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March 17, 2010 11:49 PM UTC

Health Care Reform Update: Release the Nuns!

  • 73 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

From The Associated Press:

President Barack Obama’s much-challenged health care overhaul gained traction Wednesday as a liberal lawmaker became the first to switch his opposition and Catholic nuns declared their support in an unusual public break with the bishops.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, long a supporter of Medicare-for-all, voted against the House Democratic bill in November because it did not go far enough in creating a robust government-run plan to compete with private insurance. But Kucinich said Wednesday that the bill coming before the House represents the best chance to expand coverage to the uninsured, even if it does not include a public plan…

…Meanwhile, in a rare public disagreement that will reverberate among the nation’s 70 million Catholics, leaders of religious orders representing 59,000 nuns sent lawmakers a letter urging them to pass the Senate health care bill. Expected to come before the House by this weekend, the measure contains abortion funding restrictions that the bishops say don’t go far enough.

“Despite false claims to the contrary, the Senate bill will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions,” said the letter signed by 60 leaders of women’s religious orders. “It will uphold longstanding conscience protections and it will make historic new investments … in support of pregnant women. This is the real pro-life stance, and we as Catholics are all for it.”

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Right to Life Committee have denounced the bill as a backdoor subsidy for abortion. But the nuns and the Catholic Health Association-representing some 600 hospitals-say restrictions in the Senate bill would still prevent taxpayer funding for abortion, although the legal mechanism for doing so is different from what the bishops prefer.

Comments

73 thoughts on “Health Care Reform Update: Release the Nuns!

  1. The CBO score just came in over a trillion bucks.

    If they pass this without a floor vote, I honestly fear what’s coming next.  Ultimately, I’d like these fuckers to get something done, and it’s attainable, but this bill has been shady from day one.  Obama could have made the R’s look like jackasses if he’d dome a couple of additions (and subtractions) from the beginning.  Now, if they ram this through, we’re in for endless court challenges and the Dems are going to lose congress in the fall.  And for what?

    1. The vote will be on the reconciliation bill, which will contain a provision saying that the House agrees to pass the Senate bill.  It happens all the time – in fact, it happened TODAY in the Senate:

      Motion to concur in the House amendments to the Senate amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment to HR2847, the legislative vehicle for the HIRE Act.

      The Senate bill came back from the CBO with a revised $118b savings (more than previously expected) over ten years.  If the reconciliation bill comes back with more savings, then it’s good to go.

      Obama (and the Senate) made plenty of additions and subtractions from the beginning; they’ll be making more additions and subtractions in the reconciliation bill.  Republicans have vowed that not a single one of them will vote for this bill, regardless of what’s in it; that’s all the Democrats need to know when negotiating positions in the bill – the only HCR bill suitable for Republicans is one that fails.

        1. Whatever.  It’s a procedure that’s been used thousands of times.  It’s day-to-day business.  It’s used to pass major legislation.  I hope Republicans keep going with that meme – I look forward to Democrats stuffing the truth about it down their throats and making them look completely stupid.

        2. LB, the average voter doesn’t care about procedural crap. Republicans can’t attack Democrats with procedural complaints because it’s too hard to explain and they risk coming across as just whiny. Either a bill passes or it fails — the public doesn’t understand the process beyond that.

          1. “The Dems couldn’t even get enough of their own to vote for this bill so they used a procedural trick to pass it without even having a vote!”

            Essentially true, and very bad news for Pelosi and co.

            1. Let alone care about it? Probably 99% of people don’t have any idea what’s even being discussed in the bill because of the information overload of the past year. If it passes, their first question is going to be, “what is in the bill?” Not, “what were the procedural rules in which it passed?”

              Republicans would be much better off attacking different pieces of the substance of the bill rather than focusing on the mechanics of the debate. You’re overestimating the political appetite of the general public if you think talking about “a procedural trick” will have any meaning to people.

              1. to bring us closer in solving the health care crisis in America in spite of the Republicans best efforts.

                That is all anyone will remember.

                  1. You know I have immense respect for you and I like you very much, but that’s just not true.  Mass. has the highest rates in the country, and a lot of them hate it.  Ted Kennedy’s seat went red.  Coakley was horrible, but in that seat you should be able to run a trained Llama and keep the seat blue.

