Earlier today, Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed a bill requiring women to view an ultrasound before undergoing an abortion. “This bill places an inappropriate burden on a woman seeking to terminate a pregnancy,” Crist said in his veto message. “[P]ersonal vies should not result in laws that unwisely expand the role of government and coerce people to obtain medical tests or procedures that are not medically necessary. In this case, such action would vioalte a woman’s right to privacy.”

Crist’s veto was expected, but his action is one of the few bright spots in what many pro-choice advocates see as a dark cloud of regressive abortion measures on the state level. Since President Obama signed health care reform into law, a significant number of states have taken advantage of the law’s carefully negotiated abortion provisions to restrict access to abortion coverage. The effort is being coordinated by Americans United for Life (AUL), a national anti-abortion group that released abortion opt-out legislation immediately after the law passed.

I’ve been trying to keep track of these developments in this space, but CAP’s Jessica Arons and Alex Cawthorne have just released a more comprehensive review of state-based abortion measures. As they point out, “the sponsors of these bills claim that their legislation only restricts public funding of abortion care. But closer inspection reveals that these bills mimic the infamous Stupak Amendment, which abortion-rights proponents fought so hard to beat back in federal legislation, and will broadly limit private coverage of abortion in the states where these bills are enacted“:

- 14: The number of states that have introduced laws this year that ban or limit abortion coverage in private insurance plans—either those purchased in the new health exchanges, in private markets outside of those exchanges, in government employee plans, or some combination thereof. So far, Arizona, Mississippi, and Tennessee have enacted such bills.

- 18: The number of states that have introduced legislation this year that requires abortion providers to offer their patients an ultrasound. Half of these bills mandate that the provider perform the ultrasound, regardless of whether the woman wants one, and a few go so far as to require the provider to show and/or describe the image to the woman.

- 14: The number of states that have introduced legislation or ballot initiatives this year to amend the state constitution to establish that legal personhood begins at conception, which would limit access to abortion, contraception, fertility treatments, and other medical services.

- 9: The number of states that have introduced bills this year that would criminalize abortions done purportedly because of the sex or race of the fetus.* Only Oklahoma’s bill has thus far become law.

- 1: The number of laws enacted this year (in Utah) that define criminal homicide to include a “knowing” act by a pregnant woman that causes a miscarriage or stillbirth. This bill is so broad that it could apply to a woman who smokes cigarettes or takes prescription medication.

It’s a long and depressing list and if Crist’s independent candidacy for the Senate accomplishes anything, keeping Florida off it, seems like something worth celebrating. Read the full report HERE.

Earlier this week, former President Bill Clinton visited the group that almost single-handedly brought down his health care bill in 1993 with their infamous Harry and Louise ads. Clinton delivered the keynote address at the America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) conference in Las Vegas, where he thanked them for supporting reform the second time around:

“I want to thank you for your support of the healthcare reform movement,” Clinton said numerous times during his lengthy, largely economics-oriented speech, which dealt with everything from the BP oil spill, to a new bus system in Lima, Peru.

“You deserve credit for taking a different position on this healthcare reform debate than the last one,” he said. The Health Insurance Association of America, an earlier incarnation of AHIP, was largely credited with torpedoing Clinton’s reform plans with their multimillion dollar “Harry and Louise” ad campaign.[...]

“I agree with you that we should have done more on cost-control,” he said, but he added that the law’s new insurance exchanges — which will begin operations in 2014 — will spur competition between insurance companies and lower costs.

“Americans tend to blame insurance companies for things that are really probably providers’ faults,” he said.

Clinton certainly isn’t wrong in suggesting that under the leadership of Karen Ignagni, the insurers adopted a more conciliatory tone towards reform. But he’s overstating the intensity of their support. In December 2008, the health insurers issued their own health care plan and announced that they were willing to accept new market regulations in return for a strong individual mandate, a concession they had already made 16 years earlier.

Recall that in December of 1992, the insurance lobby, then known as Health Insurance Association of American (HIAA), called for “a new Federal law that would require coverage for all Americans, define the basic set of benefits, and try to contain health care costs by limiting tax breaks for the purchase of insurance.” Under their proposal, everyone would have to buy ‘an essential package’ of benefits and could receive coverage “regardless of a person’s medical history.”

The industry ultimately rejected reform because it feared that Clinton’s regional alliances would bar some smaller insurers from the marketplace, and it opposed the President’s premium growth constraints and the community rating provisions. The lobby went on to “plant seeds of doubt” about Clinton’s reforms and organized countless grassroots campaigns, hired field operatives in six states whose lawmakers were expected to be swing votes, and recruited ground troops from members companies’ networks of employees, managers, and agents. By the end of its effort, HIAA had generated more than 450,000 phone calls, visits, and letters to Congress.

In 2009/2010, industry support for reform may have certainly been more vocal and sustained, but it followed a very similar trajectory. From September to December 2009 — while publicly embracing the idea of universal coverage — six of the nation’s biggest health insurers began quietly “pumping big money into third-party television ads aimed at killing or significantly modifying the major health reform bills moving through Congress.” Watch a compilation of some of these ads:

In October of 2009, the industry released several studies arguing that the weak personal responsibility requirement, taxes on health care providers, spending reductions in Medicare and taxes on high-value health plans will increase “the cost of coverage for both single and family policies in the individual, small group, large group, and self-funded insurance markets.”

Despite all these efforts, however, health insurers are now promising to work alongside federal and state regulators to implement the new reform law and hold off efforts by progressives to re-introduce the public option or single-payer proposals.

Democrats have been arguing that the GOP repeal efforts will take away immediate and tangible benefits of health care reform. Now, James Capretta — who is helping organize the new anti-Obamacare website Obamacarewatch.org — is arguing that Americans don’t even need those benefits in the first place. According to Capretta, Democrats are bribing seniors with checks they don’t want and the country can’t afford:

CAPPRETTA: Can you imagine, given where we are budgetarily in this country, a more colossal waste of money, then to just say to a certain group of seniors, ‘we’re going to mail you another $250 check.’ They’re doing this because they’re massively disrupting the program these seniors are in and they’re trying to bribe them with a $250 check. I think that’s what’s going on. I think it won’t work. Seniors are already wise about what’s going on here. They’re going to get letters in the mail — many, many of them are going to get letters in the mail, from their insurers saying, ‘sorry, we have to change your benefits because ObamaCare has passed and it has cut our reimbursement rates. That’s the reality of what’s going to happen. And they’re going to be forced back into the traditional program and will be forced to buy Medigap policies.

Listen:

The Democrats are, in fact, eliminating the subsidy paid out to insurers participating in the Medicare Advantage program, but companies that can provide care efficiently (including the MA programs that provide drug coverage), will receive bonus payments and prosper under the system. The more immediate problem is the doughnut hole created by the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. Millions of seniors who spend more than a certain amount on medications fall into a so-called hole, at which point they lose drug coverage and pay out of pocket until they spend a certain amount of money. Those who can’t afford the added costs, sometimes stop taking medicines altogether. In 2007, more than one in four, or 26 percent, of Medicare Part D enrollees reached this coverage gap, which the new law will close over a period of 10 years.

CMS will mail out partial rebates this week to 80,000 Part D beneficiaries who have reached the coverage gap, and will continue to mail out rebate checks to beneficiaries quarterly, as they reach the gap. Ultimately, approximately 4 million seniors will benefit from this mean ploy.