"Flexibility" and Flip-Flops
Hyde U-Turns Forthcoming...?
Regarding a potential agreement on reviving enhanced Obamacare subsidies, here’s how Politico described Hyde Amendment restrictions designed to prevent taxpayer funding of abortion this morning:
According to a Senate GOP aide briefed on the group’s discussions and another person granted anonymity to describe the private talks, the lawmakers are considering increasing penalties and audits for insurance plans to ensure funds for abortion are properly segregated from funds for non-abortion health services.
That news brings to mind three points. First, a Government Accountability Office report from 2014 already concluded that the segregation mechanism (i.e., sham accounting gimmick) included in Obamacare was NOT being implemented properly. More than a decade after that report, and more than 15 years after Obamacare’s passage, how is implementing a supposed “restriction” Democrats claimed they had created ages ago anything like a substantive concession? “This time, we really mean it???”
Second, the quote says nothing about whether or not any agreement to “enforce” the sham accounting mechanism will crack down on a plan that Maryland implemented last year to divert Section 1303 “segregated” funds towards abortion tourism in that state. If any supposed “compromise” does not explicitly prohibit the Maryland abortion tourism funding—which Maryland lawmakers have said they want other blue states to adopt—that would constitute further evidence that any agreement is not serious about eliminating taxpayer funding of abortion.
Third, here’s what Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said about prohibiting taxpayer funding of abortion via the Hyde amendment eight years ago, when she was trying to pass a “stability bill” (i.e., bailout) of Obamacare back in March 2018: “This [i.e., full Hyde protections] is nothing radical or new, and it is baffling and gravely disappointing that this should be used [by Democrats] to block this package.” If this morning’s report in Politico is accurate, it suggests that Sen. Collins, in the face of Democrat intransigence on taxpayer funding of abortion, may have used her “flexibility” to flip-flop her position.
One can call this supposed “compromise” many things, but from a Hyde Amendment perspective, it’s hard to see it as anything other than a thinly veiled capitulation by the supposedly pro-life lawmakers negotiating it.