Health Care Updates
ENDI 4-Week
EMORY
AP 
Uniqueness Updates:
Will Pass
Health Care Will Pass ............................................................................................................................................. 2
Health Care Will Pass- Public option ..................................................................................................................... 3
Health Care Will Pass- Republican Support ........................................................................................................... 4
Health Care Will Pass- Obama Support .................................................................................................................. 5
Won't Pass
Health Care Won’t Pass ....................................................................................................................................... 6-8
Health Care Won’t Pass- Conservative Democrats ................................................................................................ 9
Not Uniqueness:
Healthcare Bad for Econ and Jobs ........................................................................................................................ 10
Healthcare solves Abortion ................................................................................................................................... 11
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Health Care Updates
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EMORY
AP 
Health Care Will Pass
Healthcare will pass- there are multiple mechanisms
Silver 7/20/09 A.B., Economics at University of Chicago
[Nate, “Rumors of the Demise of ObamaCare Have Been Greatly Exaggerated” <http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/07/rumors-of-demise-of-obamacarehave-been.html>]
The beltway consesnsus seems to be that the Democrats' prospects of passing meaningful health insurance reform this year have
become much slimmer, if they haven't already entirely evaporated. Like Ezra Klein, however, I'm not really sure what everyone
was expecting. There is a lot of money -- and political capital -- at stake here. Were opponents of health care reform going to roll
over and play dead? Has anything proceeded that differently from how we might have expected it to proceed ahead of
time?
Over at Intrade, the bettors currently assign a 43 percent chance that a health care bill with a public option will be passed
by the end of the year. There is no market, unfortunately, on the prospects for passage of a bill without a public option (something
which could still happen under any number of scenarios). What's interesting about this contract, though, is that it's not particularly
higher or lower than it has ever been. Sure, health care has had a bit of a rough go of things of late, but perhaps not a particularly
rougher go than we should have been "pricing in" to our expectations: I had argued previously that Obama should have done more
to frame the debate and put a particular health care bill in front of Congress, rather than letting Congress handle it themselves.
Maybe health care would be in a little bit better shape right now if he had done that and maybe it wouldn't; we'll never really be
able to test the counterfactual. But because he didn't do that, Obama still has most of his tactical flexibility intact. And there are at
least four scenarios under which health care reform could still pass this year:
1. Whip Democrats Into Submission. This is
probably the closest thing to the default approach. So long as there are a dozen or a half-dozen different iterations of health care
floating around Capitol Hill, individual Democratic Congressmen can afford to bargain for their preferred version. "Progressive" Democrats
from rich districts can object to the plan of raising taxes on the very wealthy to pay for expanded coverage. Labor-backed Democrats can try and
play hardball on any proposal to remove the benefits tax exemption. The Blue Dogs can howl at the moon for whatever it is they want -- probably
some kind of sweeteners for rural districts, like the ones given to farm-state Democrats on the climate bill. And advocates of the public option
can continue to treat it as a sine qua non and threaten to oppose any bill that doesn't include one.
Once a particular bill is put up to a
vote, however, the overwhelming majority of Democrats are going to have a difficult time voting against it. Health care reform
remains quite popular in theory and at least marginally popular in practice. It will probably do the most good for those districts
where conservative Democrats tend to reside.
And then there is the oldest motivator of all: survival. The failure of health care
reform in 1994 may have damaged Bill Clinton -- but it really damaged the Congressional Democrats, who lost 54 seats in the
House and another 8 in the Senate. Of the 36 incumbent Democrats who lost that year, only four (North Carolina's David Price,
Ohio's Ted Strickland and Washington's Maria Cantwell and Jay Inslee) would ever return to the Congress (whereas Clinton, of
course, was re-elected). Any Democrat who votes against health care, moreover, can expect to be permanently shut off from the
Obama-run DNC and from most or all grassroots fundraising drives, and many of them can probably expect a primary
challenger.
