In the weeks preceding the November 7, 2009 passage of health care reform bill in the House, Rep. Lois Capps (D- California 23rd District) introduced the Capps Amendment which extended the provisions of the Hyde Amendment ban to the proposed reform legislation.
Although Rep. Capps has gone on record as being personally opposed to the Hyde Amendment, she recognized that concerns over abortion coverage might sink the proposed "Affordable Health Care for America Act." Thus the Capps Amendment spells out abortion restrictions in the reform bill.
To clarify the intent and specifics of her amendment, Rep. Capps wrote a Huffington Post article which was reprinted by RHRealityCheck.org. Here, in Capps' own words, is an explanation of the Capps Amendment and how it preserves the status quo in federal abortion policy:
[U]nder my amendment no federal funds may be used to pay for abortions that are not allowed by current law (the Hyde Amendment, which makes exceptions in the case of rape, incest, or to protect the life of the woman). The only funds that may be used to pay for other abortion services are from private funds generated by the policyholders' premiums, whether the policyholder is covered by a private plan or the public option.My amendment ensures that no doctor or hospital or even insurance plan can be required to participate in providing or covering abortion services. In fact, my amendment goes beyond current law in this regard. Currently, existing statute known as the "Weldon Amendment" prohibits the government from discriminating against health providers and insurance companies who refuse to perform or pay for abortions. My amendment extends that to ensure that no private insurance plan operating in the Exchange may discriminate against health providers who refuse to perform abortions.
My amendment also ensures that in each region of the country, there is at least one plan in the Health Exchange that offers abortions services but also one plan in the Health Exchange that does not offer abortion services. This actually gives consumers who object to participating in a plan that covers abortion and are getting coverage through the Exchange a choice of insurance coverage greater than what most Americans have in the current employer-based health insurance market. Today, nearly 90 percent of employer-sponsored private health insurance plans cover abortion services....
My amendment specifically prohibits abortion from being included as part of the essential benefits package.
No one - not the Secretary of Health and Human Services nor the Health Benefits Advisory Committee - can make abortion a part of the essential benefits package. Private plans participating in the Exchange can choose to provide coverage for abortion or they can choose not to. And while the Secretary may choose to allow the public plan to cover abortions not allowed by the Hyde Amendment, coverage for those services must be paid for with segregated private funds. No Federal funds may be used.
Importantly, while opponents of the bill's provision make much ado about the idea of segregating funds, it's hardly a new concept: the 17 states that currently cover abortion in their Medicaid programs already do it by only paying for those services with state dollars, which are kept separate from federal funds.
Source:
Capps, Lois. "The Truth About the Capps Amendment." RHRealityCheck.org, 17 September 2009.
