STUPAK CHANGES NOTHING

What you've said is not true, and belies a misunderstanding of both the legislative process and the legislation at hand.

If you have insurance now, you will not qualify for the public option. A small portion of the public will qualify for the public option, and it will be only those who are 120% the poverty line. Likely, you don't qualify.

If you don't qualify, and you WILL however be eligible for subsidies to your private insurance plan. This is the part that people have an issue with.

The Stupak Amendment was an amendment to bring HR 3962 in line with the Hyde Amendment. The issue isn't with the Stupak amendment, it's with the Hyde Amendment. The Hyde Amendment guarantees nothing, except a grounds for a court case suing the government.

Without the Stupak Amendment, the bill would have been in violation of the Hyde Amendment. A court case by lobbying groups later on down the road challanging the law as illegal would have been what brought HR 3962 in line with the Hyde Agreement. There is no team of legislators or judges that review laws as they come out of the congress.

That's why we had indefinite detention and illegal wiretapping, written right into legislaition such as the USAPATRIOT act, despite it being not just against other laws already on the books, but also fundamentally unconstitutional. It takes a court case to bring the law under review.

The Stupak Amendment simply pre-empted the judicial review process.

The following claim is in fact true: If you pay for your own private insurance, and your plan covers abortion, you can have an abortion.

The only change that will happen is that if you had started receiving federal subsidies for your plan (this is subsidies, NOT the public option), you would have no access to abortion through that plan. You can however purchase additional 'abortion insurance' with your own private funds. In fact, many insurance companies are looking to offer such a product.

Moreover, and the point of making this video, is that this hissy fit fundamentally ignores how corrupt this bill is, without regard to the issue of abortion. It's a bailout of the private health insurance companies. We should have a single payer system, like the UK, or just expand Medicare to cover everybody. This hissy fit over a non-issue ignores what a crappy bill HR 3962 is to start with.

Instead of creating a National Health Service, congress has done next to nothing, while giving private health insurance corporations even more control over our lives, via the individual mandate. But people aren't upset about that. That shows how ignorant and docile we are on the whole.

Except it can affect me even if I don't receive federal subsidies. If my insurance wants to accept people with federal subsidies, they cannot offer abortion. So my plan would be impacted even if I do not receive federal aid.

"The following claim is in fact true: If you pay for your own private insurance, and your plan covers abortion, you can have an abortion."

Okay, that part is factually true. The part that is untrue is "No change there either." Of course "if your plan covers abortion, you can have an abortion." That's asserting the obvious. The difference is that my plan wouldn't cover abortion any more.

That's not true.

If you buy private insurance, and don't receive federal subsidies for your premium payments, your plan can cover abortion.

Regardless, all of this ignores the fact that we shouldn't have premium payments to start with. We should have Medicare for all, free health care, full coverage.

It's a waste of energy focusing on this one shitty aspect of an already shitty bill.

It's like complaining about warts on your feet when your legs have been cut off. Its superfluous in light of how terrible the rest of the situation is.