There are probably some Democrats who would be better off if health care went away. But once it comes up to
vote, I'd imagine there will be very few who are actually better off voting against it.
2. Reconciliation. This is not necessarily
mutually exclusive with the other scenarios, but Obama could try and use the reconciliation process to pass health care, which
would mean Republicans would lose the ability to filibuster in the Senate and Democrats would need only need 50 votes for
passage. This is risky: the extent to which the bill remained intact would depend upon the rulings of the obscure Senate Parliamentarian, and
going through reconciliation would cause mayhem on the Hill with somewhat unpredictable political consequences. And it would certainly look
overtly partisan -- especially now that Democrats have gained their 59th and 60th seats in the Senate. But if Obama decides that health care is too
big to fail, reconciliation is an option.
3. Wyden-Bennett and Other "Bipartisan" Approaches.. I don't see any particular reason why
the Administration couldn't press the reset button and push for a different sort of health care bill -- particularly Ron Wyden's,
which already has a half-dozen Republican supporters. In fact, it might make Obama look somewhat good to "acknowledge the
political realities" (yadda yadda) and adopt a more "bipartisan" approach. A lot of Republicans claim to support health care -- just
not the particular approach being put forth by the Democratic Congress. Shifting gears, particularly to a bill like Wyden-Bennett
that is strong on cost containment, would reveal many of them to be hypocrites, but probably also secure enough of their votes to
make passage a likelihood.
4. Hope the Economy Gets Better (or Some Other Secular Change in Momentum). In general, I'm
pessimistic about the state of the economy insofar as it will affect Obama's political capital. Even if the economy formally pulls out of a recession
-- some economists think we're already out of the recession -- it will take some time before the employment picture turns around. The past week,
however, has brought some relatively good economic news and the Dow is now hovering at about 8,800 points, around its 6-month highs. If the
next monthly jobs report is better than expected, if the Dow somehow rallies past 10,000, or if the recession is declared over, that might give
Obama a little bit of actual momentum which may be amplified by the Washington press corps, which by that point will have tired of the "Obama
is melting!" storyline and may be looking to describe his "comeback" instead.
* * *
I'm not about to go out on a limb with some sort
of prediction that health care is going to pass this year. It could very easily fail. But it's not going to fail without the White House
fighting like mad for it, and with most or all of its options being exhausted. The fundamental weakness of the White House press
corps is that they can rarely see beyond the current 24-hour news cycle -- there are still a lot of news cycles ahead before
ObamaCare can be put to rest.
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AP 
Health Care Will Pass- Public option
US Health Care will pass- public option
Stephanopoulos 6/21/2009 ABC News Correspondent
[George “Graham'Government-Run' Health Care Won't Pass Senate” <http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/06/grahamgovernmentrun-health-care-wont-pass-senate.html
However Graham left the door open on a co-op proposal floated by Sen. Kent Conrad, D- N.D. Debating Graham on "This Week"
Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who is filling in for Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., as the Obama administration's point person in the
Senate on the health reform legislation, argued the public option isn't dead, despite widespread opposition from Republicans and
some Democrats in Congress. "I'm delighted to hear Lindsey talk about the possibility of having something like a co-op and nonprofits," Dodd told me, "I happen to support a public option, I don't think you can bring down costs without it. If there isn't some
competition out there to drive down the overall cost -- costs have gone up 86 percent since '96, 1996. Forty-five percent might
stay the loan, increase in health care cost. The American average working family can't afford this. A family of four now it's
$12,000. We're being told in 20 years, it could be half the gross income of a family spent on health care premiums. That is just
unacceptable." Dodd blasted Republicans for labeling the public option as "socialized medicine." "No one I know is for socialized
medicine. We're going to develop a U.S. plan, not a Canadian or a U.K. plan, one that meets our needs in our country. It's
designed for Americans, by Americans, that isn't socialized medicine. But you've got to drive down these costs. We need quality,
accessible health care in bringing down those costs are absolutely critical, or we're going to bankrupt the country. It's
unsustainable. That's why we're at the table," Dodd told me.