                    Brown campaigned on being the 41st vote.  I just don’t see how you can spin it as what you’re trying to do.

              2. I agree the Republicans will get no tractions complaining about a simple majority reconciliation vote.  But for the Dems to deem this passed without a vote will play very badly.

    2. From the Dem side, rumor is that the numbers were too high coming back from the CBO and that there’s an emergency tweaking session going on to fix it.  The adjustment being talked about over at Daily Kos is to move the “Cadillac” Tax adjustment from CPI+1% to straight CPI.  As the 1% extra isn’t really sufficient to keep up with current health care increases anyway, I don’t see this as a deal-breaker.

      1. How many pledges and promises are the Dems going to break?

        ‘So- let’s try to hide more costs so we’re not totally embarrassed before the non-vote.’

        Seriously, what’s gone right for this crappy-ass bill?

        At what point do you just say, ‘Ah, shit.  They’re right.  Let’s drop this turd and try to honestly reform health care into something that actually helps people and controls costs instead of just sharking the public into a takeover by the government of the medical insurance system?’

        1. …unless, of course, you count the usual insipid talking points of “tax cut” and “tax credit” as reforming health care.

          With the current senior leadership of the Repubs, you could present a plan that pays for itself in 30 days, covers all Americans with unlimited care and erases even the mere thought of abortion instantly and they’d denounce it as “socialism.”

          It’s been a year – f*ck these assclowns. As flawed as it is, I’ll take it over a perfect plan that will NEVER EVER happen.

          1. Obama could pull the plug right now.  

            He could say “OK you dicks – NOW we’re going to start from scratch, have bi-partisan meetings to craft a bill and this time we really will televise the whole process, now that you Republicans have stated your desire to fix the system.  We’ll see if you’re serious about it. This time I really do want a bill on my desk by the August recess.  So get to work and stop jacking around!”

            1. …A YEAR AGO Obama did this. He called in the Repubs to a private dinner, laid out his plans, and their response was “FUCK YOU.”

              That was followed by conference calls  fundraising letters saying that the only thing the Republican’t Party would do is sink health care reform, because it would be his “Waterloo.”

              They’ll NEVER reform health care. The track record on Repubs is pretty clear – unless it involves war or social engineering, the current leadership of the GOP can’t accomplish shit.

              1. Just to take down Obama.

                That’s their record.

                They vote against legislation that they sponsored.

                They vote against legislation that they previously supported when they controlled the majority.

                Republicans have decided that they will not be a part of the process of crafting legislation, then they whine when they’re not.

                This has been going on since Obama was sworn in. Please don’t treat us all like idiots for seeing the elephant in the room.  

                1. If Obama threw out the bill and said his new proposal consisted of only two things: malpractice damage limits and the abolition of state regulations (the only two things Republicans have ever proposed), Republicans would call it socialism and not a single one would vote for it.

                  “The government is going to tell you how much you can get if an incompetent doctor leaves a pair of scissors in your body? They’re going to tell you how much your LIFE is worth? That’s just what Hitler did!” says Rush Limbaugh.

                  “Who is the government to say what laws a state can or can’t pass? Mr. Obama, we are still a federal government, not an absolute Stalinist centralized dictatorship…YET!” says Glenn Beck.

                  Laughing Boy knows this and gets a kick out of it. Winning the next election is the only thing that matters.

              2. “Hey, I won.” is not a valid attempt at bi-partisanship.  He’s been anything but post-partisan, and that’s why we are where we are now.  He could have humiliated the Republicans by including tort reform (even a mild version of it) in the bill, instead, he’s poised to hand Congress back to the Republicans this fall.  Half of me wants to tell him to take the ball and run with it – you’re doing great work for us, but I would rather have a good bill that does cover our common interests in HC reform (and there are many).

                Republicans were shut out of the process completely until he had that stupid summit a couple of weeks ago.  The public wants reform, but they don’t want this version of it.  

                Look at how weaselly Pelosi’s getting to try to get it done in the House.  If it was so great, it shouldn’t be this difficult.  But it’s not intended to be reform, it’s intended to set up a takeover of health care by participating in the market while regulating it at the same time.

                Why the invectives toward the R’s on every post?  If I said “Demo-crap” every time I referred to your party, I’d expect that folks would stop even trying to take me seriously.

