The pro-life community must be vigilant to ensure that the health care reform debate expected to follow the next presidential election does not open the door to an increase in abortions or to health care rationing that could harm the elderly, disabled or other vulnerable populations.

That was the message from speakers at a July 5 general session of the National Right to Life Committee's annual convention in Arlington.

"Health care reform could be used to very, very substantially increase the number of abortions," said Douglas Johnson, NRLC federal legislative director.

"You might think the abortion industry would be satisfied" with the estimated 1.3 million abortions already performed in the United States, "but that is not the case," he added. "They (abortion providers) see enormous obstacles (to abortion access), and they worry that some unborn children are slipping the noose."

Other speakers cited the dangers of health care rationing, which was part of the health care reform plan proposed by President Bill Clinton in the 1990s and is a feature of some state plans. The Clinton plan would have prohibited individuals from using their own money to pay for health services not covered.

Jennifer Popik, NRLC legislative counsel, cited several factors that make some sort of health care reform likely early in the next presidential term.

One is the joint commitment to reform by both big business and labor, who together purchase half of all health care in the United States, she said. "But they are not united on how to pay for it," Popik added.

The Senate Finance Committee has declared health care reform a top priority, and the Healthy Americans Act, proposed by Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Bob Bennett, R-Utah, had 17 co-sponsors in the Senate as of July 7.

Similar to the Massachusetts universal coverage plan, it would require every American to buy private health insurance comparable to the coverage provided to members of Congress. It also would change the tax code to make employer-provided health insurance a taxable benefit for employees and allow employees to move from job to job with the same insurance.

The financing option favored by the National Right to Life Committee, however, is a "variable withhold," through which insurance companies would withhold a certain percentage of each payment to hospitals or doctors to be used to subsidize care for those without insurance. The percentage would be set each year by an expert panel.

David O'Steen, NRLC executive director, said any universal health care plan funded by tax dollars "will have to have some form of rationing" to the detriment of those near the end of life and those whose illnesses or disabilities are considered to detract from their "quality of life."

He spoke of a woman in Oregon who was denied a cancer drug but was told the state would pay for assisted suicide if she wanted it and a man covered by Great Britain's nationalized health system who committed suicide after being told he would be dropped from all coverage if he went outside the system to pay for a drug treatment his doctors wanted him to have.

Any health reform plan "should leave us the freedom to add our own funds to save our own life," O'Steen said.

Lori Kehoe, NRLC senior congressional liaison, said euthanasia "is not an issue of autonomy but of abandonment."

"The pro-life movement has always stood firm in its mission to oppose not only abortion and infanticide but euthanasia," she said.

Involuntary euthanasia, "based on a value judgment that a person's life is not worth living," could be the result if health care rationing is part of the health care reform plan enacted into law, Kehoe said.

She warned the pro-life community not to be discouraged if some health reform proposals they oppose appear headed for certain passage, reminding them that the Clinton reform plan of the 1990s once was considered "simply not defeatable."

If proponents of abortion were allowed to "piggyback on health reform" to mandate abortion coverage, Johnson said, "every taxpayer would be required to subsidize abortion on demand and every insurer would be required to cover it."

---CNS