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Health Care Updates
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EMORY
AP 
Health Care Will Pass- Republican Support
The health care bill is worth fighting for and will pass- republicans acknowledge
Stein 7/16/09 Huffington Post Writer
[Sam “GOP Lawmaker Admits Congress Will Pass Democratic Health Care Bill” Huffington Post
A Democratic-endorsed health care bill will pass both the House of Representatives and the Senate this month, one of the White
House's main Republican critics in Congress acknowledged on Thursday morning.
In an appearance on MSNBC lamenting the type of health care legislation currently being pushed by Democrats in the House, Rep.
Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) made an admission that seems to go against the current conventional wisdom.
"We'll get [a health care bill] through the House and Senate this month," he said, defying the usual predictions heard from leading
Republicans or skeptical Democrats. Hoekstra would add that it is unlikely that legislators would be able to have a bill on the
president's desk before the August recess. But the White House's own timetable doesn't call for that.
"We've known for years that we were going to reach this fork in the road where we were either going to reform health care, we
were going to provide more options to individuals, more affordable options for individuals to choose their health care, or we were
going to create a government-run health care where the government would be making those decisions for us," Hoekstra said.
"President Obama, the Democrats in the House and the Senate, have clearly chosen the government-run option. That is why they're
in such a hurry to move this program through the House, through the Senate, and get it to his desk."
Hoekstra's admission that the two chambers of Congress are likely to pass their respective health care bills within the next month is
one of the few times that a lawmaker has pulled back the curtain to reveal exactly where the legislative process currently stands.
Passage in the House and Senate would set the stage for reconciling the separate bills in conference committee once the August
recess is over.
One of the options at the president's hand is the bill recently unveiled by the House, which has become the preference for
progressives. That approach won a major endorsement from The New York Times editorial page on Thursday.
While the Senate continues to struggle over its approach to health care reform, House Democratic leaders have unveiled a bill that
would go a long way toward solving the nation's health insurance problems without driving up the deficit. It is already drawing
fierce opposition from business groups and many Republicans. This is a bill worth fighting for.
The bill would require virtually all Americans to carry health insurance or pay a penalty. And it would require all but the smallest
businesses to provide health insurance for their workers or pay a substantial fee. It would also expand Medicaid to cover many
more poor people, and it would create new exchanges through which millions of middle-class Americans could buy health
insurance with the help of government subsidies. The result would be near-universal coverage at a surprisingly manageable cost to
the federal government.
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Health Care Updates
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EMORY
AP 
Health Care Will Pass- Obama Support
Obama strongly supports and promises for healthcare this year
CBS News 7/20/09
[Stephanie Condon, Obama on Health Care: "This Isn't About Me" <http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/07/20/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry517
5035.shtml>]
President Obama responded directly on Monday to Republican opponents to health care reform who have commented on the
political nature of the debate, saying that the issue is not about politics but about the unsustainable cost of the current health care
system.
On a conference call on Friday organized by the group Conservatives for Patients Rights, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said, "If we’re
able to stop Obama on (health care), it will be his Waterloo. It will break him."
"Think about that," Mr. Obama said Monday, speaking from the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. "This
isn't about me. This isn't about politics. This is about a health care system that is breaking America's families, breaking America's
businesses and breaking America's economy."
He said "there are too many lives and livelihoods at stake" to politicize the debate.
The president restated his promise to cut the costs of health care over the long run and reiterated his point that the reimbursement
system for health care providers must be changed to provide the right incentives.
"In a city like Washington, D.C., you've got all the doctors in one half of the city, very few doctors in the other half of the city," Mr.
Obama said. "And part of that has to do with just the manner in which reimbursement is taking place and the disincentives for
doctors, nurses, and physicians assistants in caring for those who are most in need."
The president made the remarks after sitting in on a roundtable discussion about health care reform with workers at the medical
center.
