LGBT-positive provisions in House version not included in Senate bill
It’s still a little bit of a guessing game as to whether the U.S. Senate will pass a health care reform bill this month or next — or never. But if and when it does, there’s little likelihood any pro-gay provisions adopted in the House will make it into the final version Congress sends to the president.
As of Tuesday afternoon, Dec. 22, the Senate leadership had signaled yet another revised timeline for passing its bill — Christmas Eve. If the Senate has passed the bill by Dec. 24, a House-Senate conference committee is expected to begin meeting as early as next week to hammer out a final version of the bill for both houses to then give final approval.
A final bill, they said, could be on the president’s desk before Jan. 19, the date of his State of the Union address.
While both bills from both houses are aimed at making health care insurance affordable for millions more Americans, there are a number of differences between the Senate and House versions.
The House offers a government-funded insurance option — the so-called "public option." The Senate bill does not.
The House bill prohibits federal funds from being used to cover the cost of an abortion with any insurance plan; the Senate version provides a means by which people could pay for abortion coverage themselves, even if their insurance plan involves federal subsidies.
The House version, passed in early November, has at least four provisions that benefit gay people specifically:
• Eliminating the tax penalty to gay employees who provide coverage for their spouses or partners under their employers’ health insurance policies;
• Calling on the Department of Health and Human Services to address "health disparities" suffered by populations, including those based on "sexual orientation and gender identity"
•Making people with HIV and low incomes eligible for federal assistance earlier in their illness; and
• Prohibiting discrimination based on "personal characteristics" in the delivery of health care.
The Senate version includes none of these. And the battles over the public option and abortion have threatened to completely derail the overall health care legislation at numerous points.
They are expected to be contentious issues again in conference.
Jerilyn Goodman, a spokesperson for openly gay Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) who sponsored two of the four pro-gay provisions in the House bill, said Baldwin is "fully committed to a thorough conference of the health care reform legislation in which she can advocate for the LGBT provisions included in the House bill."
"She is opposed to a straight vote on the Senate bill without the opportunity to add a number of House-only provisions, including those benefitting the LGBT community," said Goodman.
The Human Rights Campaign’s legislative director, Allison Hewitt, said the group is "disappointed that the Senate did not include any of the LGBT-specific provisions that we have been working to advance throughout the health reform debate."
While Herwitt said HRC would "continue to push the congressional leadership to ensure that critical protections for LGBT people are part of the final measure," she acknowledged that the conference negotiations "will undoubtedly be complex and difficult on a range of issues."
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition December 25, 2009.
Catholics Against Obama Care is calling Catholics as well as those of other denominations to pray and fast for the special intention that Obama health care reform be defeated.Catholics Against Obama Care acknowledges that Catholic Church has always advocated health care reform; but Obamacare, as delineated in This Bill, is not health care — it is death care. Mandated abortion, health care rationing, and euthanasia are not health care. Obamacare is government control over people’s lives and, as Jon Voight points out the removal of a person’s free will. Voight said in an interview on Fox News with Mike Huckabee, “They’re taking away God’s first gift to man — our free will and no man no matter what his title, even if he’s president of the United States, has the consent of God to decide he’s God.”Jean M. Heimann, the founder of Catholics Against Obama Care, is a Catholic freelance writer and also the author and administrator of the award-winning weblog Catholic Fire.
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Catholics Against Obama Care, a grassroots movement, which began on August 22, the feast day of the Queenship of Mary, has selected the Mother of God to be the group’s special intercessor in their efforts to defeat this anti-Catholic, anti-life bill. Pray for Obama’s conversion, O Holy Mother.
Oh Helen,
How said that you would pray for the defeat of a bill that could provide health coverage for millions of Americans. How can you proclaim to be pro-life when you know if the bill is defeated, thousands of Americans will die every year because they cannot afford health care. By the way, Obama does not need to be converted. He’s already a Christian.
DLW
Dear David,
You couldn’t have put it better. Thank you. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Love,
Ali.
Catholics against Obamacare:
Once again the Catholic church shows its total hypocrisy. They talk about life, and then are willing to allow tens of millions to continue to suffer, and even die, without health care.
All to further their political agenda, which is pure hatred of gay people.
Every good Catholic should close their pocketbooks to the church. The church of child abuse- whose report to the bishops just showed that gay priests were no more apt then str8 priests, to be involved in molestation of children.
And the same issue has just come out in Ireland – molestation of children by the church. Which will end up paying billions in damages.
And then there is the Christian Brothers, a catholic group that runs reform schools in Ireland and Italy. Molestation of children hardly describes what the church did to children in their care. A good day was a day without a beating. They were poorly fed and forced to work in cold factories, building Rosary beads and other religious items.
When the truth about the church is known, it will be a shell of its former self, as Good Catholics leave to join churches where grace, not terrorism and guilt and vile crimes are the order of the day.
Which is what Jesus message of His Life was meant to be for all people