Jon Huntsman — just another Republicans who supported Obamacare before he opposed it, reports the Salt Lake Tribune:

Huntsman started with more-comprehensive goals. His 2007 draft, three-year plan to reform health care, obtained at the time by The Salt Lake Tribune , called for providing subsidies to help Utahns who didn’t qualify for government programs and requiring insurance companies to take all comers without charging higher premiums based on medical history. Taking a page from Massachusetts, Huntsman also sought to build a health exchange.

Using the term “personal responsibility,” the plan called for everyone to get insurance or face penalties.

While making individuals responsible for their health insurance would require a new mindset for the state, Huntsman said at a December 2007 news conference, “it will have to be part of what we do.” Over time, Utahns will “come to the logical end point that while it is burdensome at first glance, it’s economically an imperative for our society.”

A draft 2008 bill, developed with the governor’s staff and modeled on his plan, mandated that all Utahns have insurance by 2010. It would have taxed hospitals to generate $300 million in state and federal funds to help the poor buy private insurance.

Huntsman abandoned this version of reform (after it stopped being politically feasible) and his “goal of halving the state’s ranks of uninsured.” At the end of his term, “The state’s uninsured rate remained steady at 11 percent in 2010, meaning 300,000 Utahns went without coverage.”

On the campaign trail, Huntsman criticizes Romney — who enacted what Huntsman was basically touting in 2007 — for “lacking credibility” in following free market principles in his health policy achievement. A sober comparison between Huntmsan’s health record and Romney’s, however, points the credibility question in a different direction.

The Texas legislature has passed an omnibus health reform bill that’s a cacophony of regressive conservative polices: 1) it establishes an illegal health care compact that would “allow Texas to partner with other states to ask the federal government for control — both fiscal and governmental — over both Medicare and Medicaid,” 2) block grants the Medicaid program, 3) prevents hospital districts that use tax revenue to finance an abortion from receiving state funding, and 4) denies funds to Planned Parenthood clinics that offer abortions. If signed into law by Gov. Rick Perry (R), Texas will become the largest state to defund Planned Parenthood.

Below is the relevant abortion language:

The department shall ensure that money spent for purposes of the demonstration project for women s’ health care services under former Section 32.0248, Human Resources Code, or a similar successor program is not used to perform or promote elective abortions, or to contract with entities that perform or promote elective abortions or affiliate with entities that perform or promote elective abortions.

The final Medicaid language would task the state with privatizing the program and shifting the costs of coverage to individuals in the form of greater cost sharing:

(3)encourage use of the private health benefits coverage market rather than public benefits systems;
(4)encourage people who have access to private employer-based health benefits to obtain or maintain those benefits;
(5)create a culture of shared financial responsibility, accountability, and participation in the Medicaid program by:

(A)establishing and enforcing copayment requirements similar to private sector principles for all eligibility groups;
(B)promoting the use of health savings accounts to influence a culture of individual responsibility; and
(C)promoting the use of vouchers for consumer-directed services in which consumers manage and pay for health-related services provided to them using program vouchers;
(6)consolidate federal funding streams, including funds from the disproportionate share hospitals and upper payment limit supplemental payment programs and other federal Medicaid funds, to ensure the most effective and efficient use of those funding streams;

The Boston Globe is out with the second installment in its series examining Massachusetts’ landmark 2006 health care reform law. Part one explored Mitt Romney’s role in shaping the measure and part two makes a pretty convincing argument that Romney’s signature accomplishment has been successful in expanding access to coverage:

– The percentage of residents without insurance coverage is down dramatically, to less than 2 percent; for children, the figure is a tiny fraction of 1 percent, a state survey shows. These are by far the lowest rates in the nation.

– Many more businesses are offering insurance to employees than were before the law. The fear going in was that the opposite would happen.

– The cost of the changes, while large, has proved manageable thus far, though there are some serious warning signs on the horizon, especially as federal stimulus funds, which have helped defray the cost, run out.

– The plan remains exceptionally popular among state residents — indeed its popularity has only grown with time. There are some unhappy sectors — notably small business owners, who had hoped to see moderating premiums and chafe, in some cases, at the heavy-handed enforcement of the rules by the state. And support for the requirement that individuals obtain insurance is down to a slender majority, a recent poll shows. But there is no significant constituency here for repeal.

– And while health care costs continue to grow at alarming rates, as they have nationally, the consensus of industry leaders and health care economists is that this trend cannot be fairly traced to the makeover but rather to cost pressures baked into the existing health care payment system. Massachusetts does have the highest health care costs in the nation, but it owned this dubious distinction long before “RomneyCare’’ was born.

All of this complicates Romney’s efforts to backtrack from the law, but it also presents an even larger challenge to Republicans who seek to condemn Romneycare and tout their own “free market” health care accomplishments. The fact of the matter is that when you get past all of the attacks, no other state has been able to dramatically reduce the number of uninsured and increase the percentage of residents in private health insurance. Pawlenty, Huntsman and the rest may be eager to battle it out with Romney on health care, but in doing so, they’re asking voters to compare their own meager accomplishments to the Bay State’s successful near universal coverage expansion. It’s not a very flattering comparison and one that Romney should exploit (if he thinks conservative primary voters care about helping the uninsured).

