An anti-abortion group is gearing up an effort to place a question on the Massachusetts ballot to repeal the requirement that all state residents obtain health insurance, a core provision of former governor Mitt Romney’s “landmark 2006 health care law.” Under the law, uninsured residents below 300 percent of the federal poverty level can participate in the state-subsidized Commonwealth Care program and receive a comprehensive package of benefits that includes “doctor’s visits, surgery, radiology and lab” and abortion services:

Anne Fox, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, told the News Service she hopes the repeal of the mandate will lead to an eventual dismantling of the entire law, which she said has lengthened the wait for doctor visits, contributed to rising insurance premiums and resulted in an increase in taxpayer-funded abortion.

“It’s a place to start,” she said of the petition effort. “We’re not saying that the individual mandate is the end. It’s the beginning.”

Fox said publicity around the national health care law – which she said should also be repealed – had focused attention on Massachusetts’s law. [...]

According to an advisory distributed by the organization Monday, MCFL intends to file 10 signatures with the office of Attorney General Martha Coakley by Tuesday to begin a repeal of “Romney-care,” a name that critics of the law have used derisively to tie it to the former governor and Republican presidential candidate.

It would be interesting to know what Romney — who has embraced the law as a “state solution” for a “state problem”, but has said that he opposes a federal individual requirement and government funding for abortion — will say about the measure, which most Massachusetts voters will likely oppose. A recent poll from Harvard School of Public Health and the Boston Globe “found that 63 percent of Massachusetts residents support the 2006 health law, up 10 percentage points in the past two years.” Fifty-one percent percent said they favor the individual mandate.

More than 98 percent of Massachusetts residents now have health care coverage as a result of the provision, including 99.8 percent of children — the highest in the nation.

Last month, a federal judge temporarily blocked Kansas from enforcing new licensing regulations that sought to shut down the state’s three abortion clinics. Proponents of the new standards — which are far more stringent and specific than what the state currently requires of hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers — argued that stricter licensing requirements would help improve women’s safety, a notion the judge challenged before issuing a stay of the regulations.

Now, attorneys representing the Kansas abortion providers suing the state over the rules are alleging that officials drafted the regulations “without independently compiling data or studies on how the new rules would make the procedures safer for the women seeking them”:

Teresa Woody, a Kansas City, Mo., attorney representing two Kansas doctors who perform abortions, said Friday that the providers don’t think the state can show it has a medical justification for the new regulations. [...]

Health department officials have said they based their regulations on rules from other states, most notably Arizona and Texas. KDHE spokeswoman Miranda Myrick said Friday that both state and federal guidelines for hospitals, clinics and other facilities are based on an assumption that they will “result in a higher level of care.”

“In developing these regulations, KDHE looked to resources that used established, industry-accepted standards of care in clinical settings that have been developed over many years,” she said in an email, adding that such standards are “grounded in evidence.”

Indeed, the rules were issued so hastily, it’s difficult to see how officials could have had time to study any of their implications. The state legislature passed the standards in April and Gov. Sam Brownback (R-KS) signed it into law on May 16. Kansas’ Department of Health and Environment issued the final version on June 17 and informed clinics that they would have to comply with the rules by July 1.

Since Brownback became Governor in 2010, anti-choice lawmakers in Kansas have passed bills that “banned abortions after 21 weeks based on the disputed notion that fetuses can feel pain then; required minors seeking an abortion to obtain the notarized written consent of both parents or a legal guardian; restricted private insurance coverage for abortions; and redirected federal family planning funds from Planned Parenthood to other health care agencies.” Earlier today, a federal judge blocked the state’s law to defund Planned Parenthood, agreeing that the family-planning organization would “suffer irreparable harm while its challenge to the law works its way through the courts.”

New York Times’ Kevin Sack reminds us that Florida — which has the country’s fourth-highest unemployment rate, its second-highest rate of people without insurance and a $3.7 billion budget gap this year — is still turning away millions of dollars in health care grants from the federal government because it opposes the Affordable Care Act. A list of some of the grants Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) has rejected:

Meanwhile, Scott approved legislation seeking to privatize the state’s Medicaid program. If approved by the federal government, the new law would require “most of the state’s 3 million Medicaid enrollees to join private health plans after July 1, 2012.” The proposal “gives managed care companies more control over the program that’s paid for with federal and state money.” Reports have suggested that Scott’s companies could stand to benefit from the proposal.

The Department of Health and Human Services has announced that health insurers will be required to cover contraception and other reproductive health care services without additional cost sharing, accepting most of the Institute of Medicine’s recommendations. The administration did add an additional caveat that would allow “religious institutions that offer insurance to their employees the choice of whether or not to cover contraception services.” “This regulation is modeled on the most common accommodation for churches available in the majority of the 28 states that already require insurance companies to cover contraception,” the agency notes. The services will include:

– well-woman visits;

– screening for gestational diabetes;

– human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA testing for women 30 years and older;

– sexually-transmitted infection counseling;

– human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) screening and counseling;

– FDA-approved contraception methods and contraceptive counseling;

– breastfeeding support, supplies, and counseling; and

– domestic violence screening and counseling.

HHS guidelines are based on a scientific review conducted by the IOM. Their recommendations, which were released on July 19, received a generally positive reception, but were met with strong criticism from conservatives opposed to contraception use.

More than 15 million women use hormonal birth control, which is one of the most frequently prescribed medications in America. Contraception improves women’s health and reduces the need for abortions, but the cost is often prohibitive for low-income women. A recent survey found that 78 percent of Americans “believe the federal government should subsidize birth control and other family planning services, excluding abortion, at government-funded clinics for low-income women.”

If the final debt ceiling agreement makes significant concessions to Republicans in avoiding revenue increases and offsetting the increase with dollar-for-dollar spending cuts, the Democrats may have at least held the line in protecting entitlement programs from automatic across-the-board reductions. Gone are proposals to increase the Medicare eligibility age or block grant Medicaid spending to the states and in their place are the kind of changes advocated in the Affordable Care Act: reimbursement reductions to providers and insurers participating in the Medicare Advantage program.

The proposed legislation would raise the debt ceiling through 2012 by immediately cutting almost $1 trillion from mostly discretionary spending and establishing a joint congressional committee to recommend more than $1 trillion in further cuts. If the committee’s recommendations are not enacted, Congress would either have to approve a balanced budget agreement or accept an across-the-board cut in government programs, including Medicare and Medicaid. But those reductions won’t directly affect beneficiaries:

If the committee failed to reach its $1.8 trillion target, or Congress failed to approve its recommendations by the end of 2011, lawmakers would then have to vote on a proposed constitutional balanced-budget amendment.

If that failed to pass, automatic spending cuts totaling $1.2 trillion would automatically take effect, and the debt limit would rise by an identical amount.

Social Security, Medicaid and food stamps would be exempt from the automatic cuts, but payments to doctors, nursing homes and other Medicare providers could be trimmed, as could subsidies to insurance companies that offer an alternative to government-run Medicare.

Hospitals and doctors will complain about the possibility of future cuts, but as a general sense, it’s difficult to feel much sympathy for providers who will see an increase of revenue as a result of the coverage provisions in the Affordable Care Act. They, after all, can rejoice that Medicaid is exempt from the reductions — a great victory given that providers are already underpaid for their services and any additional cuts would further undermine access for beneficiaries. There just isn’t any real meet on the Medicaid bone.