Asa Hutchinson: “one of the issues that has arisen during this debate is whether or not the Murray amendment violates the Hyde provision…”

“one of the issues that has arisen during this debate is whether or not the Murray amendment violates the Hyde provision which prohibits Federal funding for abortion. Proponents of the amendment argue, no, this doesn't violate Hyde because we are requiring a woman to pay for the abortion procedure. I have raised the issue as to how exactly to calculate the cost of reimbursing the DOD for the expense of an abortion procedure, in a military hospital, when the facilities were built at taxpayers' expense, and the support staff were paid salaries out of public funds, in which the equipment has been paid for. How in the world would this be calculated? Now, earlier it was suggested that is not really a problem. During the lunch break, we checked with the Department of Defense. I will share for the record what we found. It is currently not feasible with existing information systems and support capabilities to collect billing information relative to a specific encounter within the military health care system. Procedures performed in military hospitals are assigned a diagnostic related group code, but these are 'assigned' or 'allocated' costs that don't necessarily reflect resources devoted to a specific case. Military infrastructure and overhead costs cannot, at the present time, be allocated on a case-by-case basis.”