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WASHINGTON — Liberals threatened Monday to derail the massive healthcare overhaul bill to protest a last-minute deal over insurance coverage of abortions that had secured passage of the legislation in the House.
At least 40 House members pledged not to vote for a final healthcare bill if the abortion provision survives — endangering the exceptionally fragile Democratic coalition that has kept the bill afloat.At issue are the insurance policies offered in a new insurance marketplace that the legislation would create to help consumers purchase health plans, many using newly created federal subsidies.The House measure says the federal subsidies cannot be used to buy health policies that cover elective abortion. But abortion-rights supporters say that would affect a broad set of consumers because insurers would likely abandon abortion coverage in all policies offered in the exchange.The provision "represents an unprecedented and unacceptable restriction on women’s ability to access the full range of reproductive health services to which they are lawfully entitled," the House members wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.It was a tougher line than they had adopted less than 48 hours earlier, when they had voted to pass the health legislation. The tumult over abortion now travels to the Senate, where it promises to cause headaches for Democrats still wrestling with fundamental issues of cost, coverage and revenues in its version of the health legislation.Legislation before the Senate contains looser restrictions on abortion coverage than the House approved.But already at least one Senate Democrat, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, appears willing to work with abortion-rights opponents on language similar to that from the House.President Barack Obama suggested Monday that the House measure might be altered as the legislation moves through Congress.The House amendment would allow people buying insurance in the exchange to purchase separate "riders" that would cover abortions. Abortion-rights advocates say few would do so.
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