The president assailed insurance companies that have "reaped windfall profits from a broken system."
Commenting that Washington has a tendency toward inertia, Mr. Obama said lawmakers will have to get over "the politics of the
moment" to pass health care reform this year.
"We always knew passing health care reform wouldn't be easy. We always knew doing what is right would be hard," he said.
"We're a country that chooses the harder right over the easier wrong... We have to do that once more."
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Health Care Updates
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EMORY
AP 
Health Care Won’t Pass
Health care won’t pass- polls show economy is more important
Washington Post 7/20/09
[Dan Balz and Jon Cohen“Poll Shows Obama Slipping on Key Issues Approval Rating on Health Care Falls Below 50 Percent”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/19/AR2009071902176.html>]
Heading into a critical period in the debate over health-care reform, public approval of President Obama's stewardship on the issue
has dropped below the 50 percent threshold for the first time, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Obama's approval ratings on other front-burner issues, such as the economy and the federal budget deficit, have also slipped over
the summer, as rising concern about spending and continuing worries about the economy combine to challenge his administration.
Barely more than half approve of the way he is handling unemployment, which now tops 10 percent in 15 states and the District.
The president's overall approval rating remains higher than his marks on particular domestic issues, with 59 percent giving him
positive reviews and 37 percent disapproving. But this is the first time in his presidency that Obama has fallen under 60 percent in
Post-ABC polling, and the rating is six percentage points lower than it was a month ago.
Obama has taken on a series of major problems during his young presidency, but he faces a particularly difficult fight over his
effort to encourage Congress to pass an overhaul of the nation's health-care system.
The legislation has run into problems in the House and Senate, as lawmakers struggle to contain spiraling costs and avoid
ballooning the deficit.
Since April, approval of Obama's handling of health care has dropped from 57 percent to 49 percent, with disapproval rising from
29 percent to 44 percent. Obama still maintains a large advantage over congressional Republicans in terms of public trust on the
issue, even as the GOP has closed the gap.
The erosion in Obama's overall rating on health care is particularly notable among political independents: While positive in their
assessments of his handling of health-care reform at the 100-day mark of his presidency (53 percent approved and 30 percent
disapproved), independents now are divided at 44 percent positive and 49 percent negative.
At the same time, there is no slackening in public desire for Obama to keep pressing for action on the major issues of the economy,
health care and the deficit. Majorities think he is either doing the right amount or should put greater emphasis on each of these
issues.
On health care, the poll, conducted by telephone Wednesday through Saturday, found that a majority of Americans (54 percent)
approve of the outlines of the legislation now heading toward floor action. The measure would institute new individual and
employer insurance mandates and create a government-run plan to compete with private insurers. Its costs would be paid in part
through new taxes on high-income earners.
There are sharp differences in support for this basic package based on income, as well as a deep divide along party lines. Threequarters of Democrats back the plan, as do nearly six in 10 independents. More than three-quarters of Republicans are opposed.
About two-thirds of those with household incomes below $50,000 favor the plan, and a slim majority (52 percent) of those with
higher incomes are against it. The income divide is even starker among independents.
Republicans have hammered the president and congressional Democrats over the cost of an health-care overhaul and its potential
impact on the federal deficit, twin issues that have emerged as a possible brake on any new package.
Obama's approval rating on his handling of the deficit is down to 43 percent, as independents now tilt toward disapproval (42
percent approve; 48 percent disapprove).
More broadly, 55 percent of Americans put a higher priority on holding the deficit in check than on spending to boost the
economy, compared with 40 percent who advocate additional outlays even if it means a sharply greater budget shortfall. This is a
big shift from January, when a slim majority preferred to emphasize federal spending.
Independents, who split 50 percent to 46 percent for more spending in January, now break 56 percent to 41 percent for more fiscal
discipline. But a larger shift has been among moderate and conservative Democrats, who prioritized more spending by about 2 to 1
in January and March. Now they are about evenly divided in approach.
