Public health officials and women’s rights groups are cheering the recent recommendation of the Institute of Medicine that “health insurers should pay for a range of services for women at no cost, including birth control, counseling on sexually transmitted diseases, and AIDS screening.”

But unsurprisingly, many on the right immediately lashed out at the decision, denouncing it as “feminist pork” or tantamount to government-sponsored abortion. Some particularly vile reactions came from Fox News, where host Greg Gutfeld said eliminating birth control co-pays was part of a much more sinister leftist plot:

GUTFELD: If you’re talking about free birth control, who’s going to use free birth control? The people who can’t afford it. So the left has figured out a way to eradicate the poor, and it’s by eradicating the poor!

Watch it:

On another Fox News segment, the contributor and host decided that birth control wasn’t necessary if women would “just stop having irresponsible sex.” Fox News’ America’s Newsroom’s Heather Childers discussed the IOM recommendation with Sandy Rios, president of Family-PAC Federal. Rios personally attacked a female physician who supported the decision as “a disgrace to our gender.” She then proposed that women don’t really need birth control, saying, “Let women stop having irresponsible sex. [...] Let’s stop making excuses and providing a way to get women out of trouble when they should be responsible in their behavior.”

Childers quickly agreed that it’s “not too much to ask for everyone to stop having irresponsible sex.”

In the U.S., 15.3 million women use hormonal birth control, which is one of the most frequently-prescribed medications in America. Rios’ accusation is ironic given that most women think they are behaving responsibly precisely by using birth control to prevent unwanted pregnancies. But Fox News apparently believes those 15.3 million just need to stop sleeping around.

Contraception improves women’s health and reduces the need for abortions, but the cost is often prohibitive for low-income women. The IOM’s ruling opens the door for government-subsidized birth control, which a recent national poll found 78 percent of Americans support.

Earlier today, the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed an amendment that would restore and expand the so-called global gag rule, a provision that would prohibit foreign organizations receiving U.S. development assistance from using their own funds to perform abortions or provide women with information and referrals for the procedure. The rule, which unlike past variations does not even make exceptions for HIV/AIDS programs, was approved in a vote of 25-17, after the committee rejected an amendment by Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) stripping the language:

“The provision included in this bill is far more extreme than the Global Gag Rule policy that was implemented under Presidents Reagan, George Bush, or George W. Bush,” said Berman. “It bars ALL assistance to local health care providers in poor countries – including HIV/AIDS funding, water and sanitation, child survival, and education. In the name of ‘right to life,’ the majority is cutting off funds that are literally saving hundreds of thousands of lives.”

The gag rule was initially instituted by President Ronald Reagan in Mexico City in 1984, lifted by President Bill Clinton on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade in 1993, reinstated by President George W. Bush on his first working day in office in 2001 and then lifted again by President Barack Obama.

Conservatives argue that the policy reduces abortion by limiting a woman’s access to abortion services and ensures that taxpayer funding for family planning services overseas is separate from abortion activities. But in reality, the rule actually denies NGOs access to the very contraceptives that can help prevent the need for abortions in the first place. Under the Bush administration, USAID-supplied contraceptives were no longer being shipped to 16 developing countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and the leading providers of family planning in 13 other developing nations were not receiving USAID contraceptives.

More than 200 million women in the developing world don’t have access to needed reproductive health care, while approximately 70,000 women die from unsafe abortion and at least 5 million more suffer serious injuries or disabilities.

Over at the Incidental Economist, John Nyman, professor of health policy and management at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, expands on this suggestion that policy makers should look at Maryland as an example of how all-payer rate setting — in which payers negotiate with each provider for a single price for each service — can help reduce health care spending. Nyman places U.S. health care spending in an international context and argues that “you have a strong argument for a causal relationship” between rate-setting and lower spending:

Because of the ascendant health insurance theory in the US (purporting to show that the additional health care consumed when insured is not worth the costs), the results of the RAND Health Insurance Experiment (purporting to show that additional care has no significant effect on health), and the political interests of the providers, we have spent much of the last 40 years trying to reduce healthcare costs by reducing the quantity: cost sharing, managed care, consumer-driven health care. According to the OECD data, we have succeeded, but costs are still double on a purchasing power parity basis. It seems to me that it is time to switch our focus to prices, rather than quantity. [...]

As Nyman notes, all-payer rate-setting is just one way of changing our focus on price, but it’s one that’s making a comeback within the health care community. According to a Commonwealth Fund/Modern Healthcare Health Care Opinion Leaders Survey from October 2010, a majority of experts actually “favor either all-payer payment rate setting or a single system of payment negotiation on behalf of all payers.” The strategy was popular in the 1970s and 1980s, when at least 30 states used all-payer rate setting to contain health care spending. More here.

Anti-abortion advocates have long used violence to intimidate abortion providers, but activists in California are now going a step further: they’re trying to prevent a Planned Parenthood from opening in Redwood City, California by threatening to picket Enterprise Rent-A-Car for agreeing to provide nine parking slots for the clinic and are pressuring the company to back out of its contract. As a result, the city’s planning department — which had required the center to come up with at least 27 parking spots for patients and staff — notified Planned Parenthood on Tuesday that a permit issued May 20 “has been amended“:

Michelle Tangunan, an associate planner for the city who oversees the clinic application, said that after the use permit was approved, Planned Parenthood informed the city Enterprise might try to pull out of the agreement. Lupe Rodriguez, a Planned Parenthood spokeswoman, confirmed that the rental car chain had expressed “second thoughts” about making nine spaces available. Rodriguez said she doesn’t know why Enterprise might try to renege from its legally binding contract with Planned Parenthood. [...]

Belmont resident Ross Foti, known for protesting outside abortion clinics with graphic pictures of fetuses, offered an explanation. He said abortion foes have approached the company and threatened to picket its El Camino Real location if it delivers the parking, he said. “They (Enterprise) were the ones that made it possible for Planned Parenthood to open up,” Foti said.

The clinic will provide “preventative health care services, family planning, reproductive health, prenatal, and primary care services” and could dispense “chemical abortions” but “was not approved for surgical abortions.” Meanwhile, a corporate spokeswoman for Enterprise has said “the contract with Planned Parenthood requires two signatures and it only has one,” but said the lease would still require corporate approval. Enterprise is now claiming that the center revised the conditions of the contract, which Planned Parenthood is denying. A local report about the story:

The city has said it is “open to considering alternative off-site parking arrangements that Planned Parenthood might come up with if Enterprise pulls out.”