Tag Archives: Topic: Insurance

Turtle Bay and Beyond: The White House blog in a post called “Health Reform, Preventive Services, and Religious Institutions” addresses women’s preventive services required under the Affordable Care Act by religious institutions.

LifeSiteNews.com: Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), told LifeSiteNews.com “we will not comply” with the Dept. of Health and Human Services’ mandate requiring religious institutions to cover abortifacient products such as Plan B, Ella, and the IUD.

CBS New York (includes video): “The federal government should do what it’s traditionally done since July 4, 1776, namely back out of intruding into the internal life of a church,” Dolan told CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer.

The Hill: The White House struggled Wednesday to contain the growing uproar over its birth-control mandate, with Democrats peeling off one by one in what has become an increasingly divisive election-year controversy.

LifeNews.com: “I’m not a Catholic but I stand in 100% solidarity with my brothers & sisters to practice their belief against govt pressure,” Warren said. “I’d go to jail rather than cave in to a govement mandate that violates what God commands us to do. Would you? Acts 5:29.”

LifeNews.com: In a new interview with Greta Van Susteren of Fox News, “pro-life” former Democratic congressman Bart Stupak of Michigan says he is opposed to the controversial new Obama mandate that forces religious employers to pay for birth control and abortion-causing drugs in employee health insurance plans.

NewsOK.com: Religious groups that oppose President Obama’s mandate that they provide contraception are using the right to religious liberty as a way to discriminate against women, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in an email opposing congressional repeal of the mandate.

Catholic Culture: A state law in Hawaii may form the basis for a compromise between the Obama administration and the US Catholic bishops on the mandate to include contraceptive coverage in health-care plans.

Daily Caller carries the video.

LifeNews.com: Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning is coordinating a legal challenge against the controversial Obama mandate requiring religious employers to cover birth control and drugs that can cause abortions.

Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America – Record of Protest Against the Infringement of Religious Liberty by HHS: . . . We, the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops, call upon HHS Secretary Sebelius and the Obama Administration to rescind this unjust ruling and to respect the religious freedom guaranteed all Americans by the First Amendment.

Catholic Culture: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has released a statement that offers “clarifications regarding the Health and Human Services regulations on mandatory coverage of contraceptives, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs.”

News from The Associated Press: Romney has accused Obama of an “assault on religion” over the issue. But Carney says a virtually identical policy is in place in Massachusetts, where Romney served as governor, and that it’s ironic for Romney to criticize Obama over it.

Hot Air:The ACLU protests this perception, pointing to a number of controversial clients they have defended and insist that their mission is only to preserve the civil liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the rest of the US Constitution. I think this puts the ACLU argument to rest once and for all . . .

In today’s broadcast, Rush Limbaugh read from this report –  LifeSiteNews, December 9, 2005 by Gudrun Schultz: In a shocking turn-around, Massachusetts’s governor Mitt Romney announced yesterday that Roman Catholic and other private hospitals in the state will be forced to offer emergency contraception to sexual assault victims under new state legislation, regardless of the hospitals’ moral position on the issue . . .

Religion Clause: It appears that the letter posed particular issues for Catholic chaplains in the U.S. military who received a letter to read from Archbishop Timothy Broglio, head of the Archdiocese for the Military Services USA. God and Country blog reports that Army’s Office of the Chief of Chaplains e-mailed senior chaplains advising them that Broglio had not coordinated the letter with the Chief of Chaplains Office.

News from The Associated Press: A political adviser to President Barack Obama said Tuesday the administration didn’t intend to “abridge anyone’s religious freedom” with its regulation requiring church-affiliated employers to cover birth control for their workers.

ADF President and General Counsel Alan E. Sears on the Hugh Hewitt Show. | MP3 audio 10:24 mins

News from The Associated Press: A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that seniors who receive Social Security cannot reject their legal right to Medicare benefits, in a rare case of Americans suing to get out of a government entitlement.