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Health Care Updates
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EMORY
AP 
Health Care Won’t Pass
Healthcare will not be passed soon- it’s too big with too many issues
PEAR & HERSZENHORN 7/17/09 Writers for the NY Times
[ROBERT and DAVID M. “Democrats Grow Wary as Health Bill Advances” <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/health/
policy/18health.html?bl&ex=1247976000&en=7d0339b05bc2733a&ei=5087%0A>]
WASHINGTON — Three of the five Congressional committees working on legislation to reinvent the nation’s health care system
delivered bills this week along the lines proposed by President Obama. But instead of celebrating their success, many Democrats
were apprehensive, nervous and defensive.
Even as Democratic leaders and the White House insisted that the nation was closer than ever to landmark changes in the health
care system, they faced basic questions about whether some of their proposals might do more harm than good.
And while senior Democrats vowed to press ahead to meet Mr. Obama’s deadline of having both chambers pass bills before the
summer recess, some in their ranks, nervous about the prospect of raising taxes or proceeding without any Republican support,
were pleading to slow down.
Democrats had three reasons for concern. The director of the Congressional Budget Office warned Thursday that the legislative
proposals so far would not slow the growth of health spending, a crucial goal for Mr. Obama as he also tries to extend insurance to
more than 45 million Americans who lack it.
Second, even with House committees working in marathon sessions this week, it was clear that Democrats could not meet their
goal of passing bills before the summer recess without barreling over the concerns of Republicans and ending any hope that such a
major issue could be addressed in a bipartisan manner.
Third, a growing minority of Democrats have begun to express reservations about the size, scope and cost of the legislation, the
expanded role of the federal government and the need for a raft of new taxes to pay for it all. The comments suggest that party
leaders may not yet have the votes to pass the legislation.
Mr. Obama tried Friday to shift the political narrative away from the grim forecasts of the Congressional Budget Office. He said
he and Congress had made “unprecedented progress” on health care, with even the American Medical Association endorsing the
House bill this week.
He acknowledged a treacherous path ahead, saying, “The last few miles of any race are the hardest to run,” but insisted, “Now is
not the time to slow down.” And he vowed: “We are going to get this done. We will reform health care. It will happen this year.
I’m absolutely convinced of that.”
On Capitol Hill, the picture is more complex. Representative Jared Polis, a freshman Democrat from Colorado who voted against
the bill approved Friday in the Education and Labor Committee, said he worried that the new taxes “could cost jobs in a
recession.”
To help finance coverage of the uninsured, the House bill would impose a surtax on high-income people and a payroll tax — as much as 8
percent of wages — on employers who do not provide health insurance to workers.
Mr. Polis said these taxes, combined with the scheduled increase in tax rates resulting from the expiration of Bush-era tax cuts, would have a
perverse effect. “Some successful family-owned businesses would be taxed at higher rates than multinational corporations,” he said.
In a letter to the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, Mr. Polis and 20 other freshman Democrats said they were “extremely concerned that the
proposed method of paying for health care reform will negatively impact small businesses, the backbone of the American economy.”
And in the latest sign of lawmakers’ chafing at Mr. Obama’s ambitious timetable, a bipartisan group of six senators, including two members of
the Finance Committee, sent a letter to Senate leaders pleading with them to allow more time.
“While we are committed to providing relief for American families as quickly as possible,” they wrote, “we believe taking additional time to
achieve a bipartisan result is critical for legislation that affects 17 percent of our economy and every individual in the United States.”
The group included three senators, Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska; and Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins, Republicans of Maine, who
met with Mr. Obama at the White House this week and urged him not to rush the bill.
“The legislative process right now is going in the wrong direction,” said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the Connecticut
independent, who also signed the letter. “I think it’s extremely doable to get this done before the end of the year. But just to try to
get it passed in the Senate before we leave for the August recess seems just about impossible. It’s just too big a bill.”
