A proposal for a government program that would send nurses into the homes of low-income women to counsel them about their pregnancies and parenting skills failed to gain support in Congress this year, but has been revived in the health care legislation.
The language, buried deep in the 1,000-plus-page House health care reform bill, has bipartisan support, though it never had enough backing to pass the House or Senate on its own.
On page 768 of the House bill, the language calls for “Optional Coverage of Nurse Home Visitation Services,” which would aim to improve the health of pregnant women and their children under the age of 2 by “increasing birth intervals between pregnancies,” curbing child abuse and “improving family stability” by reducing domestic violence and crime.
President Barack Obama called for the creation of the program in his budget proposal, delivered to Congress earlier this year, and he gave it a $124 million price tag for the first year.
House Democrats left the language out of the annual health and education spending bill and instead inserted it into their sweeping $1 trillion health care reform bill.
The language has given opponents of that bill more ammunition with which to label the legislation a giant leap toward socialism.
“The federal government doesn’t hold the key to parenting success, and creating a new home visitation program would further increase the federal role in preschool education,” wrote Linsey Burke, of the Heritage Foundation. “Just one more reason for parents to be concerned about what’s actually in the health care bill.”
Support for the language is based on studies that show home visitation to low-income families has many benefits, including improved prenatal health, reduction in cigarette smoking, and fewer injuries to young children.
The studies, conducted by the Denver-based Nurse-Family Partnership also found that the visits led to “fewer unintended subsequent pregnancies, and increases in intervals between first and second births.”
Some opponents of the language fear this could lead to abortion counseling.
Darrell West, a governance studies scholar at the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., think tank, said lawmakers will have a hard time explaining such aspects of the bill until Congress settles on one piece of legislation from the various plans that are now under consideration.
“Opponents are assuming the worst possible motivations and so they are taking innocuous language and twisting into something that sounds absolutely terrible,” West said. “Democrats have to confront those fears and explain what the reality is.”
