ThinkProgress filed this report from West Des Moines, Iowa.

Longshot GOP presidential hopeful and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum stomped for votes in Iowa on Tuesday, trumpeting his “culture wars” message. A longtime anti-abortion activist, Santorum is selling himself as the leading social conservative in a crowded field. Yesterday in West Des Moines, he made an appearance at a “crisis pregnancy center” called Informed Choices that tries to talk women out of having abortions. Santorum said that he “separates [himself] from the rest of the pack” and criticized the other candidates for simply “checking the box” on anti-abortion issues.

When discussing his track record as a champion of the partial birth abortion ban, Santorum dismissed exceptions other senators wanted to carve out to protect the life and health of mothers, calling such exceptions “phony”:

SANTORUM: When I was leading the charge on partial birth abortion, several members came forward and said, “Why don’t we just ban all abortions?” Tom Daschle was one of them, if you remember. And Susan Collins, and others. They wanted a health exception, which of course is a phony exception which would make the ban ineffective.

Watch it:

Santorum’s complete lack of empathy for women who find themselves with life-threatening pregnancies is repugnant, but not altogether surprising. When the Senate took up the ban in the ’90s, the debate was focused not on banning an abortion method, but rather on what exceptions would be allowed under the new law. Senators led by Santorum “refused to allow an exception even to protect the woman from serious harm to her health,” while President Clinton refused to sign the bill without one.

Although there are any number of serious medical emergencies that might require a woman to terminate a pregnancy in her third trimester to protect her own health, Santorum and his allies “said that ‘health’ is nothing but a loophole for women who would abort a pregnancy to fit into a prom dress.” Back then, Santorum decried “the selfishness, the individual self-centeredness” of legislators who were concerned about the health of pregnant women. Judging by his latest remarks, he’s still holding a grudge.

The Los Angeles Times has a more skeptical reading of why Blue Shield of California has chosen to voluntarily cap its net income and provide rebates to customers, arguing that the move is “richer in symbolism than in economic impact” and is “designed to deflect scrutiny and blame from insurers onto others in the industry, particularly doctors and hospitals”:

The point of the cap, Bodaken said, is to assure Blue Shield’s customers that its rate increases aren’t intended to fatten the company’s reserves. That’s true in an overall sense. The cap provides no guarantee, however, that Blue Shield is spending its premium dollars wisely — witness Bodaken’s $4.6 million salary, which is more than four times what the chief executive of his largest for-profit rival makes.

Nor does it give the company more incentive to hold down the rates it pays doctors and hospitals, whose cost increases can be passed on to consumers. As insurers have argued repeatedly, the main factor in rising premiums is treatment costs driven ever higher by increased demand for care and expensive new drugs and technologies.

All this sounds fair, and if Blue Shield’s actions can be used as an opportunity to go after provider rates or to pass legislation giving regulators greater authority to police premium increases, then it’s even more important than the LA Times is suggesting.

But this also strikes me as significant because rather than using the interim period between passage of the Affordable Care Act and when most of the insurance regulations are enacted in 2014 to increase profits and force the sickest (and costliest) beneficiaries off their rolls — as some companies are now doing — Blue Shield is actually getting ahead of the regulations by moving toward the goals of reform, not away from them. And that’s a good example for the health care industry as a whole.

Republicans have now seized on a new survey of employers which found that “at least 30 percent of companies say they will ‘definitely or probably’ stop offering employer-sponsored coverage” once a new ACA provision requiring businesses with workers receiving subsidies in the exchanges to pay a fee or offer coverage takes affect in 2014 and are using it to press their case against the new law:

- NEWT GINGRICH: “30%+ employers could eliminate coverage b/c Obamacarehttp://bit.ly/j1I3l8 So much for “if you like your coverage you can keep it”

- MICHELE BACHMANN: Will your employer be one of the 3 out of 10 employers who are likely to drop health coverage after #ObamaCare? http://tiny.cc/iq2qb #tcot

- JOHN BOEHNER: “As businesses begin planning for the onslaught of ObamaCare taxes, mandates, regulations, and penalties coming down the pike, many are left with two untenable choices: stop offering health care for their employees, or eliminate full-time jobs and keep wages low.”

I pointed out yesterday that this particular survey undermines other studies that have predicted that only a small number of employers would drop coverage, and suggested that if policymakers were truly interested in reducing the erosion of employer-sponsored coverage, then they should support adding an employer mandate to the Affordable Care Act.

But that aside, we’ve been seeing fluctuations in employer coverage rates long before the Affordable Care Act was enacted, as employers struggled with skyrocketing health care costs. Employer-sponsored health insurance “covered 58.9 percent of people under age 65 in 2009, down from 61.9 percent in 2008, and a total decline of 9.4 percentage points since 2000“:

The difference now is that we’ll probably see a much smaller drop, but any erosion will be matched by greater access — so that workers who lose their employer-sponsored coverage will actually have someplace to turn if their company decides to stop offering insurance. And of course those are the coverage options that Republicans are now seeking to repeal.

Maggie Mahar makes the case for how the Affordable Care Act — particularly the provision requiring insurers to spend a certain percentage of premium dollars on health care costs — prompted Blue Shield of California to voluntarily cap its net earnings at 2 percent of revenue and issue $180 million in rebates to beneficiaries and providers:

Did “soul-searching” lead to this decision? Perhaps. But I would suggest that Blue Shield is responding, in an enlightened and pragmatic way to a climate change within the healthcare industry.

Government regulators are beginning to take a hard look at insurance premiums. Blue Shield California “had recently come under fire by state regulators for rate hikes,” ModernHealthcare.com explains. “In March, the company abandoned plans to raise rates on individual policyholders for the rest of the year, under pressure from the California Department of Insurance.”

Blue Shield is trying to inoculate itself against further criticism (and regulation) by getting ahead of the regulators. $180 million is hardly a huge sum. But pledging to put a 2 percent cap on net income is a serious step forward. This should help curb premium inflation– assuming that the company doesn’t fudge the way it calculates “net income.” Though now that Blue Shield has made a public commitment, I would guess that state regulators will keep an eye on that number.

Consumer advocates are undoubtedly hoping that Blue Shield’s move will pressure other nonprofit health care plans to begin issuing their own rebates, particularly as consumers are now using less care and insurer reserves are only increasing.

In a statement issued yesterday, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius praised Blue Shield and seemed to attribute the rebates to pressure from the Affordable Care Act. “While such voluntary efforts are great for Blue Shield’s policyholders in California, today’s announcement also reinforces the importance of the Affordable Care Act and rigorous State review of insurance rates,” she said.