CBS New York: Catholic leaders upped the ante Monday, threatening to challenge the Obama administration over a provision of the new health care law that would require all employers, including religious institutions, to pay for birth control.

CNSnews.com: Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who leads the Roman Catholic Archdiocese for the Military Services, wrote a letter to be read at all Sunday Masses for U.S. military personnel around the world that said that a regulation issued by the Obama Administration under the new federal health care law was “a blow” to a freedom that U.S. troops have not only fought to defend but for which some have recently died in battle.

Rosss Douthat at the NYTimes.com: But there are trade-offs as well, which liberal communitarians don’t always like to acknowledge. When government expands, it’s often at the expense of alternative expressions of community, alternative groups that seek to serve the common good.

Associated Baptist Press: “Our religious liberty is being similarly subverted and attacked,” Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said of the Obama administration’s inclusion of pregnancy in “preventive services” that health insurers must provide.

LifeNews.com: In an email distributed by Human Events, a conservative publication, Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich takes the Obama administration to task of its new Obamacare mandate.

Religion Clause: Q What about the constitutional right to freedom of religion?…
MR. CARNEY: I don’t believe there are any constitutional rights issues here, but I would refer you to others to discuss that. … I understand that there’s controversy … and we will continue to work with religious groups to discuss their concerns. But on the other side of this was the important need to provide access to women to the preventive services that they require….

Liberty Counsel: U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) introduced a bill called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 2012 that will expand the nearly nonexistent exemption for religious employers in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as ObamaCare.

LaTimes.com: The healthcare law’s mandate to require religious-affiliated employers to pay for contraception for their workers has prompted two lawsuits. If the matter gets to the Supreme Court, it will go before justices who recently affirmed — in a 9-0 ruling — that the 1st Amendment gives special leeway to religious employers.

Pat Buchanan at Townhall: Now, not only is this a battle the Church must fight, it is a battle the Church can win if it has the moral stamina to say the course. In forcing the Church to violate its own principles, Obama has committed an act of federal aggression, crossing the line between church and state to appease his ACLU and feminist allies, while humiliating the Catholic bishops.

Ronald Rotunda at Fox News: So, the DOJ is simultaneously claiming that it completely walled off Kagan from any discussions involving the constitutional defense of ObamaCare, while admitting that Kagan was participating in emails discussing “legal issues, arguments, and strategy concerning” the anticipated ObamaCare litigation.

National Catholic Reporter: A week after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told individuals and institutions who oppose contraception “to hell with you,” as one bishop put it, members of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy were mobilizing their followers to fight.

News from The Associated Press: House Republican leaders are drafting a bill to replace President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul if the Supreme Court strikes it down this summer.

NY Archbishop Timothy Dolan writes at the Wall Street Journal (full access via Google): Religious freedom is the lifeblood of the American people, the cornerstone of American government. When the Founding Fathers determined that the innate rights of men and women should be enshrined in our Constitution, they so esteemed religious liberty that they made it the first freedom in the Bill of Rights.

Hot Air (includes video): Former Senator Norm Coleman joined the Mitt Romney campaign in September, but hasn’t made an impact until now — and Romney may have wished he hadn’t. In an interview Sunday for BioCentury, a health-industry roundtable forum, Coleman said that ObamaCare won’t ever be repealed “in its entirety,” and that “you can’t whole cloth throw it out.”

Politico: The Supreme Court on Monday denied a request for debate over whether Justice Elena Kagan should recuse herself from the health care reform case due to be argued in March.

SCOTUS Blog reports.

Kaiser Health News: he United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is promising a legal challenge to federal rules the Obama administration reaffirmed Friday requiring health insurers to provide women with a range of preventive health services, including birth control, without charging a co-payment, co-insurance or deductible.

Grace-Marie Turner at National Review Online: The Obama administration announced today it will wait for a year (coincidentally until after the elections) before requiring religious organizations to comply with an Obamacare mandate that they provide coverage for contraception — including controversial drugs that can abort an early pregnancy.

