The Catholic Bishops' Huge Financial Stake in Stupak-Pitts: Cutting off the competition

[seafan]

This sheds a whole new light on the relatively sudden interference by Catholic bishops in the wrangling over the House health care bill, The Affordable Health Care for America Act.

What threw everyone off the track was that the Catholic Church had been an ally in the push for universal health insurance, and had been for decades.



In a nutshell:

....

What the Stupak-Pitts amendment does for the Catholic health care system is omit a competitive advantage secular and other religiously-affiliated hospitals without doctrinal restrictions can use to simultaneously market their services to both the expected influx of newly insured patients and the outpatient medical professionals who will treat them.

By restricting insurance coverage of women's reproductive health care, the competitive barriers faced by Catholic institutions will be eliminated — provided the amendment is not stripped out of the final bill that emerges from House-Senate health care reform conference committee. Which is why pro-choice advocates should expect nothing short of a full-frontal attack by the Vatican on conservative Senators.

And in the case of an industry that accounts for 18 percent of the gross domestic product and is expected to double in less than 10 years, it's absolutely critical to follow the money.

.....

This resembles what happened with Goldman Sachs' competitor Lehman Brothers.... when ex-Goldman operatives running Bush's Treasury decided to cut Lehman off at the knees, it worked out pretty well for Goldman.


(More from this link farther down, with a hat tip to digby)







Recapping the main points since last weekend, on November 7:

WASHINGTON — A restriction on abortion coverage, added late Saturday to the health care bill passed by the House, has energized abortion opponents with their biggest victory in years — emboldening them for a pitched battle in the Senate.

Both sides credited a forceful lobbying effort by Roman Catholic bishops with the success of the provision, inserted in the bill under pressure from conservative Democrats.

Abortion rights advocates charged Sunday that the provision threatened to deprive women of abortion coverage because insurers would drop the procedure from their plans in order to sell them in the newly expanded market of people receiving subsidies.

House Democratic leaders had sought to resolve the issue by requiring insurers to segregate their federal subsidies into separate accounts.

Insurance plans would have been permitted to use only consumer premiums or co-payments to pay for abortions, even if individuals who received federal subsidies used them to buy health plans that covered abortion. But the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, was unable to hold on to enough moderate and conservative Democratic votes to pass the health bill using that approach, forcing her to allow a vote Saturday night on the amendment containing the broader ban.

The bishops objected to the segregated funds proposal previously embraced by the House and Senate Democratic leaders in part because they argued that it amounted to nothing more than an accounting gimmick.

Advocates on both sides of the question weighed in, but the bishops’ role was especially pivotal in part because many Democrats had expected them to be an ally. They had pushed for decades for universal health insurance.

Beginning in late July, the bishops began issuing a series of increasingly stern letters to lawmakers making clear that they saw the abortion-financing issue as pre-eminent, a deal-breaker.

At the funeral of Senator Edward M. Kennedy in August, Cardinal Seán O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, stole a private moment with Mr. Obama to deliver the same warning: The bishops very much wanted to support his health care overhaul but not if it provided for abortions. The president “listened intently,” the cardinal reported on his blog.

Bishops implored their priests and parishioners to call lawmakers. Conservative Democrats negotiating over the issue with party leaders often expressed their desire to meet the bishops’ criteria, according to many people involved in the talks. On Oct. 8 three members of the bishops conference wrote on its behalf to lawmakers, “If the final legislation does not meet our principles, we will have no choice but to oppose the bill.”

On Sunday, some abortion rights advocates lashed out at the bishops. “It was an unconscionable power play,” said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, accusing the bishops of “interceding to put their own ideology in the national health care plan.”

President Obama and Cardinal Sean O'Malley, the archbishop of Boston, at the funeral of Senator Edward M. Kennedy. (Pool photo by Brian Snyder)



The bishops' agenda seems to be about **more** than narrow ideology.



More from Wendy Norris:


The Bishops' Huge Financial Stake in Stupak-Pitts


November 13, 2009

The justifiable anger at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for lobbying on the Stupak-Pitts amendment overshadows what is possibly the bigger motive for the Vatican: the billions of dollars at stake for the church's hospitals.

The scale of the church's involvement in the rapidly growing $2.5 trillion dollar American health care industry is staggering. (edited link)

What the Stupak-Pitts amendment does for the Catholic health care system is omit a competitive advantage secular and other religiously-affiliated hospitals without doctrinal restrictions can use to simultaneously market their services to both the expected influx of newly insured patients and the outpatient medical professionals who will treat them.

