Our guest blogger is Lucy Panza, a policy analyst with the Women’s Health and Rights Program at American Progress Action Fund.

Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee released a draft FY 2012 budget for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education that reduces funding for health care reform by at least $8.6 billion and makes significant cuts to services for low income women and families – at the same time that women are falling deeper into poverty. Some highlights:

– Funding for the Title V Maternal and Child Health Services Block Grant is proposed at $654,489,000 – a $1.8 million reduction from the FY 2011 level;

– The $350 million Title V Maternal, Infant and Early Child Health Home Visiting program is eliminated;

– The $25 million Pregnancy Assistance Fund is eliminated; and

– $337 million in Title X Family Planning grants are proposed to be eliminated – this would eliminate Title X altogether.

– Funding for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative is reduced by $64.79 million — from $104.79 million to $40 million. 

These cuts, if enacted, would end publicly funded women’s health care as we know it. Just to take a few examples, the Title V proposed cuts would deny pre-natal health access to millions of mothers and preventive care access to millions of children. The elimination of Title X (signed into law by Republican President Nixon in 1970) would mean that millions of Americans who rely on publicly funded health clinics each year would go without services like mammograms, cancer screenings, and birth control. The Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative funding would be diverted to ineffective, abstinence-only education. And these are just a few of the implications. Perhaps most offensive is the “pro-life” banner that the GOP waved in its own summary of the proposed budget:

Protecting Life – The bill includes several provisions to protect life. These include continuations of longstanding restrictions on abortion funding that have been included in the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Appropriations legislation in prior years. The legislation expands the Hyde Amendment to apply to funding provided through ObamaCare, includes language prohibiting funding for Planned Parenthood unless it certifies it will not provide abortions, and includes the text of the “Abortion Non-Discrimination Act.” The bill also bans funding for needle exchange programs, a provision that had been included in the bill until fiscal year 2010.

The reality underlying these cuts is the double kudos that Republicans expect to get from stripping health reform implementation of necessary funding while at the same time reducing access to reproductive health and rights. While no one can deny that budget-drafting is a form of policymaking, this House majority has unabashedly used the budget-making process to advance its out-of-touch ideological agenda. To name just one example, the current draft bans insurance coverage of abortion in the new health exchanges under the Affordable Care Act — restricting a common health benefit that most women currently have – in a budgetary proposal. What does this have to do with the budget? Nothing. There is no federal spending involved in deciding whether a state allows or prohibits insurance coverage of a particular health benefit, and it shouldn’t be in a budget proposal released by the United States House of Representatives.

This proposal is largely symbolic. Ultimately, it will fail because neither the Democratic-controlled Senate nor the White House – nor advocates on the ground, for that matter – will allow it to become law. But that should be no source of comfort – for one thing, bits and pieces of the proposal may end up in the final product. Yesterday’s budget proposal is a reminder of the long road ahead for reproductive health, rights and justice advocates – and how persistent the opposition is.

Our guest blogger is Jessica Arons, director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at American Progress.

Today the Hyde Amendment, which bans Medicaid coverage of abortion with few exceptions, turns 35 years old. Not even its sponsor, Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL), could have imagined its unfortunate success. In its three and a half decades, the Hyde Amendment policy has crept into every government-run or government-managed program, including Medicare, the Indian Health Service, the Peace Corps, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, the military’s Tricare program, and federal prisons. And with the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, restrictions on abortion coverage crossed from the public into the private health insurance market as well.

While such restrictions have some effect on all women, poor women and women of color continue to bear the brunt of this cruel policy. Women enrolled in Medicaid — by definition those with the fewest resources — were the first targets of the Hyde Amendment, but two trends have converged to make them even more likely to need an abortion and less likely to be able to afford one.

The United States now has the highest number of people living in poverty since the Census Bureau started tracking the data in 1959. And 14.5 percent of women lived in poverty in 2010, up from 13.9 percent in 2009 — the highest poverty rate for women in 17 years.

