<div><p>The health care reform bill passed by US senators Thursday tramples on women's abortion rights and leeches off working Americans while enriching the insurance industry and changing little, critics said.</p><p>The National Organization for Women (NOW) blasted the measure as a "disappointing move that sets women's reproductive rights back" after Democratic senators included compromise language on abortion coverage to muster the 60 votes needed to overcome parliamentary delaying tactics.</p><p>"When a small group of men sets out to determine what rights women can exercise over their own bodies, it's sexism, not health care," NOW said in a statement.</p><p>The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), which groups 57 national and international labor unions, said the Senate bill "doesn't live up to the kind of reform we need."</p><p>Key shortcomings of the bill are that it would be "paid for by a tax on working families' health benefits" and fails to provide a public health insurance option, "which would control costs by giving insurance companies real competition," the AFL-CIO said.</p><p>The House of Representatives version, which passed last month, does include a government-backed "public option" to compete with private insurers but that provision was stripped from the Senate bill.</p><p>Both versions, which differ significantly, must now be merged before they can be sent to President Barack Obama's desk to be signed into law. Republicans have vowed to make sure that does not happen.</p><p>The most heartfelt criticism of the bill came from a woman who several years ago found herself at the receiving end of medical malpractice and the insurance industry's barbs.</p><p>"They keep calling it health care reform but it seems to me that it's health care insurance restructuring," said 55-year-old Merri Ferrell, who seven years ago was given a hysterectomy by mistake.</p><p>"If millions of people are going to be required to buy health insurance, think of the revenues for the insurance industry."</p><p>Ferrell's insurance company was the first to contact her in 2002 after she was released from a hospital in New York where she had gone to have uterine fibroids removed, only to be told by a nurse when she came to after surgery that she had been given a hysterectomy instead, against her wishes.</p><p>"Not only was everything gone, but my lungs had collapsed during the operation. So they kept me in the hospital for a few days to make sure my lungs reinflated," Ferrell told AFP.</p><p>"The first piece of mail I got when I got home was from my insurance company. They didn't wish me well -- they were asking why I had stayed an extra day at the hospital and I had to justify it or they would charge me some sort of figure that made me faint."</p><img src="http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/images/ad.gif?aid=65960634&bid=informcom" /></div><div id="copyright"><div>

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