By restricting insurance coverage of women's reproductive health care, the competitive barriers faced by Catholic institutions will be eliminated — provided the amendment is not stripped out of the final bill that emerges from House-Senate health care reform conference committee. Which is why pro-choice advocates should expect nothing short of a full-frontal attack by the Vatican on conservative Senators.

And in the case of an industry that accounts for 18 percent of the gross domestic product and is expected to double in less than 10 years, it's absolutely critical to follow the money.

One in six patients are cared for in 624 Catholic hospitals scattered throughout the U.S. in 2006, according to the Catholic Health Association. The church also operates more than 800 post-acute care, senior living and skilled nursing centers across the nation. All told, $84.6 billion was spent on Catholic church-affiliated care.

The Denver-based Catholic Health Initiatives is now the largest of the church's hospital systems in the country with 78 hospitals and 40 long-term care facilities in 20 states and operating revenues exceeding $9.6 billion ranking it sixth among all for-profit and charity health care networks.

Now consider that there are 60 some Catholic-affiliated hospital systems in all 50 states — representing 13 percent of the nation's entire in-patient health care system. That's easily tens of billions of dollars flowing through the business arm of the Catholic church that continues to grow through mergers with private and other religiously-affiliated hospitals.

Congressional health insurance reforms promise the prospect of 36 million uninsured Americans — who are currently self-rationing care, paying on sliding fee scales, or not paying at all — flowing into hospitals, clinics and outpatient facilities via subsidized insurance, mandated policies and more affordable options in the proposed insurance exchange.

Conservatively, those newly insured people will not only add millions of dollars more to hospital coffers in the short term but the potential for trillions in billable services over their lifetimes.

So why would the bishops risk the House health reform bill collapsing under the weight of a bitter abortion debate? It appears to be a fairly brazen attempt to kneecap their health care industry competitors while knowing the president's top domestic agenda would be passed in some way, shape or form.

Catholic institutions are uniquely bound by religious directives on care, effectively eliminating key reproductive health and end-of-life treatment that other institutions will provide to patients and bill to their insurance carriers.

Add those restrictions and compound it with two simple facts: 73 percent of the now uninsured are of reproductive age and the leading cause of death among people aged 15-44 is accidents.

In essence, the people most likely to benefit from the proposed public option and insurance exchange will undoubtedly be seeking the type of care Catholic hospitals refuse to provide as a matter of religious principle. And these prospective patients are young and will conceivably need care for many decades to come.

For the business arm of the Catholic church it's a theological and economic two-fer.

The bishops can extract abortion care from the private insurance benefits of millions of American women that are federally subsidized ten ways to Sunday (with the blessing of conservative lawmakers' corporate welfare earmarks) and they level the competitive playing field without having to revise its medical doctrine to modern standards of care.

Analyzing the bishops' lobbying efforts from a cold, calculating green eyeshade perspective adds a very different dimension to their motives that may help spur secular business interests to protect both a woman's right to choose and their own bottom line.

The pro-choice community should raise holy hell with lawmakers for passing the discriminatory Stupak-Pitts amendment. But while you're grabbing your pitchfork look to some new allies in unlikely places where the password is money.

It all makes perfect sense now.

A very powerful religious institution that is tax-exempt and cannot vote, is somehow sending a powerful lobbying army into Washington, D. C. to steamroll its way into legislation that will remove its competitors' ability to provide full reproductive health care services that Catholic hospitals are, themselves, bound by religious directives to deny to patients.


The Catholic Church just launched an attack drone at America's health care reform efforts.





In view of stories like the one below that are becoming more widespread, there's no wonder that these bishops are now seizing on the House bill's abortion restrictions to shut down the ability of The Catholic Institutions' competitors to provide full reproductive health services to women, as a brilliant maneuver that will supremely benefit Catholic health care facilities across the country.



14 Catholic churches to close (link now dead; from this thread)


BY JAWEED KALEEM
May 31, 2009

The Archdiocese of Miami announced Sunday that 14 struggling Catholic churches will close in the coming months.
The churches on the list have not been able to financially support themselves and have lost significant membership.
''We're looking at a shift in the Catholic population,'' said archdiocese spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta, adding that the archdiocese can no longer afford to subsidize stained churches.