At the same time, poor women’s rates of unintended pregnancy are far outpacing those of more affluent women. The unintended pregnancy rate for women with incomes under the federal poverty level rose 50 percent from 1994 to 2006, while women with incomes at or above the poverty line saw their unintended pregnancy rate decrease by almost 30 percent. Poor women’s unintended pregnancy rates rose regardless of their education, race and ethnicity, marital status, or age.

And so the chasm between these two Americas continues to grow wider. A poor woman is five times as likely as her higher-income counterpart to have an unintended pregnancy (132 versus 24 per 1,000 women of reproductive age), six times as likely to have a birth resulting from an unintended pregnancy, and five times as likely to have an abortion (52 versus 9 per 1,000 women). Indeed, more than two-thirds (69 percent) of women who have an abortion are economically disadvantaged.

Put another way, abortion is becoming a poor woman’s problem — just as more women are becoming poor. Yet because of the Hyde Amendment, a woman who qualifies for Medicaid due to her low income is denied coverage for abortion care. Instead, she and her family must divert scarce resources to pay for a needed abortion out of pocket.

The Hyde Amendment’s blatant discrimination against poor women violates the fundamental principles of fairness and equality that our country aspires to achieve. At a time when Americans are experiencing record rates of poverty and economic hardship, the Hyde Amendment only compounds an already difficult situation and cuts off aid to those who need it most.

Until the Hyde Amendment is repealed and poor women receive adequate support for all of their reproductive health needs, rich and poor women will continue to live in two different countries with two different sets of rights. This 35th anniversary of Hyde is nothing to celebrate.

Our guest blogger is Chris Mooney, a editor of The Intersection.

In a Q&A after his event yesterday to announce a “New Contract With America,” Newt Gingrich was asked if he would work to make “Christian social issues the law of the land,” by a questioner who cited stem cell research in particular.

Here was his response:

I am very much for adult stem cell research, and I am very much for stem cell research that comes from, for example, any device other than killing an embryo. But I am opposed to getting involved in a process of killing children in order to have research materials. And I think you’re finding, you look at what’s happening with stem cell research, we have less and less demand that you have anything except regular stem cells, because we’re learning how to use them. So I think that’s an ideological fight, rather than a scientific fight.

The bit about “killing children” is absurd. According to the NIH, most embryos used are leftover from in vitro fertilization clinics, and have been designated for research with the “informed consent of the donors.” They never have any chance of becoming children because they’re never implanted in a womb.

And not only are there no dead children here. Gingrich’s claim about adult stem cells — the “regular” stem cells, he claims — is also way off. He’s engaging in classic hype that the religious right uses whenever this issue comes up — claiming that we don’t really need embryonic stem cells because adult stem cells are so wonderful that they can take care of everything. That would surprise the International Society for Stem Cell Research, which offers this statement on adult stem cell hype by Dr. David Scadden:

Adult stem cell therapies are powerful, but they are not as wide-ranging as claimed. They have a narrow record of disease types for which the therapy is extremely valuable, a success story that is enormously encouraging evidence for stem cell research leading to methods of positively affecting people’s lives. It took approximately 25 years between discovery and routine clinical application of adult stem cell therapy. It is not known how long it will take for embryonic stem cells to become a useful therapy or whether they will ever directly do so. However, it would be unwise to ignore the potential for either adult or embryonic stem cells to result in a meaningful new approach. Adult and embryonic stem cells are complementary subjects of research and studying them side by side offers the greatest potential to rapidly generate new therapies.

Sorry, Newt. And this is a guy who likes science, at least when it suits him.

Gingrich ends the latest clip with a lampooning of evolution — we’re talking Bishop Wilberforce-type stuff.

I always tell my friends who don’t believe in this stuff, fine, how do you think — we’re randomly gathered protoplasm? We could have been rhinoceroses, but we got lucky this week?

