Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) wasn’t the only member left speechless by a hard Democratic retort at today’s health care summit. House Minority Leader John Boehner and Rep. David Camp (R-MI) were given a stiff rebuke by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for falsely characterizing the Democrats’ health care reform proposals.
To Boehner, Pelosi set the record straight on the question of public funding of abortion. “The law of the land is there is no public funding of abortion, and there is no public funding of abortion in these bills and I don’t want our listeners or viewers to get the wrong impression,” she said.
And to Camp, she insisted his claims about the bills’ proposed cuts to Medicare were false. “You said that the Medicare cuts in this bill cut benefits for seniors,” Pelosi said. “They do not. They do not.”
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The House health care bill prevents women who receive federal assistance to buy health insurance from purchasing any policy that covers abortions. The Senate bill takes multiple steps to make sure that federal dollars and private dollars are segregated, and requires that only private funds be directed to abortion services.
Both health care bills raise money by ending government overpayments to Medicare Advantage policies and redirecting those funds toward federal subsidies.