                1. LB, we’ve beaten this horse to death. I’ve posted numerous links to all the attempts made to try and bring the GOP into the process.

                  Somehow they’ve managed to add amendments to both the House and Senate bills, despite being “shut out.”

                  The Senior Republican’ts managed to hoot and screech that they hadn’t seen any of the Dem bills “until the last minute” despite the invention of something called “the internet” which miraculously had “links” to all of the legislation on various Congressional Websites.

                  And most amazingly,due to a process called “introducing legislation,” both House AND Senate Republican’t legislators had numerous options to write things down on many pieces of paper, and submit them to a place where they review them for financial accuracy, and get a public report. This miraculous agency is called the “Congressional Budget Office” and is open to both parties.

                  But for some reason they chose not to until the last minute, and those versions they did submit were stinking pieces of partisan shit.

                  Lastly LB, the only way I’ll stop taking you seriously if you keep repeating the same old tired talking points.  

                  1. Some Dem should propose one additional amendment to the health care bill. Namely that all the amendments that were proposed by Republicans will be deemed to have failed unless at least 30% of Republicans vote for the entire bill.

                    1. But it doesn’t even need to go that far.

                      It is deemed to fail unless the legislator who proposed it votes for the bill.

                    2. … about the 30% threshold. I’d be willing to compromise on this. I’d entertain proposals of 10 or 5 or 2%, or even one individual per R amendment!

                2. Was there a personal attack in there? Did I misrepresent anything?

                  You know LB, we’ve never met, but I imagine that we share common goals. Where we differ is how to achieve those goals. We’d all like to see universal, affordable health care. This isn’t rocket science – the rest of the developed world has achieved something close to this. The plan on the table now isn’t the one you’d like to see. Before you blame Democrats, have a look at Republicans. The last real attempt in 1993 was effectively killed by Republicans. From 1994 to 2006 Republicans did nothing to advance health care reform.

                  The Republican Party has decided that reforming health care is unimportant. As your posts indicate, it has become the issue that Republicans intend to use to incite fear and to campaign on. The Republican leadership has made it clear that they intend to make health care Obama’s Waterloo.

                  So where did the common goal of affordable, universal health care go?

                  The pattern of Republican obstructionism is clear – just look at the record number of filibusters. The caterwauling about parliamentary procedures is the height of hypocrisy. Just look at procedures used by R’s from 2000-2006, when R’s held slim majorities in the House and Senate.

                  but now, Democrats are expected to play by a different set of rules, while Republicans have made clear that they have zero intention of supporting any legislation. Yet you complain about R’s getting shut out of the process. It seems to me that the very worst thing you can complain about is that Democrats are starting to legislate like Republicans.

                  Enough of this rant – it’s grown to Steve Harvey proportions. 🙂

                  1. I replied to Dan about “Republican’t”.

                    As you were.  

                    It’s a tough one, because you have two competing schools of thought that aren’t going to be able to compromise on our cores, but we might as well compromise on what we can:

                    Pre-existing protection and subsidization

                    Protection from coverage being dropped

                    Tort refor….  Ok, ok.  Just kidding.

                    This would at least be a start and might actually cover the 10 million or so folks that want insurance and can’t get it or afford it.

                    I think a public option that’s truly an option, not a mandate would be a catastrophic plan with a high deductible that you’d buy from the government.

                    1. and call it the next step toward Nazi-style Communism.

                      Search your feelings. You know it to be true.

                    2. But the only reason you guys want to pass this turd right now is because it could be an even bigger disaster for your party if you don’t.

                      No public option, no abortion coverage (if Pelosi wants to get it out of the House), fuzzy math (10 years of payments for six years of service), etc.

                      I almost think I’d rather see it passed to increase the amount of destruction it’s going to levy on the Dems, but I really fear what it could do to our country.  [Side note: Before anyone comes back with the snarky ‘Yeah – insure minority and poor people who you hate’ make sure you ask one of the folks that knows me personally on here if they think that’s accurate.]

                      Once a big, new, unsustainable entitlement is given out, it’s nearly impossible to reign in.  I have no confidence in the government’s ability to run our health care system, or in the budget projections for this bill.  Remember the projections for Medicare?