The churches to close include Resurrection, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, St. Cecilia, St. Charles Borromeo, St. Francis Xavier, St. George, St. Luke, St. Philip Neri, St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Vincent de Paul, Divine Mercy Mission, St. Joseph Haitian Mission, Our Lady of Aparecia Mission, and Vietnamese Apostolate.

They will all merge with nearby congregations.

.....

In January, the archdiocese announced it would close six struggling Catholic schools, shaving $1.8 million off its budget. Those schools will now reopen in the fall as secular, publicly funded charter schools and will lease school buildings from individual churches.

.....

And digby also notes the hollowness of the *fungibility* argument. The Catholic Church decries keeping funds for abortion services separate from those funds provided by the government, yet religious groups function on the premise that they separate government funds from those funds used to proselytize.... wanting to have it both ways, are they?

And once again, we see the problems with government funding of "faith based" programs in general. Money tends to muddy up the whole argument, doesn't it?

I doubt seriously that anyone will have the guts to even bring this up. Religious correctness is far, far more prevalent than anything the PC police could ever gin up. But it does bring up the wider issue of fungibility. We are told that insurance companies cannot keep these funds separate because money is fungible. When do you suppose they figured that out? Faith based programs are all premised on the idea that religious organizations would keep government funds separate from those which are used to proselytize. In fact, there are dozens of examples of private contractors keeping federal money separate from their own private funds and 17 states do it even in the case of medicaid for abortions.

If the churches want to use this fungibility argument, bring it on. It's hard to see how even the Roberts Court could uphold this double standard. And I can't see how the churches benefit if they don't.

I personally think the whole thing is absurd. Money is fungible and all the protestations of the churches over the years that they weren't using my tax dollars to spread their word never made any sense to me. And it's not my "moral objections" that rule in this case (although I do have them) it's the US Constitution which clearly intends that the government not be involved in the religious sphere. Churches aren't taxed for just that reason --- separate spheres, no taxes, no interference. The churches and their adherents, however, not only want to be tax exempt, which most people agree with, they want taxpayers to actually fund them. And now they also want to determine how tax dollars are spent, including those spent on constitutionally guaranteed rights.

At some point some legal decisions are going to have to be made one way or the other. Either federal money is fungible or it isn't --- and either the constitution allows government money to be spent on abortion or it doesn't. You can't have it both ways on those issues. This silly pretense that just because some people really, really don't like abortion means they get an exception to every rule that guides federal and state or private partnerships in other circumstances is ridiculous.And why government money can't be spent for a constitutionally sanctioned medical procedure just because some people feel strongly about it makes no sense. Churches have many privileges in society and there are very few people who would argue that they shouldn't have them. But they have limits as well.

And the fact that they also have huge financial stakes in the outcomes of these moral decisions should not be ignored. Money is power and power is money and there's no doubt that a rather large incentive exists to tilt the playing field to those who can control the political system. Anyone who thinks that the Christian tradition isn't riddled with political ambition and financial corruption hasn't been paying attention.

As is always the case nowadays..... FOLLOW THE MONEY.

[Better Believe It]

1. Good find. Follow the money. K & R

[pleah]

2. K&R

[jwirr]

3. So where is that letter the Pope wrote Ted Kennedy again?

[harry_pothead]

4. The catholic priests also want to keep the young boys flowing.

[Beartracks]

6. :rolls eyes: n/t

[juno jones]

5. It is a very strange thing to be talking to your

ob/gyn after giving birth and having them react in a slightly freaked out manner when you mention birth control options and say 'we can't talk here'. Aaah, catholic hospital, it dawns on you.

You are at the catholic hospital because it deals with all the medicaid births in the county (probably cheaper), even though there is a far better teaching hospital, totally secular, not far down the road.

And it makes you wonder, how many poor women aren't being given information they need about their bodies, pregnancies, birth control and other choices because they are sent to catholic hospitals and charities for some or all of their care.

Interesting take on this whole matter, thanks.

[shimmergal]

7. Welll, we need to find some way to

reach them with this info.

In fact, if that stupid stupak amendment passes, we need a coalition of women's and pro-choice groups to turn their efforts to donations in a big way. Enough so we can advertise, "If your insurance won't pay and you need an abortion, contact us."

In fact they're doubly stupid if they think the amendment will stop a single abortion. Back in the bad old days, women would do whatever it took to raise the money for a needed abortion. Hate to see those times come back, but just sayin' . . .