Evolution by natural selection is not a random process–though this is a standard creationist talking point. So Gingrich almost hit an anti-science trifecta here — all he had to do was snub global warming too. So close!

Yesterday, Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee released a draft spending bill for FY 2012 that could derail the the Affordable Care Act by cutting off funding until the courts rule on the law’s constitutionality. Overall, the budget reduces funding for reform by at least $8.6 billion and allows insurers to effectively flaunt consumer protections and increase health care costs. A sampling of the cuts:

- Rescinds $1 billion for the Prevention and Public Health Fund

- Rescinds $1.2 billion for Community Health Center expansion

- Rescinds $1.9 billion for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation Center

- Prohibits funds for the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight

- Eliminates funding for the already defunct CLASS office

The budget remains deadlocked in committee, where two Republican lawmakers, Reps. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), “have objected to appropriations bills with spending levels higher than those contained in the House-passed budget resolution.” But should this measure — or something like it — eventually make it out of the House, Republicans wouldn’t just be going after the parts of the law they disagree with — the mandate or the employer requirements — they’d be striking directly at the heart of the law’s consumer protections and cost-saving initiatives.

For instance, defunding the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight would prevent HHS from enforcing provisions that prohibit discrimination against children with pre-existing conditions and allow young adults up to age 26 to stay on their parents’ policies, effectively empowering insurers to ignore the law and disregard Patients Bill of Rights. It would also halt the drafting of all new regulations and put an end to the federal government’s efforts to help states review and in certain cases deny unreasonable premium rate increases.

The budget would halt progress on developing and testing new, more efficient ways of reimbursing providers — and realigning incentives so that hospitals and doctors are rewarding for delivering quality care — and cut off funding to prevention efforts that help communities fight chronic conditions like heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes that are “responsible for 7 of 10 deaths among Americans each year and account for 75 percent of the nation’s health spending.” All this, while undercutting community health centers — the primary source of care for many Americans which President Bush not only championed but also greatly expanded.

Newt Gingrich’s new 21st Century Contract For America would give seniors the choice of opting out of the Medicare program and buying health insurance coverage in the private market. The former House speaker unveiled the plan in Iowa this afternoon, where he mocked “liberals” for claiming that seniors would be confused by too many choices and compared the purchase of health insurance to shopping at Walmart. “You know there are 250,000 items in a Walmart,” he said. “Maybe you don’t want to go to all the aisles.” Watch it:

Far from a new idea, Gingrich’s proposal is very similar to one he himself considered as speaker and Sens. John Breaux (D-LA) and Bill Frist (R-TN) offered in 1999 and then again in 2001. The idea is to replace the current Medicare program with competing health plans, while maintaining the CMS-sponsored Medicare fee-for-service coverage as an option. Seniors would receive “premium support” that would either be pegged to some economic indicator (like inflation) or compiled through the percentage of actual plan bids for a comprehensive set of benefits. The beneficiary would pay the difference between the the government’s contribution and the cost of the actual plan.

Analysts at the time argued that the proposal would lead to severe adverse selection for seniors who remain in traditional Medicare — increasing their premiums — and would be unlikely to produce significant savings. Henry Aaron — who developed the premium support concept with Robert Reischauer in 1995 — has since walked away from the plan, arguing that the Affordable Care Act may do a better job of lowering costs.

Furthermore, the concern about seniors being overwhelmed with too much choice is a real one, partly because buying health insurance is nothing like shopping at a Walmart. It’s nothing like buying an iPod or a desk lamp. It’s ultimately about extending life and delaying death and asking anyone — particularly older Americans — to bare the brunt of making those decisions when they know so little about the complexities of medicine and insurance policies is not only fool-hearted but also fairly cruel.

