Word: careful
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...also noted the stagnant job market in Massachusetts, as well as the need for more public disclosure of health care costs in order to foster an informed and efficient discussion on health policy...
...House of Representatives passed by the slimmest margins the most sweeping progressive legislation since the Johnson Administration. The Affordable Health Care For America Act was passed by a meager five votes, the ayes coming in at 220 and the nays coming in at 215. Passage was made possible by an eleventh hour amendment proposed by Democratic Representative Bart Stupak of Michigan that forbids health insurance companies from covering abortions for any individual whose insurance is subsidized by taxpayer dollars. We lament that such a reactionary amendment was required for the passage of this landmark bill, but we also recognize...
...Stupak Amendment is to survive into the final version of the health care bill—after the separate House and Senate bills are reconciled in conference—it would decrease the number of insurers providing coverage of abortions for women, since virtually all insurers would have an incentive to partake in the insurance exchange for individuals eligible for federal subsidies that the bill establishes. All insurance policies bought via this exchange would be prohibited from covering abortions in order to uphold the principle of the 1976 Hyde Amendment forbidding the use of taxpayer dollars to fund abortions...
Even in the House, the amendment garnered only an additional six to ten votes, hardly proportional to their cost. Nonetheless, without those six to ten votes, the bill would not have passed, and, as President Obama put it, “this is a health care bill, not an abortion bill,” and in that vein, it must be recognized that reforming America’s health care delivery system is worth whatever reversible price must be paid to enact the required legislation...
Efforts to enact sweeping health care reform date back to the presidency of Harry Truman, and attempts have been made under presidents ranging from Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton, whose disastrous failure to enact reform in 1993 resulted in the Republicans regaining control of the House of Representatives for the first time in four decades. The House’s passage of health insurance reform thus marks the farthest that the reform effort has ever come, for which we congratulate Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her pragmatism and extraordinary political acumen...