Thread: US 'to change' contraception rule

10 February 2012 Last updated at 09:47 ETThe new rule goes into effect for religiously affiliated institutions in more than a year
The White House is preparing to compromise amid a growing row with religious leaders over a new rule on providing contraception, reports say.

US President Barack Obama is expected to make an announcement on Friday.

Catholic leaders have been angered by a new rule requiring Church-linked institutions to offer health insurance including birth control.

The debate has pushed social issues to the fore during an election season so far dominated by the US economy.

Word of the compromise comes shortly after the top Republican in the US Congress joined the outcry against the contraception rule.

House Speaker John Boehner said legislation was needed to prevent the rule coming into force.

The issue is also expected to be a key rallying point for Republican presidential candidates at a major conservative conference in Washington on Friday.

Under the current White House plan, Church-linked institutions must cover birth control costs in their health insurance plans.

Churches and other houses of worship were given a waiver under the new law, but institutions including Catholic universities and hospitals are not exempt.

Catholic leaders say that would force them to violate religious beliefs.

Under President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law, employers must offer insurance that includes contraceptives.

The uproar began over the weekend, after US Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius defended the policy in an editorial for USA Today.

Catholic bishops called for the rule to be dropped, including Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, who wrote in an editorial for the Wall Street Journal that the mandate was "an unprecedented incursion into freedom of conscience".

The Obama administration has sought to portray the issue as a balance between religious freedoms and preventing discrimination under the new healthcare law.



Article Source : BBC News

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Cause you know if it's offered you HAVE to take it. Since most health insurance covers birth control are all these complainers dropping their coverage. Don't think so.

I'm sorry please vote for me.

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama's compromise on free birth control coverage left health insurers stuck with the bill, sparking worries over the precedent set by the new policy.

Obama on Friday made insurers responsible for providing free birth control to employees of religious groups, aiming to placate outraged leaders of the Catholic church who oppose contraception and to defuse an election-year landmine.

Free birth control is mandated under Obama's 2010 healthcare law. The administration has exempted houses of worship from the rule, but requires the coverage be made available to employees of religiously affiliated organizations such as hospitals and universities.

Providing free birth control is not expected to hurt profits for the multibillion dollar insurance industry. But insurance companies questioned the principle of making them pay for coverage with no clear way to recoup the expense.

"We are concerned about the precedent this proposed rule would set," said Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry's trade group. "As we learn more about how this rule would be operationalized, we will provide comments through the regulatory process."

Zirkelbach said insurers "have long offered contraceptive coverage to employers as part of comprehensive, preventive benefits that aim to improve patient health and reduce health care cost growth."

Employers who have signed on for such health plans in the past paid part of the cost of birth control prescriptions, while their employees also bore some expense through co-payments.

An Obama administration official said the new policy would not allow health insurers to increase their premiums, charge co-payments or deductibles to make up for the cost of contraceptives.

The National Organization of Women estimates that nearly 3 million employees of religious groups and their dependents are affected by the birth control policy. U.S. Catholic institutions like colleges and hospitals are estimated to employ over 630,000 people.

PRIME TARGET

Health insurers were a prime political target of the Obama administration as it sought to rally momentum behind the healthcare law, which aims to extend affordable insurance coverage to millions more Americans.

The law has added oversight of the industry's premium rate increases and forced insurers to pay the lion's share of their premium revenue on medical care rather than administrative costs. It also prohibits insurers from turning away patients with pre-existing conditions.

In the case of the new requirement on free birth control, insurers may still seek less obvious ways to pass it through, either to the same employers or other corporate clients.

Thomas Carroll, an analyst who covers health insurance companies for Stifel Nicolaus, said that, "in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't seem like a material cost to be added to the managed care company or the employer."

"Any services that are mandated are ultimately covered in the premium, either to the specific group or to the system in general," Carroll said.

Aetna, the third-largest U.S. health insurer, said it would comply with the policy, but needed, "to study the mechanics of this unprecedented decision before we can understand how it will be implemented and how it will impact our customers."

An Aetna spokeswoman said the company, "did not have any direct input into the actual policy decisions that were made."

The administration says insurers should ultimately make up any initial costs by avoiding expenses associated with unintended pregnancies.

That view was echoed by Wendell Potter, former top spokesman for insurer Cigna Corp who is now an industry critic.

"Providing contraception, even for free, is cost-effective for insurers so I don't think they'll balk," he said, adding it could even save them money in the long run.

"It may add a little administrative complexity to what they do, but they can deal with it."

(Additional reporting by David Morgan and Caren Bohan in Washington and Sharon Begley in New York; editing by Michele Gershberg, John Wallace, Matthew Lewis editing by Andre Grenon)

Obama is damned if he does and damned if the doesn't.

Do christian science people use birth control?

Catholic bishops said Friday night that they would not support the Obama administration's proposed compromise on a controversial rule that requires most employers to fully cover contraception in their workers' health plans.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which had led opposition to the regulation, issued a statement saying that they didn't believe their concerns were addressed by a new policy offered by President Barack Obama on Friday morning to allow religious employers who object to the use of birth control to turn over responsibility for covering it to insurance companies.

Under the new policy, religious employers that don't want to offer contraception could exclude it from their policies. Insurance companies instead would be required to provide access to contraception for plan participants who wanted it, without explicitly charging either the religious employer or worker.

The shift is intended to ensure that women working at religious hospitals, schools and charities who want to use contraception can obtain it in the same way as women who work for secular employers. It also means the cost of providing the coverage for those women is likely to be spread across all policyholders by insurers.

The bishops had earlier expressed cautious optimism about the announcement, saying that it was "a first step in the right direction" but that they would have to study it.

In their later statement, they said they still had "serious moral concerns," noting that the proposal didn't contain provisions for religious employers who self-insure, meaning the employer takes on the underlying risk of covering employees' health care.

The bishops also said that the current structure of the proposal meant that if an employee and insurer agreed to add contraception coverage to a health plan, it would still be financed in the same way as the rest of the coverage offered by the employer.

"These changes require careful moral analysis, and moreover, appear subject to some measure of change. But we note at the outset that the lack of clear protection... is unacceptable and must be corrected," the statement said.

The White House declined to comment.

Under the health-care law passed in March 2010, insurers must cover preventive care at no out-of-pocket cost for consumers. The Institute of Medicine recommended that all forms of contraception approved by the Food and Drug Administration be included on the list of covered services.

The bishops also said that they were unlikely to be satisfied by changes that affected only religious employers, since they still had "grave" objections to the overall mandate, which includes the morning-after pill and sterilization.

The later statement came after leading members of the conference reviewed the proposal, among them president Archbishop Timothy Dolan and the two men who chair its committees on doctrine and what the church calls "pro-life activities," the cardinals Donald Wuerl and Daniel DiNardo. Archbishop Dolan will be elevated to the rank of cardinal next week.

President Obama telephoned the archbishop to tell him of the announcement Friday morning. The bishops said they hadn't been previously consulted about the proposal.

"We note that today's proposal continues to involve needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions, and to threaten government coercion of religious people and groups to violate their most deeply held convictions....The only complete solution to this religious liberty problem is... to rescind the mandate of these objectionable services," they wrote.

It isn't clear what effect the bishops' objections will have on the Catholic community, which had already been divided in its initial response to the proposal, and to the health-care law as a whole.

Several Catholic organizations praised the administration compromise after it was announced, including the hospitals group the Catholic Health Association and Catholic Charities USA.

At some people they should trust their church women to do the right thing and forget all this insurance stuff. They aren't going to get Obama to go any lower than this.