If anything, choices have to be very well regulated and few. Surveys conducted by the Massachusetts Connector — that state’s exchange — revealed that even once insurance policies are standardized (so they would be comparing apples to apples), consumers still feel that too much choice is “confusing” and “overwhelming.” “Participants expressed a desire a for manageable numbers of plans (e.g. three to four) offered by four to six carriers. In addition, consumers expressed difficulty making plan comparisons under the existing model,” Massachusetts found. “Instead, consumers preferred for information to be presented in a simple and standardized format that clearly distinguished between different benefit design options.”

Just when you thought the nationwide crackdown on undocumented immigrants couldn’t get any more brutal, the Huffington Post reports that pregnant women in Arizona and Tennessee were detained and forced to give birth while shackled to their hospital beds because they couldn’t produce identification.

The shackling of female inmates when they go into labor has been a roundly condemned practice in prisons, but local authorities are now extending that humiliation to non-violent immigrant women whose only crime was being stopped by police without a valid license:

“When I was in bed, I was begging the sheriff, ‘Please let me free — at least one hand,’ and he said, no, he didn’t want to,” Juana Villegas said in an interview with a local Nashville television station. She was describing the experience of being shackled to her hospital bed as she went into labor. Villegas gave birth in the sheriff’s custody, after she was stopped by local police while driving without a valid license.[...]

Like Villegas, Alma Chacon, and Miriam Mendiola-Martinez gave birth in the United States shackled to their hospital beds, without their husbands, and in the presence of a prison guard. They also were not violent criminals, but rather, they were all undocumented and charged with an immigration-related offense in Sheriff Arpaio’s jurisdiction of Maricopa County, Arizona.

What’s more, Villegas’s lawyer notes that driving without a license is usually handled with a simple citation, not an arrest, leading them to believe the women were only detained because they looked like immigrants.

The three women report shockingly inhumane treatment by police officers. One woman’s newborn son was taken from her within 48 hours of his birth and given to a family member. Local authorities refused to let Juana Villegas use a breast pump the hospital gave her, causing her to be in “great pain.” Alma Chacon says she was not allowed to nurse or hold her baby until she was released from immigration custody almost 70 days after she gave birth.

Pregnant undocumented immigrants are treated even worse than prosecuted criminals, who can be released on bond before they gave birth if they are charged with nonviolent crimes that don’t include the sin of being undocumented.

In 2007, the Bureau of Prisons instituted an anti-shackling policy in federal correctional facilities, but “state correctional facilities are still free to shackle inmates before, during and after child delivery if they see fit.” In 36 states, it’s legal for local authorities to handcuff women to their hospital beds if they are being held for immigration-related charges classified as “criminal offenses.” Those women can also be denied the right to have a family member in the birthing room, or to hold their newborns for longer than 24 hours.

According to a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “it is against ICE policy to use restraints in medical situations, absent extraordinary circumstances.” But critics note that ICE refuses to enforce the policy or train local authorities to respect it. “They’re very happy to wash their hands of things, and say, ‘That happened under local authority, not our authority,’” says Michelle Brané, director of the Detention and Asylum program at the Women’s Refugee Commission.

As ThinkProgress previously reported, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) made history earlier this year when he signed into law legislation that would make his state the first state to lay the groundwork for a single payer health care system. In order to enact this system, the state needs a waiver from the federal health care law, which it will be able to obtain in 2017. Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) has introduced legislation to move the waiver date up to 2014, an idea President Obama has endorsed.

Now, another governor is looking to take advantage of flexibility in Obama’s health care law in order to establish a single payer system. Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D-MT) announced yesterday that he will be seeking a waiver to set up his own universal health care system in his state modeled after the single payer Canadian health care system that began in the province of Saskatchewan:

Gov. Brian Schweitzer said Wednesday he will ask the U.S. government to let Montana set up its own universal health care program, taking his rhetorical fight over health care to another level. [...] The popular second-term Democrat would like to create a state-run system that borrows from the program used in Saskatchewan. He said the Canadian province controls cost by negotiating drug prices and limiting non-emergency procedures such as MRIs.