The House education committee approved the bill, 26 to 22, on Friday morning, after an all-night session. Three Democrats
crossed party lines and voted no.
The vote came eight hours after the House Ways and Means Committee approved a nearly identical bill, 23 to 18, with 3
Democrats voting no. On Wednesday, the Senate health committee approved a generally similar bill on a party-line vote, 13 to 10.
The House and Senate bills would require insurers to take all applicants and vastly expand coverage, with federal subsidies for
millions of people.
But the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas W. Elmendorf, testified on Thursday that doing so would come at a
steep cost and that the proposals would not curb the rise in health spending by the federal government, which he called
“unsustainable.”
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Health Care Updates
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EMORY
AP 
Health Care Won’t Pass
Health care will not pass- it will not work
Stephanopoulos 6/21/2009 ABC News Correspondent
[George “Graham'Government-Run' Health Care Won't Pass Senate” <http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/06/grahamgovernmentrun-health-care-wont-pass-senate.html
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told me that the U.S. Senate will not "go down the government-run health care road" despite a new
poll showing 72 percent of Americans want a government role in health care -- and are willing to pay higher taxes for it.
"The reason you're not going to have a government run health care pass the Senate is because it would be devastating for this
country," Graham told me Sunday in an exclusive "This Week" interview. "The last thing in the world I think Democrats and
Republicans are going to do at the end of the day is create a government run health care system where you've got a bureaucrat
standing in between the patient and the doctor. We've tried this model -- people have tried this model in other countries. The first
thing that happens -- you have to wait for your care. And in socialized health care models, people have to wait longer to get care
and the Graham: 'Government-Run' Health Care Won't Pass Senate - George's Bottom Line government begins to cut back on
what's available because of the cost explosion." Graham cited a Congressional Budget Office estimate of the draft Kennedy-Dodd
health care bill costing $1 trillion to cover one-third of Americans. "The CBO estimates were a death blow to a government run
health care plan, Graham told me, "The finance committee has abandoned that. We do need to deal with inflation in health care,
private and public inflation, but we're not going to go down to the government owning health care road in America and I think
that's the story of this week. There's been a bipartisan rejection of that."
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Health Care Updates
ENDI 4-Week
EMORY
AP 
Health Care Won’t Pass- Conservative Democrats
Conservative democrats will vote against healthcare in committees
Vaughan, 7/15/09 Writer for Dow Jones Newswires
[Martin, Dow Jones Newswires “Centrist Dem Leader: Has Committee Votes To Block Health Bill” <http://thebsreport.wordpress.com/2009/07/16/healthcare-bill-losing-support-in-house-committee/>]
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- U.S. Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., a leader of fiscally conservative House Democrats, said Wednesday
a House plan to overhaul the U.S. health-care system is losing support and will be stuck in committee without change “Last time I
checked, it takes seven Democrats to stop a bill in the Energy and Commerce Committee,” Ross told reporters after a House vote.
“We had seven against it last Friday; we have 10 today.”
Three House committees are slated to begin considering the $1 trillion-plus bill this week, but the Energy and Commerce looms as
the biggest challenge. That’s because it counts among its 36 Democratic members seven members of the Blue Dog Coalition, a
fiscally conservative bloc that is opposing the House Democrats’ effort.
Ross said the bill, introduced Wednesday by House Democratic leaders, doesn’t include provisions adequate to curb rising health
care costs, including what the government spends on healthcare.
“The current bill would have to be substantially amended before we could consider supporting it,” Ross said.
The Energy and Commerce panel is scheduled to meet Thursday afternoon to kick off its review of the legislation, but its session is
expected to stretch into late next week.
Ross said Blue Dogs have been meeting every day to craft amendments that will be offered during that meeting, but offered no
details on what those amendments are. He said those amendments could number in the dozens.
Ross said he expects Blue Dogs will meet with the panel’s chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., soon to discuss their specific
proposed changes.
