Gay rights advocates are hoping that certain LGBT-friendly provisions now part of the House health care legislation “will be incorporated into the final bill” once the Senate and House bills are “reconciled in conference.”

The House bill “ends the unfair taxation of employer-provided domestic partner health benefits,” “designates LGBT people as a health disparities population,” “allows states to cover early HIV treatment under their Medicaid programs” and “prohibits consideration of personal characteristics unrelated to the provision of health care”:

- Ends the unfair taxation of employer-provided domestic partner health benefits: While federal law allows married workers who receive family health insurance benefits to deduct the value of that coverage from taxable income, workers who are unmarried and have domestic partners are required to pay taxes on the fair market value of their coverage. As a result, “employees with partner health benefits now pay on average $1,069 per year more in taxes than would a married employee with the same coverage.” As CAP’s ‘Unequal Taxes on Equal Benefits‘ concluded, “collectively, unmarried couples lose $178 million per year to additional taxes.” The bill extends the tax exclusion to domestic partnership benefits.

- Designates LGBT people as a health disparities population: This opens up health data collection and grant programs “focused on health disparities related to sexual orientation and gender identity, enabling the government to direct funding for research and public health efforts to address those disparities.” For instance, “gay men and lesbian women are at increased risk for certain cancers (lung, cervical, breast, and anal cancer), due to a higher prevalence of smoking and inadequate risk assessment and screening by providers.” Greater research into these disparities would allow the federal government to “target the health promotion campaigns” about “smoking prevention and cessation activities” to LGBT populations.

- Provides states to expand coverage for early HIV treatment under their Medicaid programs: Medicaid “covers 55 percent of all people living with AIDS and 90 percent of all children living with AIDS who are receiving medical care.” Under current law, “individuals with HIV/AIDS who qualify for Medicaid do so because they are certified as disabled,” (which means that they will not be eligible for services until their immune systems have declined to the point of an AIDS diagnosis and/or they are no longer able to work). At this stage and is often “too sick to benefit from current therapies” and is “past the recommended point to begin treatment.” This provision, based on the bipartisan The Early Treatment for HIV Act (ETHA), would allow more HIV positive people to receive treatment at earlier stages and would “dramatically improve the quality of life for low-income people with HIV, as well as saving taxpayers money and reducing the transmission of the virus.” The Senate bill

- Prohibits consideration of personal characteristics unrelated to the provision of health care: The bill specifies that all health care and related services (including insurance coverage and public health activities) covered by this Act shall be provided without regard to personal characteristics extraneous to the provision of high quality health care or related services. Consideration of sexual orientation and gender identity in the dispensation of medical care has long disadvantaged the LGBT community.

Josh Rosenthal has more on how health reform can address the specific needs of LGBT Americans.

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

On Monday, in an interview with ABC News, President Obama reminded Congress that “this is a health care bill, not an abortion bill.” When asked about the Stupak Amendment, he responded that “there needs to be some more work before we get to the point where we’re not changing the status quo,” implicitly acknowledging that the measure does not preserve the status quo on laws related to abortion funding. “I want to make sure that the provision that emerges meets that test — that we are not in some way sneaking in funding for abortions, but, on the other hand, that we’re not restricting women’s insurance choices,” he said.

Ironically, it was the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that was among the first to call for an “abortion-neutral” health care bill back in July. It defined abortion-neutral as maintaining current policies on funding, mandates, and conscience protections:

Any legislation should reflect longstanding and widely supported current policies on abortion funding, mandates and conscience protections because they represent sound morality, wise policy and political reality. Making the legislation “abortion-neutral” in this sense will be essential for widely accepted reform.

The Capps Amendment, which was in the original House bill and is still in Senate legislation, meets all of these criteria:

- The Hyde Amendment ban on Medicaid funding for abortion would remain unchanged.

- The Hyde Amendment would be applied to all public and private plans in the Exchange by segregating private premiums and government subsidies and ensuring that only private premiums be used to pay for abortion.

- No abortions could be mandated as part of the minimum benefits package, even those allowed by Hyde.

- Evenhanded conscience provisions protect those willing and unwilling to provide abortion care, counseling, and referrals.

But the Bishops lobbied against this compromise and demanded that the far-reaching Stupak Amendment be adopted. This measure:

- Goes beyond the Hyde Amendment by preventing women from using their own money to buy an insurance plan that includes abortion, even though no public funding would be spent on abortion services.

- Gives insurance companies an incentive to discriminate against low- and moderate-income women.

- Limits insurance companies in deciding what benefits to offer their customers

- Provides for the purchase of flimsy abortion-only riders that are unlikely to be offered or purchased.

- Allows for discrimination against health care providers who are willing to offer abortion services

The Capps Amendment involved a number of concessions from abortion rights advocates and ought to satisfy the demands of abortion rights opponents. If the true goal is health reform and not to undermine that reform or advance an ideologically-rigid agenda, then we need both sides to meet in the middle.