Local news station KRTV covered Schweitzer’s bid for a new universal health care system for his state. Schweitzer said that under his ideal system patients can still buy private insurance if they want to, but that it’ll be a “lonely place over there at Blue Cross Blue Shield” due to the superior public health insurance he plans to provide. Watch it:

Schweitzer’s announcement to seek a waiver and design his own system was met with curiosity by GOP state Sen. Jason Priest, who responded, “I don’t want to reject it before I see the details. I am just glad he is thinking about it.”

Newt Gingrich releases his new 21st Century Contract with America today in Iowa. His website describes the proposal as “larger and more complex…than any presidential campaign has undertaken in modern times” but “the minimum necessary to mobilize the American people, change the entrenched elites and their system, and get America back on the right track.” The document is meant to recall the former speaker’s 1994 Contract with America, but a closer reading of the new proposals suggests that the Gingrich of today may not necessarily agree with the Gingrich of yesteryear.

For instance, the first proposal promises to “Repeal Obamacare and pass a replacement that saves lives and money by empowering patients and doctors, not bureaucrats and politicians.” The contract goes after the law’s requirement to purchase health insurance coverage beginning in 2014, calling it “unconstitutional.” It also criticizes the law’s efforts to help lower-income Americans access affordable coverage. “[O]nce the government mandates such expensive insurance, the government becomes responsible for its costs. It has to adopt expensive subsidies to help people pay for the expensive plans that it is requiring,” it reads.

Instead, Gingrich offers to replace the law with a consumer-driven solution:

This system will assure healthcare for all with no individual mandate or employer mandate of any kind. This alternative to Obamacare begins with patient power and localism and the many common sense ideas developed over the past eight years at the Center for Health Transformation.

Over the next year, I look forward to discussing solutions for a pro-market replacement for Obamacare that puts top priority on empowering patients, focusing on the doctor patient relationship, using the best new science to save lives and save money.

But as Mitt Romney recalled yesterday during a radio interview with Sean Hannity, Gingrich has previously supported the very mandate his contract wants to repeal.

Gingrich advocated for coverage mandates in the mid-2000s, when he partnered with then-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) “to promote a centrist solution to fixing the nation’s health care system” and wrote in his 2005 book, Winning The Future, that “a 21st Century Intelligent System requires everyone to participate in the insurance system.” He even endorsed Medicaid expansion and subsidizing coverage for lower income Americans. “People whose income is too low should receive Medicaid vouchers and tax credits to buy insurance,” he continued. “Large risk pools (association health plans are one model) should be established so low-income people can buy insurance as inexpensively as large corporations. ”

Mitt Romney described the individual health mandate as a “conservative idea” yesterday afternoon on Sean Hannity’s radio show, just as the federal government asked the Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of the provision in President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

“The idea for a health care plan [in Massachusetts] was not mine alone,” Romney explained. “The Heritage Foundation — a great conservative think tank — helped on that. I’m told Newt Gingrich, one of the very first people who came up with the idea of an individual mandate, did that years and years ago”:

ROMNEY: It was seen as a conservative idea to say, you know what? People have a responsibility for caring for themselves if they can. We’ll help people who can’t care for themselves, but if you can care for yourself, you gotta take care of yourself and pay your own bills.

Listen:

In 2006, the Heritage Foundation — which attended the signing ceremony for the law — described Romney’s mandate as “not an unreasonable position, and one that is clearly consistent with conservative values,” claiming that it would reduce “the total cost to taxpayers” by taking people out of the “uncompensated care pool.”

Gingrich also embraced the “ultimate conservative idea,” writing in a 2007 Des Moines Register op-ed, “Personal responsibility extends to the purchase of health insurance. Citizens should not be able to cheat their neighbors by not buying insurance, particularly when they can afford it, and expect others to pay for their care when they need it.” An “individual mandate,” he added, should be applied “when the larger health-care system has been fundamentally changed.”