WASHINGTON (ABP) — President Obama, in an unprecedented Aug. 19 Internet conference that organizers said drew 140,000 participants, appealed to faith leaders to boost his attempts to reform America’s health-care system.
But some conservative religious leaders are fighting back against Obama’s plan, claiming among other things that it leaves the door open to federal funding of abortion.
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“I believe that nobody in America should be denied basic health care because he or she lacks health insurance, and no one in America should be pushed to the edge of financial ruin because an insurance company denies them coverage or drops their coverage or charges fees they can’t afford for care that they desperately need,” Obama said in a call sponsored by a coalition of centrist and progressive religious groups.
But he pushed back against critiques of his proposal that many conservative religious leaders and politicians have floated in recent weeks. “I know there’s been a lot of misinformation in this debate. And there are some folks out here who are, frankly, bearing false witness,” Obama said, citing contentions that his plan would set up so-called “death panels” or that it would provide public funding of abortion services.
In response to a question from a Catholic parish nurse about arguments that the bill would cause funding of abortion, White House domestic-policy adviser Melody Barnes noted that Obama “has said it’s a longstanding policy that federal funds won’t be used for abortion coverage.”
But some conservative groups said the White House was being disingenuous about provisions in the bill that could provide federal subsidies to coverage that includes abortion services.
“The president knows very well that pro-abortion House and Senate committees rejected every single amendment to keep abortion funding out of the health-care overhaul,” said Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, in a statement issued shortly after Obama’s call ended.
“This evening, President Obama stated that abortion funding in health-care reform is a ‘distraction.’ If that is the case, then why not end this so-called ‘distraction’ and amend the bill to explicitly prohibit abortion funding and coverage with his health care plan?”
Perkins and other abortion-rights opponents have noted that one amendment to H.R. 3200 (the main House version of the health-care bill) allows for abortion services to be funded under a public-subsidized insurance plan.
His group is running television ads in conservative states with moderate senators — almost all of them Democrats in the South — claiming the bill will fund abortions while denying the elderly needed surgeries.
Prior to Obama’s conference call, Perkins held his own with reporters to criticize Obama’s attempt to appeal to religious leaders, saying that the president was “changing his tone” and “that Obama was “now trying to use the language of the Religious Left to convince Americans that this is is a moral issue.”
Perkins noted his opposition to the plan because of his understanding of its the abortion provisions as well as other aspects, including what he described as “rationing” of health-care services that he said would result from a government-subsidized or -administered plan.
He acknowledged that there were problems with the current health-care system, but, when asked what his alternative solution would be, he said he preferred “market-based approaches” such as tax incentives and deductions to encourage people to purchase private insurance.
“We don’t think the solution is a government takeover that would prescribe what the benefits are,” he said.
Asked if he agreed health-care “rationing” was already occurring at the hands of private insurance companies, Perkins acknowledged it was — but that it is preferable to government rationing.
“I think it’s the marketplace that rations, and that’s kind of a free-market system,” he said. “But it’s rational in the way it works; people understand that there’s a certain supply of something and demand…. I think the government acting as an arbitrary rationing agent doesn’t act rationally.”
Joel Hunter, a conservative Florida megachurch pastor who spoke on Obama's call in favor of comprehensive reform, said he took Perkins’ concerns about abortion seriously, but that he supported more comprehensive reform than can be achieved by market-based reforms alone.
“I do think that abortion is being used as a diversionary or a barrier tactic to slow down and therefore defeat health-care reform,” he said.
Hunter, who opposes abortion rights, said he was also concerned about government funding of the procedure and wants to see an explicit ban on that in the final version of the plan. But, he added, he was not opposed to Obama’s plan because lots of tweaking to the final bill remains to be done in both chambers of Congress.
“Until we get something concrete or we have some sort of real legislation that we’re working on and they’re trying to vote it up or down, I’m saying that what people are doing right now is posturing — and I don’t think that debate is profitable when you don’t know exactly what is going to be in there,” he said.
Hunter added: “Market-based reforms are great for rich people who have insurance. They’re very slow and non-inclusive for those people who are being rationed health care now on the basis of insurance-company exclusion or who just don’t have the money to, in any way, get into the health-insurance market.”
Robert Marus is managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Associated Baptist Press.