                    3. Have you looked at health care systems outside the U.S.? If so, which looks the best to you?

                    4. But what struck me was the fact that we have 340 million people here and that the best single-payer system doesn’t serve nearly that many people and still has huge problems.

                      Maybe you can give me an example and enlighten me (no snark).

                    5. Long ago, I posted a study showing that the Canadian single payer system covered every Canadian, at a cheaper per-capita cost, and with better health care outcomes by every statistical measure, than the U.S. system.

                      Comparative analyses are based on comparisons, not on reference to absolute standards conjured in the mind of someone with a particular position. Comparing these two systems, universal single-payer wins, hands down.

                      Everything “still has huge problems,” if you set your standard in order to make the claim. The issue in social policy always is, what, among the known or knowable options, has fewer problems, and more benefits?

                    6. The big thing, to me, is that in the U.S, we have no system, just bits of this-n-that.

                      Probably the system most palatable to conservatives is the Swiss system, where they rely on private insurers. 2 things make it work: It’s fairly heavily regulated: no denials for pre-existing conditions, no recissions, and a minimum set of standards for what’s covered. But, everybody is required to have health insurance and the poor are subsidized. IIRC, it’s an individual mandate, not employer-based. The insured person pays a deductible. Beyond the deductible, they pay 10% up to some ceiling (not terribly high). Insurers don’t make a profit on basic coverage. Cost is about 11% of GDP (The U.S was 16% in 2007).

                      In Japan, health insurance is mandatory. There is a mix of private and public insurance, much of it employer-based. It’s  all heavily regulated, with lots of cost controls. Japan spends about 8% of GDP. Note that there are 3x as many hospitals per capita and an avg of 14 doctor visits in a year, way more than in the U.S. They’re hardly rationing care.

                      In Australia, there’s a national single-payer system, and you pay for it: an income tax of 1.5% for average wage earners, with an extra 1% for higher income earners. You don’t pay the income tax if you opt out of the nationalized system and buy private insurance. Aussies pay about 9% of GDP. Again, that’s pretty heavily regulated in terms and conditions.

                      all for now – gotta go pick up the kiddos from school.

      1. And my childhood friends who went to Catholic school with mainly Irish nuns were terrified of them. Thought the idea of cute singing flying nuns was a scream.  Of course I think nuns, in general, are not quite what they were circa early 60s.

  2. telling anyone who will listen that the Democrats are “going to lose the majority” if Health care passes.

    SO… Why do they actually care about the plight of Democrats majority?

    One would think that they would be helping it along if that were indeed true.

    alas republics know that when Health care actually kicks in full bore… the republicans will become a permanent minority.

    OH WOW I Just got a flash of giddiness thinking of that.  

        1. It’s using accounting tricks to use 10 years of payments to pay for six years of care so it looks like it’s not such a bad deal.

          Cadillac taxes don’t go into effect until 2018?

          Please.

                  1. That’s only the beginning of the fallout from this bill.

                    Here’s more:

                    What if nearly HALF of all physicians in America suddenly stopped practicing medicine?  Such a drastic decrease in the physician workforce could become a reality, depending upon how the healthcare reform legislation is implemented, and which version of health reform passes into law.

                    In a physician survey conducted December 2009 by The Medicus Firm, a national physician search firm, 24.7% of physicians stated that they would “retire early” if a public option is implemented, and an additional 21.0% of respondents stated that they would quit practicing medicine, even though they are nowhere near retirement.   This brings the amount of physicians who would leave medicine to a total of 45.7%.

                    Can you tell me again why it’s more important to ram this bill that nobody – not even many of its proponents – thinks is really the best bill down our throats?

                    1. and the part you quoted (even if an online survey had any validity) kind of mentions a public option that’s not in the bill. Hope that doesn’t mess up your argument though.

                    2. and the part you quoted (even if an online survey had any validity) kind of mentions a public option that’s not in the bill. Hope that doesn’t mess up your argument though.

                    3. You DICK!

                      🙂

                      Right, but we’re going to see a public option in reconciliation, correct?  

                    4. No plans for that as far as I can tell.

                      And see, the problem with basing anything on things that happen online is that people fuck up things online all the time, for no good reason. Case in point. Those 45.7% of physicians threatening to quit medicine if a public option passes are probably all just the same angry Republican doctor pressing “submit” way too many times.

