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Senate Leader Announces Health-Care Bill
Posted by Adele Stan on November 18, 2009 at 4:12 PM.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that his Democratic caucus was ready to begin debate on a health-care bill that will be made public later this evening.

Reid told reporters that the bill contains a public option with an opt-out provisions whereby state legislatures could deny citizens participation in the plan.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill will cost $849 billion.

Reid made his announcement this evening surrounded by a group of senators, including Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who wrote the health-care legislation that came out of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that was chaired by the late Ted Kennedy, for whom health-care reform was a life-long goal. Other senators, all Democrats, around the podium included Sen. Patty Murray, Wash.; Al Franken, Minn.; Chuck Schumer, N.Y.; Debbie Stabenow, Mich., and Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin, Ill.

Absent from the scene were the Senate's most ardent pro-choice women senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein of California. Also absent was Sen. Jay Rockefeller, W.V., who opposed the Senate Finance Committee bill for its lack of a public option -- a situation Reid has attempted to remedy with this opt-out provision. Rockefeller is regarded as the Senate's health-care scholar.

Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, Mont., was notably absent, as well, though for family reasons. Dodd said that Baucus' mother was ill, and that accounted for his absence. The bill that Reid announced today melds Dodd's HELP Committee bill with the one crafted by Baucus' committee.

Reid promised that the bill would be available to the public online later this evening.

C-SPAN has the video here of Reid's press announcement.

Stupak Amendment Could End Abortion Coverage -- For Everyone
Posted by Daniela Perdomo, AlterNet on November 18, 2009 at 12:00 AM.

A little over a week ago, Democrats bent over backwards to appease conservatives in the House by adding the Stupak-Pitt amendment to the health care bill. The amendment imperils access to abortion -- a reproductive freedom affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1973 -- by making it illegal for women to use government insurance plans to cover costs associated with an abortion. 

And there is more bad news for women: a George Washington University study released this week indicates that the Stupak amendment could have serious implications for industry-wide coverage of medically-indicated abortions.

But if the GWU study is correct, the Stupak amendment would not simply affect women under the public insurance option -- it would affect women covered by private insurance plans, too:

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »