Health Reform Viagra Sex Offenders

Ed Perlmutter voted for Viagra for sex offenders, paid for by health care bill? Nope.
By Angie Drobnic Holan on Tuesday, October 26th, 2010 at 7:02 p.m.
A new campaign ad makes the startling claim that the new health care law will pay for Viagra for rapists — and that Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo., voted for the measure.
So Coburn offered an amendment that would "reduce the cost of providing federally funded prescription drugs by eliminating fraudulent payments and prohibiting coverage of Viagra for child molesters and rapists and for drugs intended to induce abortion."
But by the time the Senate took up the amendment on March 24, 2010, it was late in the process. The bill's sponsors said any changes, no matter how small, could effectively kill the bill, so they opposed Coburn's amendment for procedural reasons. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., urged his colleagues to reject the amendment, saying, "This is a serious bill. This is a serious debate. The amendment offered by the senator from Oklahoma makes a mockery of the Senate, the debate and the American people. It is a crass political stunt aimed at making 30-second commercials, not public policy." The amendment failed, 57-42, and the president signed the law six days later. Now, nearly seven months later, the commercial has turned up.
We want to emphasize that the Viagra amendment came up in the Senate . Perlmutter is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He never got the chance to vote one way or the other on the amendment.
The Perlmutter campaign was not amused by the ad's claims, calling them "blatant lies."
"It's so illogical it would be like saying the bill allows Martians masquerading as humans to see a proctologist," said spokeswoman Leslie Oliver in a statement.
American Action Campaign e-mailed a factsheet that says by virtue of voting for final passage for the health care bill that did not include the anti-Viagra amendment, he was voting for Viagra. The ad itself flashes an editorial from the Washington Times , headlined "Obamacare's Viagra giveaway." The editorial said the Senate should have voted for the Viagra amendment and questioned whether Democrats were sincere in their procedural objections.
We should note that the use of taxpayer dollars for sex-offender Viagra remains a hypothetical. While CRS concluded that there was nothing in the current law to stop it from happening, the earliest it could start is in 2014 — so there's time for lawmakers to act or for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to write regulations to stop it from happening.
Finally, whatever taxpayer subsidies for sex offenders might materialize after 2014, they would not go to all sex offenders — only to sex offenders who get health care through the exchanges and who also qualify for subsidies.
About this statement:
Published: Tuesday, October 26th, 2010 at 7:02 p.m.
U.S. Senate, roll call vote on the motion to table Coburn amendment no. 3556, March 24, 2010.
Text of Coburn Amendment no. 3556.
Memo from the Congressional Research Service to Sen. Tom Coburn, Re: coverage under a qualified health plan for drugs prescribed to treat erectile dysfunction in the case of a convicted rapist, child molester or sex offender, April 2, 2010.
Memo from the Congressional Research Service to Sen. Tom Coburn, Re: News articles on federal coverage of erectile dysfunction drugs for sex offenders, April 2, 2010.
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