The forced-birthers are out in force in the blogosphere, looking for federal funding of abortions in the bill, so I thought I'd help them out.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The public plan and the exchange[s]

The public plan might or might not pay for abortions that don't fall under the Hyde amendment. The Secretary of HHS cannot require private insurance plans offered through the exchange[s] to cover abortions of any kind. Fortunately Sec HHS can't prevent private insurance from paying for abortions either. Abortion cannot be listed as part of the essential benefits package.

If you want to know why people might NOT want to choose the public plan, here's one reason that some women will "choose" to stay with private insurance.

Oh well, at least it doesn't prohibit abortion coverage outright.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post