Michael A. Walsh at NYPOST.com: Friday’s ruling by the Department of Health and Human Services proved yet again that ObamaCare’s critics are right. It’s a breathtaking attack not only on the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom, but also on the separation of church and state.

Heritage Foundation Foundry Blog: An internal memorandum from the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) reveals that Justice Elena Kagan “substantially participated” in a health care case in San Francisco in which the Justice Department argued over the effect of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). This raises grave new doubts about the appropriateness of Kagan’s participation as a justice in the Obamacare lawsuit scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court in March.

Marc Siegel at USATODAY.com: Nearly half (48%) expected health reform to hurt their incomes this year, while 73% said it would not reduce costs.

The Hill: Supporters of President Obama’s healthcare reform have lost the high level of confidence they once displayed that the Supreme Court would throw out constitutional challenges to the law’s individual mandate.

The Hill: Hospitals and other healthcare providers are worried that a Medicare panel has painted a target on their backs just as lawmakers return to Capitol Hill to prevent a payment cut to physicians.

NCPA Policy Digest: Cancer patients on Medicaid survive less time after their diagnosis than people with private or no insurance, data from Ohio show.

The Hill: More than 480 state lawmakers plan to file a brief Thursday urging the Supreme Court to uphold President Obama’s healthcare law.

Ceskapozice.cz (report contains graphic birthing images): Czech law unfairly denies coverage for homebirths, insurers don’t reimburse cost of hiring midwives, say women filing suit at ECtHR

TPMDC: In its amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court Friday, the Justice Department cited no fewer than 10 times the 2005 Gonzalez v. Raich case, in which Scalia (and Justice Anthony Kennedy) broke with the court’s conservative wing to hand down what scholars viewed as one of the broadest declarations of federal power under the Commerce Clause: a 6-3 ruling decreeing that Congress may ban a medical-marijuana patient from growing cannabis for personal use in California where it’s legal.

LifeNews.com: A bill in the Washington state legislature would require that any insurance policy sold to state residents for maternity coverage also require policyholders to pay for coverage of abortions.

The Hill: He said that since President Lyndon Johnson introduced the idea of a federal role in healthcare costs have skyrocketed and the system has become controlled by corporations instead of the government.

How Appealing reports and links to the ruling.

CNN: Doctors in America are harboring an embarrassing secret: Many of them are going broke.

The Hill: Requiring people to have health insurance is “conservative,” GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney told MSNBC on Wednesday, but only if states do it.

Education News: Because of the faltering economy and slowed tax revenue, the Clark County School District needs to cut $78 million from its budget over the next two years. The district must do this either by freezing teacher pay and finding a more affordable employee health insurance carrier, or by laying off 1,000 educators as early as next month.

The Washington Post: The Obama administration Friday rolled out a benefits framework for millions of people who will get private insurance through the health care overhaul, but states will decide the specifics.

Courthouse News Service: The Rhode Island State Right to Life Committee and 28 state legislators say Gov. Lincoln Chafee illegally bypassed the Legislature in issuing an executive order to create a Rhode Island Health Benefits Exchange Program, to sell health insurance plans that include coverage for abortions.

News from The Associated Press: The Human Rights Campaign said in a report to be published Thursday that 207 of the 636 businesses it surveyed for its annual Corporate Equality Index either are already providing transgender- inclusive employee health benefits . . .

SCOTUSblog: This article deals with an issue the Court will confront if it strikes down the mandate: what, if anything, would then be left of the remainder of the Act?

NCPA Policy Digest: Both the federal and state governments hamper doctors’ ability to innovate in medicine and to offer more affordable or alternative care. While the federal government delays innovative medicine, state governments make affordable care more difficult by limiting the number of doctors and saddling those who do practice with difficult liability rules.

