By Dave Andrusko

Part Two looks at more rationing components in the Senate health care restructuring bill. Please send your comments on either part to daveandrusko@gmail.com.  If you'd like, follow me on http://twitter.com/daveha.

"As the Senate prepares to vote on health care reform, American voters 'mostly disapprove' of the plan 53-36 percent and disapprove 56-38 percent of President Barack Obama's handling of the health care issue, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Voters also oppose 72-23 percent using any public money in the health care overhaul to pay for abortions, the independent Quinnipiac University poll finds."
     -- From "U.S. Voters Oppose Health Care Plan By Wide Margin, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; Voters Say 3-1, Plan Should Not Pay For Abortions." [http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1295.xml?ReleaseID=1408]

As these numbers illustrate with crystal clarity, the American public overwhelmingly supports NRLC: it does not want public money paying for abortions as part of any new health care plan. That's important to keep in mind as we move into the next phrase of a protracted battle. Keep the faith, there is a long way to go.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

As a single-issue organization, NRLC does not spend a lot of time discussing the backroom machinations that have reached an apotheosis of sort in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's gargantuan "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" except insofar as it increases the chances of passage of a legislative abomination that flies in the face of popular opinion.

As noted yesterday, the bill is a 2,074 page behemoth, modified by a 383-page "manager's amendment." It needed most of those pages to account for all the unseemly payoffs Reid made to make sure he had 60 votes to invoke cloture (end debate).

Our concern is what this logrolling has produced. In a letter sent to the Senate on December 20 NRLC explained that it viewed a vote for cloture on the manager's amendment "as a vote to advance legislation to allow the federal government to subsidize private insurance plans that cover abortion on demand, to oversee multi-state plans that cover elective abortions, and to empower federal officials to mandate that private health plans cover abortions even if they do not accept subsidized enrollees."

As explained at http://nrlactioncenter.com Reid's manager's amendment modified the abortion-related provisions found in the original Reid bill from November 18 "but did not correct them." NRLC and other pro-life organizations strongly oppose the measure which faces two remaining procedural hurdles. (See below.)

Pro-abortion congressional leaders are pushing against public opinion, both on the mammoth health care restructuring bill in general and its advancement of abortion in particular. The numbers keep plummeting, as has the popularity of pro-abortion President Barack Obama, who has made its passage his highest priority.

In addition to disapproval of his handling of health care reform, there is this: "The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 25% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-six percent (46%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -21 That's the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President."

What should we say at this stage? Writing in today's Wall Street Journal Bret Stephens reminds us on two complementary truths: "just as bad ideas never quite go out of fashion, neither do good ones."

We can chalk up the truth that bad ideas are like hardy perennials to a host of factors, starting with our fallen human nature. (No need to cite that depressingly long list of character faults!)

But it is more important that good ideas, especially those rooted in the virtues of honesty, generosity, courage, and faithfulness are no less resilient and will carry the day. To be sure, my guess is that within days-to-weeks any number of pro-abortion Democrats will start sweating their support for the proposal for less elevated reasons: electoral self-preservation.

But the concern of pro-lifers is grounded in nobler soil--the sure knowledge that we are in this together. Sooner or later it will dawn on people that it is, at best, farcical, at worse, schizophrenic, to sell health care restructuring as a way of ensuring that more people have health care at the same time this revamping makes it possible to lethally exclude more and more of the littlest Americans.

Please go to http://nrlactioncenter.com and make sure you again contact your elected officials. There you will read, "The legislation now faces an additional 60-vote procedural hurdle, leading up to a vote on passage of the Senate bill on Christmas eve."

Don't be discouraged. This is only one phase of a battle that will extend for weeks and quite possibly months to come.

Part Two