Yesterday, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) signed a budget that cuts funding for Planned Parenthood, after pushing the measure through the state Legislature without a single Democratic vote. Planned Parenthood denounced the decision to choke off state and federal funding to nine health centers in small communities that will deny preventative health care to 12,000 women who don’t have health insurance:

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin says it has 27 health centers across the state, which provide birth control, cancer screenings, annual exams, and sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment to 73,000 patients every year.

Wisconsin is the fourth state to target Planned Parenthood because of conservative-led objections to the group’s abortion services — even though they are funded separately and make up a small fraction of the services Planned Parenthood provides.

Planned Parenthood points out that the budget also threatens Wisconsin’s BadgerCare family planning program, “which currently helps more than 53,000 women and men get preventive health care at providers throughout the state.” Scott’s budget disqualifies men entirely from the program, leaving the 7,000 low-income Wisconsin men who use BadgerCare without access to health care and testing that saves lives. The budget also severely restricts eligibility and requires parental consent for all patients under 18 years old.

The Department of Health estimates the BadgerCare family planning program saves Wisconsin nearly $140 million per year and prevented 11,064 unplanned pregnancies in 2008. By denying so many residents access to preventive care, Wisconsin may see an increase in unintended pregnancies, the spread of STDs, and a rise in undetected and untreated cervical and breast cancer cases — “all of which would then cost the state millions of dollars in future medical costs.”

The budget also calls for $500 million in unspecified cuts to Medicaid programs, and eliminates $800 million in funding for public schools.

Because Planned Parenthood is already barred from receiving federal funds for abortion services, Wisconsin lawmakers did nothing to advance an “anti-abortion” agenda. Instead, they succeeded only in dismantling access to essential reproductive health care such as birth control, cancer screenings and HIV and STD testing for tens of thousands of women who rely on Planned Parenthood.

Via Ryan Grim, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) backed away from Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare during a town hall on Sunday after a 54-year-old constituent expressed concern about losing his guaranteed Medicare benefits:

At age 54, Menomonee Falls resident Paul Race said he just misses the cutoff in U.S. Paul Ryan’s proposal to reform Medicare for those younger than 55.

“If it’s good enough for the people 54 and younger… then I think it’s good enough for people 55 and older,” said Race, a former Marine who has been a teacher for 25 years.

He said under Ryan’s plan he would have to “go shopping to insurance companies” whose administrative costs will be higher than under Medicare and who may be unwilling to cover people with pre-existing conditions.

He predicted he will have to spend a greater share of his retirement funds on health care than will those 55 and older.

Sensenbrenner said, “I’m not here to say he’s (Ryan) right or he’s wrong, but at least he’s got a plan.

Sensenbrenner voted for Ryan’s budget in April and even issued a press release commanding Ryan’s leadership on the issue. “This vote starts an honest debate about getting our spending under control and taking real steps to make that happen through cutting trillions of dollars, reforming the tax code and welfare system, and eliminating wasteful spending. At the same time, it preserves and strengthens the health and retirement programs for those who are currently 55 and older and future retirees,” he said at the time. Now, he is not so sure that it does.

Kansas is now down to just two abortion providers, after one clinic failed to meet the rigorous licensing requirements established by a new state law. Abortion advocates see the new regulations — which require abortion clinics to obtain a state license to continue operating past July 1 — as an effort by opponents to chase abortion providers out of the state. Kansas’ remaining clinics worry they could be next“:

A lawyer for the Aid for Women clinic in Kansas City, Kan., said Friday that it received a notice that its application for a license had been denied by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment without an inspection. Attorney Cheryl Pilate said the clinic was looking at its legal options but would have to close, at least temporarily.

The clinic received its notice on the same day the leader of a regional Planned Parenthood chapter said inspectors who spent two days at its Overland Park clinic found it will comply with all new regulations. An inspection of the third provider is scheduled for Wednesday. All three are in the Kansas City area.

“We’re doomed,” said Dr. Herbert Hodes, who performs abortions for the third provider, the Women’s Health Center, also in Overland Park.

The new requirements are far more specific than anything the state requires for hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers, and are much more detailed “than the rules for most clinics and offices in which doctors perform many surgical procedures.” The abortion providers were informed of the new standards earlier this month and given just weeks to comply with the new licensing requirements. For instance, the room where the abortions occur must maintain a temperate of between 68 and 73 degrees, have at least 150 square feet (excluding ‘fixed’ cabinets), and come with its own janitor’s closet with 50 or more square feet. Women also have to remain in recovery for at least two hours afterward.

No such requirements exist for hospitals or surgical centers and the state doesn’t mandate specific room sizes or temperature standards. Instead, “they’re tied to standards from the American Institute of Architects for medical facilities, which call for at least 360 square feet of unrestricted space for surgery rooms. But those standards apply to new construction.” The health department also doesn’t “set a minimum recovery time.”

If the licensing standards succeed in closing down the two remaining abortion clinics and discourage any new providers from entering the market, it will pose a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court held that states may enact some abortion regulations, but they may not “strike at the right itself” to terminate a pregnancy.