SCOTUS Blog: This is one of a continuing series of articles the blog will publish over the next several weeks, explaining more fully the new federal health care law, and the Supreme Court’s review of the constitutionality of key parts of the law.  This article is the third of three on the heart of the new law: the mandate that virtually all Americans obtain health insurance by the year 2014.  Part I (found here) described why Congress adopted the mandate.   Part II (found herediscussed the tie between the mandate and expanded health insurance coverage.  This Part III discusses the financial penalty that Congress adopted to enforce the mandate, and how the penalty is to work.  Each of these parts has included discussions of related constitutional questions.   Prior posts in this overall series can be read, in sequence, here and here and here.

The Hill: Doctors and healthcare executives on Thursday slammed a set of expert recommendations on how to define “essential” health benefits.

Kathryn Jean Lopez at NCRegister.com: “Public funding should go toward helping and caring for the most vulnerable Americans, not killing them,” said Matt Bowman, legal counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund, which frequently goes to bat for conscience issues in court. “Clearly, the American taxpayers should not be forced to fund abortions, especially during tough economic times, but the health-care act threatens to do that and more. It threatens the conscience rights of health professionals, payers and employers, because it is not subject to existing federal conscience-protection laws, and Congress failed to apply comprehensive conscience protections to the statute. In addition, HHS recently mandated that all employers provide plans that cover abortifacients, contraception and sterilization.”

The Hill: President Obama’s healthcare law will leave millions of families without affordable coverage unless tax officials rewrite the rules on who gets subsidies, advocates warned Thursday.

David C. Rose at CSMonitor.com: The distinction between inactivity and activity is vital for upholding the Constitution’s principle of enumerated government powers and thereby maintaining a free society. It is important that all Americans understand the threat President Obama’s health-care law poses to freedom in the US.

Rasmussen Reports: As the Supreme Court considers the constitutionality of the health care law, American voters overwhelming reject the notion that the federal government has the authority to force anyone to buy health insurance.

Cheryl Gay Stolberg at NYTimes.com: As Barack Obama battled Hillary Rodham Clinton over health care during the Democratic presidential primaries of 2008, he was adamant about one thing: Americans, he insisted, should not be required to buy health insurance.

The Nation: Today, the Supreme Court agreed to hear constitutional challenges brought on by twenty-six states and a business group to President Obama’s healthcare reform bill. There will likely be arguments in the spring and a ruling by July, right in the heat of the presidential election.

Washington Times: he Supreme Court’s announcement Monday that it will hear challenges to President Obama’s health care law have put the spotlight on Justice Elena Kagan, who worked in the administration while the law was being written and, conservatives argue, helped craft its legal defense.

SCOTUSblog has this post on the certiorari grants.

Politico: The nine Supreme Court justices could decide as soon as Thursday whether — and how — to wade into the politically charged legal waters of health reform.

Voters in Ohio have approved a ballot measure intended to keep government from requiring Ohioans to participate in any health care system.

How Appealing links to reports and the ruling.

SCOTUSblog: The Obama Administration has filed the last key document in the constitutional cases in the Supreme Court on the new federal health care law, urging the Justices not to grant review of Virginia’s attempt to get back into the controversy. The Court, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., suggested in a filing Thursday, should simply hold Virginia’s petition until after it rules on other pending cases that the government wants reviewed.

Businessweek: For insurance companies nervously watching the legal fight over the constitutionality of the President’s health-care law, it would be the unthinkable: The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down the law’s so-called individual mandate, which requires millions of young, healthy people to buy coverage—but leaves intact rules compelling insurers to cover sick people, who are likely to cost far more in benefits than they pay in premiums. Congress is then left to fix the problem.

Politico: If the Supreme Court next year gets rid of the health reform law’s requirement to buy insurance, Republicans could gain momentum to get rid of the rest of the law — and President Barack Obama would suffer a huge embarrassment at the height of an election year.

Fox News: Supporters admit that a victory for “Issue 3” would be mostly symbolic – but powerfully so. “Sometimes symbols matter,” said Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich. “The problem with Obamacare is you stick all these people on, and you have no way to pay for it.”

The Hill: The 22-page report from House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) concludes that married couples will get only 14 percent of the law’s tax credits, even as more than 7 million mostly single people cease paying income taxes altogether.