Lee Fang points out that after spending millions on trying to kill health care reform, insurers have “massively shifted their campaign giving to Republicans,” and independent groups dedicated to defunding or repealing the law — including this one run by veteran Republican lobbyist Scott Reed to run ads against Democrats:

Meanwhile, lobbyist Reed’s fledgling Commission on Hope, Growth and Opportunity, a 501 (c) (4) raised over half its $25 million goal to run ads in 20 House districts and a few Senate contests, Reed says. Where’s the dough coming from? “The big three stepping into the batter’s box are the financial services industry, the energy industry, and the health insurance industry,” Reed said.

Reed credits the recent Supreme Court ruling knocking down nearly a century of campaign finance laws with the increased fundraising haul for Republican attack groups. “Citizens United opened the door for the unparalleled participation by corporations at the financial level,” Reed told reporter Peter Stone. Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that the health insurance industry met and planned a $20 million dollar “war chest” to be used against its opponents during the election this year. It is still unclear if Reed’s group or the Tea Party caucus donations are part of that fund.

Publicly, the industry is singing a different tune. Issuers have nominally agreed to assist the administration with implementation and promised to work with the government to implement the new provisions — which they claim to fully support.

But they also have their own interests in mind. Not only are insurers leaving certain markets, and raising rates as they see fit, they’re also trying to protect themselves for all of the new regulations and fees. The industry has watched as Democrats — led, most recently by the six Democratic Committee chairman with jurisdiction over health care — argued that insurers should have to abide by a strict interpretation of the law and spend 80 to 85% of premium dollars on health care and contrasted that approach to Republican senators, many of whom recently took to the Senate floor to speak out against any effort to review insurance premium increases. That kind of hands off approach is exactly what they’re purchasing with their contributions.

Therefore, insurers’ donations shouldn’t be interpreted as an industry endorsement of the GOP’s repeal efforts or its attack on the individual mandate — which could make the industry millions. The industry is turning to the Republican party not so that it could repeal the entire law — that seems highly unlikely — but so that it can push for favorable regulations that don’t cut into industry profits. And, the GOP is obliging.

In what looks like a gift to the medical devise industry wrapped in a pro-life bow, the Michigan state Senate passed a bill on Wednesday that requires doctors to use “the most advanced ultrasound equipment available at their office to a woman considering an abortion with images of her fetus” — to get the most “distinct” image possible:

Republican Sen. Wayne Kuipers is the sponsor of the bill and he said, according to the Grand Haven Tribune, that the image of the unborn child in the ultrasound should be as high quality as possible.

“When lawmakers gave a mother the opportunity to see real-time ultrasound images of her unborn child before aborting her pregnancy in 2006, we never thought doctors would trample on that right by producing poor-quality pictures,” said Kuipers. “My bill will restore our original legislative intent — to ensure women considering abortion have access to as much information as possible before making this life and death decision.”

“My goal with this reform is to protect as many babies as possible by making abortion as rare as possible,” Kuipers said. “If viewing a clear ultrasound image of her unborn child causes just one woman to change her mind about having an abortion, then it is worth the effort.” .

The bill would impose an unfunded mandate on doctors and clinics across the state — which are already required to conduct an ultrasound before performing an abortion — and represents the very kind of government overreach into the doctor’s office that Republicans have spent most of the last two years condemning. But unfortunately, political intrusion over the abortion process is all too common and has only escalated since the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

A significant number of states have taken advantage of the law’s carefully negotiated abortion provisions to go beyond the exchanges and restrict access to abortion coverage in other health programs. CAP’s Jessica Arons and Alex Cawthorne released a comprehensive review of state-based abortion measures back in June, at which point 18 states had introduced legislation to require abortion providers to offer their patients an ultrasound. Half of these bills mandated 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.

The Michigan bill “has been sent to the House for consideration.”

Throughout her campaign for U.S. Senate in Nevada, GOP candidate and tea party favorite Sharron Angle has railed against government intervention in health care and has campaigned on the claim that coverage mandates only drive up health care costs. “Take off the mandates for coverage in the state of Nevada and all over the United States,” she said during a rally last year. “You know what I’m talking about. You’re paying for things that you don’t even need. They just passed the latest one, is everything that they want to throw at us now is covered under ‘autism’.”

“If you go to my website, you’ll see my record,” Angle said at a Republican primary debate. “I introduced three bills. One would have taken off all of the mandates on insurance. That’s one of the solutions. We have to have a senator who will go and introduce something like that that says we don’t have mandated coverages on insurance.”

But now, an exhaustive search of Angle’s record in the State legislator by the Las Vegas Sun has found that not only has Angle not introduced “legislation to repeal any of the 38 state mandates requiring insurers to cover” certain conditions, but she has actually co-sponsored bills expanding coverage mandates and increases access to insurance:

Yet during her time in the Legislature, Angle proposed no fewer than five laws that would have expanded state insurance mandates,….She co-sponsored a bill to require insurance companies to cover mammograms and another bill, which she later voted against, to cover osteoporosis treatment. She co-sponsored legislation that would have required an insurance company to continue covering the treatment of a patient if the company’s contract with the provider was canceled before the treatment was completed.

She was primary sponsor of legislation that would have required insurance companies to cover not only the adult children of policyholders, but their parents too if their incomes were below the federal poverty line. [...]

Yet Angle’s 2001 effort to provide health insurance to low-income people would have gone a step further than the Democrats’ new health care law by requiring the coverage of adult children up to age 30. That bill, which also would have allowed chambers of commerce to provide health insurance, never received a hearing.

In 2003, she co-sponsored a bill that would have prohibited insurance companies from refusing to pay for treatment they authorized, also a key part of the Democrats’ health care legislation.

Of course this isn’t the first time Angle’s rhetoric parted so drastically from her record. As Politico reported last month, Angle recently admitted that “both she and her husband benefit from government subsidized health care.” Angle’s husband’s insurance plan (the Federal Employee Health Program), which also covers Sharron, “is a continuation of what he was receiving while he worked for the federal government,” a campaign spokesperson admitted.

Angle’s record, however, also seems to suggest that despite her most recent public comments, she once believed the government should set basic standards for insurance coverage to ensure that individuals receive adequate coverage when they need it most.