal
funds, it suggests more federal tax dollars would pour into
plans that cover abortion."
This "more federal tax dollars" test is
misconceived and indeed untenable. Before
the Hyde
Amendment took effect in 1977, the federal Medicaid program
was paying for 300,000 elective abortions a year, but under
this arbitrary PolitiFact definition, the federal Medicaid
program never actually "subsidized abortion with federal
funds"! That's because the federal Medicaid program saved money
every time it paid for an abortion, because it is much cheaper
to kill an unborn child than to pay for prenatal care and
childbirth.
According to
a 2007 article, the average cost of prenatal care and
childbirth for a Medicaid client is $6,719. The average cost
of a first-trimester abortion is under $500. The figures were
lower in earlier decades, but the ratio was roughly the same.
So when the federal Medicaid program paid for an abortion, it
saved Medicaid money. Still, it requires the use of very
tortured logic and a contrived terminology to deny that the
federal Medicaid program was subsidizing abortion prior to the
enactment of the Hyde Amendment.
We hope that the PolitiFact editors will
reconsider the practice of filtering our discourse through
their fallacious assumptions about what they think the
pro-life side is trying to achieve or what they think we are
implying, rather than looking at what we actually say and at
the meaning of words like "subsidize" and "federal funds" as
they appear in standard reference sources, unrelated to the
current debate over abortion policy. Contrary to the
perhaps unconscious assumption that the PolitiFact reporters
and editors seem to be imposing on this debate, the Hyde
Amendment and similar pro-life amendments were not advanced
to save "tax dollars." They were advanced to save lives.
When we now talk about the provisions of the
various health care bills, using definitions of "subsidy" and
"federal funds" that have long been accepted with respect to
innumerable government programs, we are not engaged in
falsehood. The skeptical scrutiny ought to fall on those who,
in order to advance their goal of having the government begin
subsidizing abortion-covering plans, want to impose novel and
contrived definitions of what constitutes a "subsidy" and what
constitutes "federal funds."
When the government helps pay for insurance, the
government subsidizes coverage of whatever the insurance
covers. When the federal government gives money to a health
insurer to help pay for a plan that covers elective abortion, it
is indeed a subsidy of elective abortion coverage, in the
ordinary English meaning of the term "subsidy," even if the cost
to the government is the same as the subsidy that would be paid
for some other plan that does not cover abortion.
To go to the Abortion in Health
Care index, click
here.
To go to the NRLC Home page, click
here.
To go to the NRLC Legislative Action Center, click
here. |