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AP 
Healthcare Bad for Econ and Jobs
Healthcare will cost many jobs and the economy
Woodhead 7/21/09 Writer for TRNS
[Laura, “Energy, Health Care Bills Will Kill Jobs, Hurt Economy Say House GOP’ers” Talk Radio News Service
<http://talkradionews.com/2009/07/energy-health-care-bills-will-kill-jobs-hurt-economy-say-house-gopers/>
The energy and health care proposals currently being debated in Congress will be disastrous for the economy, House Republicans
said at a press conference Tuesday. Speaking following the weekly House Republican conference, Rep. Mike Pence (R – Ind.) said
that the Democrats seem determined to try and pass their bills despite the negative impact they’ll have on an already challenged
economy. If it were to pass, the American Clean Energy Act and the Democrats’ health care plan would be a “disaster for this
economy and a disaster for working Americans” he said.
“House Republicans are determined to step forward and demand that this Congress focus on putting this country back on its feet,”
Pence added.
House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said that there is a strong bi-partisan coalition opposing the current health care
proposals.
“Either this bill fails or it changes dramatically,” Cantor said. “If the bill fails it will be because of disagreement among the
Democrats as to the proper direction to head as far as health care reform is concerned.”
“This administration, this President has no one else to blame,” he added. “What they ought to be doing is coming to work with us
in order to reflect a much more reasoned approach to try and accomplish health care for the American people.”
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio.) said that the “President is going to begin his barnstorming” on bills that will kill
jobs.
“The stimulus bill isnt working, they bring along this health care bill that will cost 5 million jobs, and they bring this cap and trade
bill up last month that will cost us 2.5 million jobs each year for the next ten years. This is not what the American people want.”
Boehner called on President Obama to abandon current health care proposals and negotiate with Republicans in order to achieve
economically feasible health care reform.
“Mr President, it’s time to scrap this bill. It’s time to start working in a bi-partisan way,” he said.
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EMORY
AP 
Healthcare solves Abortion
Abortion is under the provisions of the current healthcare
Salmon 7/17/2009 Writer for Washington Post
[Jacqueline L. “Abortion Could Emerge as Key to Health Care Battle” Washington Post <http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com
/onfaith/godingovernment/2009/07/abortion_could_emerge_as_key_to_battle_over_health_reform.html>]
Although still under the radar, abortion could emerge as one of the central battlegrounds in the fight over health-care reform.
Conservative Christian groups are gearing up to fight health-care reform based on their contention that any plan passed could
include funding for abortion.
"Under the largest piece of health care legislation in decades, virtually every American would be required to have health care
coverage that meets 'minimum benefits standards' established by the Obama administration. Those benefits would include abortion
unless Congress acts to explicitly exclude abortion from the health plan," warned CitizenLink, an arm of Focus on the Family in a
recent e-mail blast to supporters.
Health care reform is fairly fast-moving right now. But according to Roll Call, at least 30 House Democrats and Republicans who
oppose House reform legislation unless it excludes abortion funding say that draft versions of the House bill includes the option for
the Health Benefits Advisory Committee to recommend that abortion services be included as part of a benefits package for the
government-subsidized health plan.
But can abortion be covered in a "public option" health care plan? The answer to that question has been no for the three decades.
The Hyde Amendment largely forbids federal funds to pay for the procedure. All but 17 states also largely ban state money from
paying for abortions.
But the prospect of sweeping health reform has reopened the issue. Abortion rights proponents say the issue is tricky, but they
maintain that if an explicit ban on abortion coverage were imposed, it could deny abortions to women who are reimbursed under
private plans for getting the procedure if they receive federal subsidies to fund their health-care insurance.
Abortions rights supporters like Planned Parenthood and the National Women's Law Center (NWLC) are, of course, lobbying
heavily against an abortion-funding ban in any health care legislation. NWLC vice president Judy Waxman said recently that
"Congress should refrain from practicing medicine and instead let medical professionals determine what health-care services will
be included in a benefits package."
11