Judith A Becker, MD, Director of Fetal Cardiology at Mass General Hospital notified us about an alarming discussion going on in Congress concerning the health care reform bill.

The United States Congress is considering placing restrictions on what can be done with public subsidies meant to help individuals pay for healthcare. These restrictions would effectively ban abortion while allowing coverage for erectile dysfunction such as Viagra.

Mrs. Becker points to this NY Times story which predicts

"if the bill blocked the use of subsidies for abortion coverage, private insurers would stop covering abortion because those plans would be excluded from the federally subsidized programs."

The argument is that private insurance companies will have no incentive to provide coverage for medically necessary abortions because the government will make it illegal for individuals receiving government assistance to purchase plans that cover those procedures.

While it is still conceivable that private insurers will offer health care plans that cover abortions to non-subsidized consumers, insurance plans with abortion coverage will become essentially unobtainable for lower income consumers who receive government assistance.

Mrs. Becker concludes

"representatives on both sides of the isle and in both houses of congress are seeking to ban abortion coverage from any insurance that is subsidized through a public option or other by public funds. While many abortions are initiated based on medical need, this seems of no concern to the legislators. Meanwhile, NO ONE is saying anything about dropping coverage for the Diagnosis and management of erectile dysfucntion including insurance coverage of Viagra even though there is little if any medical need to alleviate this problem....There is something very wrong with a system that allows this."

We couldn't agree more.