                    5. As noted in Colorado Independent, claims that this survey was performed by or published in the New England Journal of Medicine are false.

                      Indeed, the outfit (The Medicus Firm) that conducted this survey is in the business of recruiting physicians.

                      Thus, the specter of mass retirements following the passage of HCR would promote their bottom line!

                      Scroll down to the 12th paragraph of the above linked report form Medicus and you will find their solution to their “forecasted” physician shortage is for hospitals to hire Medicus to take extraordinary steps to recruit more doctors.

                      What does this mean for physician recruiting? It’s difficult to predict with absolute certainty, but one consequence is inevitable. After health reform is passed and implemented, physicians will be more in demand than ever before. Shortages could be exacerbated further beyond the predictions of industry analysts. Therefore, the strongest physician recruiters and firms will be in demand. Additionally, hospitals and practices may be forced to rely on unprecedented recruitment methods to attract and retain physicians. “Health reform, even if it’s passed in a most diluted form, could be a game-changer for physician recruitment,” said Bob Collins, managing partner of The Medicus Firm in Texas. “As competitive as the market is now, we may not even be able to comprehend how challenging it will become after health reform takes effect.”

                      h/t Media Matters

                      Can you spell c-o-n-f-l-i-c-t o-f i-n-t-e-r-e-s-t children?  

  3. Did someone say “CBO”? (Way up there on the first post?)

    CBO: $940 billion health bill would help cut deficit over 10 years

    The cost of expanding coverage would exceed $200 billion a year by 2019, the CBO said. But new revenue in the package, combined with savings from program cuts, would outpace the cost of coverage, reducing the federal deficit by $138 billion over the next 10 years.

    Time for you fiscal conservatives to get behind this.

    1. I saw that.  Too bad it’s for ten years of tax collections and Medicare cuts and only six years of services.

      And doesn’t include the Doc fix.  There goes your deficit reduction.

      Even the CBO gave a disclaimer about beyond ten years, and I’m not buying savings like that for a second.

      It’s like, “Here, Ari.  Eat this five-pound turd.  Hey – at least it’s not the six-pounder that’s next to it, right?”

      1. LB, the intellectual dishonesty of your arguments is disappointing. You should really reflect on why you can’t argue against this on its merits.

        1. CBO:

          Although CBO does not generally provide cost estimates beyond the 10-year budget projection period, certain Congressional rules require some information about the budgetary impact of legislation in subsequent decades, and many Members have requested CBO’s analyses of the long-term budgetary impact of broad changes in the nation’s health care and health insurance systems. Therefore, CBO has developed a rough outlook for the decade following the 2010-2019 period by grouping the elements of the legislation into broad categories and (together with the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation) assessing the rate at which the budgetary impact of each of those broad categories is likely to increase over time. Our analysis indicates that H.R. 3590, as passed by the Senate, would reduce federal budget deficits over the ensuing decade relative to those projected under current law-with a total effect during that decade that is in a broad range between one-quarter percent and one-half percent of gross domestic product (GDP).3 The imprecision of that calculation reflects the even greater degree of uncertainty that attends to it, compared with CBO’s 10-year budget estimates.

          They’re not terribly fond of making projections they know are pretty much a guess, and I’ll refer back to my point about the estimates for Medicare when it was introduced compared to what was actually spent.

          There is no Doc fix in the bill, and it’s going to have to happen, at a tune of about 400 Billion dollars.  Where do you think I’m being dishonest?

          The bill starts taxing right away and most benefits don’t kick in for four years.

          1. I think Ed Morrissey put it well over at HotAir:

            This is why they’re delaying the start of the program, of course. If it kicked in right away, the decade-long estimate would obviously be well into the trillions. So they simply stalled it for four years, incurring just $17 billion in costs – or 1.8 percent of the total 10-year estimate – through 2013 so that wavering Democrats could go back to their districts and tell baldfaced lies to their constituents about the pricetag. A perfect ending to this travesty.

          2. it’s intellectually dishonest to cite the CBO (inaccurately, as it turns out) to support your case, then dismiss their work as “just guessing” when I cite them in argument against you.

            Second, PR states he’s addressed your claims. I’m not here all that much anymore, as you know, but if there’s one polster I can trust to know his stuff and to be honest at all times, it’s PR. If he says you got nothin’, then he also showed you how and why you got nothin’. Continuing to trot out dismissed arguments is dishonest.

