In this morning’s Washington Post, editorial page editor Fred Hiatt argues that the House health care bill “could take America a step closer to bankruptcy” and harm “the poor and vulnerable.”

Hiatt acknowledges that “[i]n a country as wealthy as America, no one should have to go without medical care” and remains hopeful that the House health care bill “would take America a giant step closer to” insuring all Americans. But, he also sees a “dilemma.” “The bill also could take America a step closer to bankruptcy. And for progressives in particular — for those who believe that government has a mission to help the poor and protect the vulnerable — that prospect should be alarming.”

But since the CBO’s analysis of the House health care bill doesn’t support Hiatt’s contention that it would bring America “a step closer to bankruptcy,” Hiatt relies on the CBO’s analysis of the President’s budget and implies that it’s Obama’s health “plan”:

The root difficulty is Obama’s insistence that the nation can afford a large new social program without raising taxes on anyone who earns less than $250,000 per year. Under his plan, according to a CBO analysis, the government will be spending 24.5 percent of gross domestic product — the total value of the national economy — by 2019 while raising only 19 percent in revenue: a huge, unsustainable gap.

The 24.5% of GDP isn’t a measure of government spending as a result of the House/Obama health care bill. It’s a measure of the outlays of all of the President’s policies in his 2010 budget in 2019 and does not capture the effects of health care reform or the House bill.

According to the CBO, the House health care bill — the one that Hiatt claimed “could take America a step closer to bankruptcy” — would actually “reduce the federal deficit by $9 billion in 2019″ and, in the decade following 2019, the “the legislation would slightly reduce federal budget deficits in that decade relative to those projected under current law—with a total effect during that decade that is in a broad range between zero and one-quarter percent of GDP.”

Our guest blogger is Jessica Arons, Director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

If you thought that just because abortion is a constitutional right and part of basic reproductive health care it would be available in the reformed health insurance market known as the Exchange, think again. The Stupak Amendment, passed Saturday night by the House of Representatives after a compromise deal fell apart, potentially goes farther than any other federal law to restrict women’s access to abortion.

The claim that it only bars federal funding for abortions is simply false. Here’s what the Stupak Amendment does:

1. It effectively bans coverage for most abortions from all public and private health plans in the Exchange: In addition to prohibiting direct government funding for abortion, it also prohibits public money from being spent on any plan that covers abortion even if paid for entirely with private premiums. Therefore, no plan that covers abortion services can operate in the Exchange unless its subscribers can afford to pay 100% of their premiums with no assistance from government “affordability credits.” As the vast majority of Americans in the Exchange will need to use some of these credits, it is highly unlikely any plan will want to offer abortion coverage (unless they decide to use it as a convenient proxy to discriminate against low- and moderate-income Americans who tend to have more health care needs and incur higher costs).

2. It includes only extremely narrow exceptions: Plans in the Exchange can only cover abortions in the case of rape or incest or “where a woman suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness that would, as certified by a physician, place the woman in danger of death.” Given insurance companies’ dexterity in denying claims, we can predict what they’ll do with that language. Cases that are excluded: where the health but not the life of the woman is threatened by the pregnancy, severe fetal abnormalities, mental illness or anguish that will lead to suicide or self-harm, and the numerous other reasons women need to have an abortion.

3. It allows for a useless abortion “rider”: Stupak and his allies claim his Amendment doesn’t ban abortion from the Exchange because it allows plans to offer and women to purchase extra, stand-alone insurance known as a rider to cover abortion services. Hopefully the irony of this is immediately apparent: Stupak wants women to plan for a completely unexpected event.

4. It allows for discrimination against abortion providers: Previously, the health care bill included an evenhanded provision that prohibited discrimination against any health care provider or facility “because of its willingness or unwillingness to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.” Now, it only protects those who are unwilling to provide such services.

One in three women will have an abortion in their lifetime. Eighty-seven percent of employer plans offer abortion coverage. None of that will matter if the Senate takes its cues from the House. In every other way, this bill will expand access to health care. But for millions of women, they are about to lose coverage they currently have and often need.