            Third, if you’re going to bring up partisan editorials, then so will I. Krugman:

            The second myth is that the proposed reform does nothing to control costs. To support this claim, critics point to reports by the Medicare actuary, who predicts that total national health spending would be slightly higher in 2019 with reform than without it.

            Even if this prediction were correct, it points to a pretty good bargain. The actuary’s assessment of the Senate bill, for example, finds that it would raise total health care spending by less than 1 percent, while extending coverage to 34 million Americans who would otherwise be uninsured. That’s a large expansion in coverage at an essentially trivial cost.

            And it gets better as we go further into the future: the Congressional Budget Office has just concluded, in a new report, that the arithmetic of reform will look better in its second decade than it did in its first.

            Furthermore, there’s good reason to believe that all such estimates are too pessimistic. There are many cost-saving efforts in the proposed reform, but nobody knows how well any one of these efforts will work. And as a result, official estimates don’t give the plan much credit for any of them. What the actuary and the budget office do is a bit like looking at an oil company’s prospecting efforts, concluding that any individual test hole it drills will probably come up dry, and predicting as a consequence that the company won’t find any oil at all – when the odds are, in fact, that some of the test holes will pan out, and produce big payoffs. Realistically, health reform is likely to do much better at controlling costs than any of the official projections suggest

            Now, that doesn’t have anything to do with what Morrissey say. I just wanted to throw that out there because I think it’s absurd for partisans to quote partisans when debating this stuff.

            1. Hasn’t even seen the reconciliation bill. How can they score it?

              Let me ask you a question:

              is passing this particular bill worth the cost of losing Congress? If so, why?

              1. This line of argument is ridiculous because the insinuation is that if Democrats dump the bill, start all over shiny and fresh and pass something that Republicans just love, love love, every Democrat will keep his seat in November, we’ll keep a majority in Congress and I’ll finally get my fucking pony.

                The future of the Democratic majority in the House and in the Senate does not rest solely on this bill and it’s slightly disingenuous to suggest otherwise.

                1. A lot can happen, and I dig Ari.  I think he’d answer it honestly, but I should have phrased it better.

                  “Hypothetically assuming Democrats will lose control of Congress as a result of this particular reform bill being passed, would you still want to pull out all stops and resort to any procedural method to ensure its passage?”

                  I should be a push poller…

                  PS What color pony?

                  1. I’ve been too busy with the fam to even check on this til now.

                    I’ll tell you this much. I’m not certain that this will make things better. BUT… I fail to see how things could get any worse compared to leaving things as they are. Government already picks up the tab for uninsured people when they go to the emergency room, unless they have the assets (like a home and life savings) that can be liquidated to pay for their care. Both outcomes are intolerable to me and any bill – ANY BILL – that attempts to fix this is a good one.

                    So… without acknowledging whether or not the Dems will lose Congress over this (because only a hardcore conservative stalwart really believes that health care reform will directly lead to that result), I will say that any backlash suffered will be worth it because passing this bill is the right thing to do.

                    I skimmed the comments on the Markey diary, so I know that you’ve already seen some say that taking a stand won’t do her as much damage as playing it safe, given the makeup of CD4. I happen to hold that opinion, but I also know that the GOP really knows how to hammer a message home, whether it’s true or not, and if they retake Congress I will give the credit to their campaign machine, not to the notion that a majority of Americans are dead set against this bill.

              2. The CBO numbers are from the reconciliation bill.  The score is as posted: saves $130b over the first 10 years, and $1.2t over the next 10.

                And yes, it’s worth losing Congress over – not that it will happen outside of conservative dreamland.

                  1. “It’s a preliminary score” – well, it’s as final as the CBO is going to give for this bill.

                    On the “Medicare Doc fix” – you mean, the fix that’s included in every year’s budget that isn’t part of health care reform but rather is part of the general Medicare budget?

                    PS – you might want to subscribe to something other than GOP-talking-point-of-the-day; these are right out of yesterday’s list.

  4. There are too many and great financial interests in the private health care sector to allow the Senate to adopt this bill. The nuns and the church may try to influence or rush the decision but they are powerless. Politicians must start moving this bill forward before needing hemorrhoid treatment for sitting on it too long.

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