A new study shows that adults in low- to moderate-income families are “more likely to be uninsured, to lack a regular source of health care, and to struggle to get the health care they need compared to those in higher-income families,” according to the Commonwealth Fund. The researchers focused on the vast income gap in health insurance and health care access and concluded that the Affordable Care Act could help close the disparity.

While 57 percent of people in families earning 133 percent of the poverty line (less than $30,000 for a family of four) were uninsured for some time in the past year, and 35 percent had been uninsured for two years or more, just 12 percent of adults in families with incomes above $89,400 for a family of four reported being uninsured during the year. Three percent said they were insured for two years or more.

While adults are often uninsured, programs such as Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) step in to insure children. But 31 percent of low-income families and 20 percent of moderate-income families still reported that all or some of their children were uninsured, compared to 12 percent of higher-income families. Fortunately, the Affordable Care Act will help close the enormous income divide in health insurance — for children and adults — by expanding coverage:

– The Affordable Care Act has already expanded health insurance to 2.5 million 19-to-25 year-olds, banned lifetime limits on health insurance coverage, created pre-existing condition insurance plans providing health insurance options to those who were often uninsurable, and required insurers to cover preventive care without requiring co-payments.

– But the major provisions of the law to be implemented in 2014 will have the biggest effect on narrowing the income divide, through expanded Medicaid coverage; new health insurance exchanges offering comprehensive coverage and premium tax credits to make coverage affordable; and new rules that will prevent insurers from denying coverage or charging people more based on pre-existing conditions or gender.

Yesterday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney joined the religious right in supporting the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood, and said the government should do the same.

Of course, Romney’s past support for the right to choose has been well documented, but Romney’s connection to Planned Parenthood has been largely overlooked.

Mitt and Ann Romney attended a Planned Parenthood fundraiser in Cohasset, Massachusetts in 1994, and Ann wrote a $150 check to the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, various news outlets reported. “They were both there, and I remember very well chatting with both of them, and talking about his support for the pro-choice agenda,” Nicki Nichols Gamble, the president of the League told ABC News in 2007.

That year, the Boston Globe published this photo, which purportedly shows Romney at the fundraiser:

Asked about the fundraiser four years ago, Romney didn’t outright deny attending. “I attend a lot of events when I run for office. I don’t recall the specific event,” he told the AP in South Carolina four years ago.

During his successful race for Governor of Massachusetts 2002, Romney also signed a pro-choice pledge organized by Planned Parenthood.

See Think Progress’ full rundown of Mitt Romney’s evolving attitudes towards abortion.

Staples co-founder Tom Stemberg is speaking out against a serious threat to economic recovery and job creation: breastfeeding moms.

Stemberg, a longtime supporter of Republican policies and candidates like Mitt Romney, complained recently that President Obama’s health care reform law hurts businesses by requiring them to provide what he dubbed “lactation chambers” for new moms who need to breastfeed at work:

Tom Stemberg, co-founder of mega-office supply chain Staples is questioning an Obamacare provision that discourages job creation by dictating employers funnel their capital into lactation chambers.

“Do you want [farming retailer] Tractor Supply to open stores or would you rather they take their capital and do what Obamacare and its 2,700 pages dictates – which is to open a lactation chamber at every single store that they have?” he asked.

“I’m big on breastfeeding; my wife breastfed,” Stenberg added. “I’m all for that. I don’t think every retail store in America should have to go to lactation chambers, which is what Obamacare foresees.

Stemberg was presumably referring to provisions in the Affordable Care Act that require employers to give lactating mothers “reasonable break time” to nurse their child, as well as “a place, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers and the public…” The place they provide for new moms does not have to be a dedicated room as long as it’s private and can be called into use when female employees need it.

Stemberg, who has contributed tens of thousands of dollars to Romney’s campaign and SuperPAC, added that repealing the health care law should be at the top of the next president’s “to-do” list.

As of early January, the Labor Department had already cited 23 companies, including Starbucks and McDonald’s stores, for violating the new protections for breastfeeding employees.

Mitt Romney has launched a petition accusing the Obama administration of “using Obamacare to impose a secular vision on Americans who believe that they should not have their religious freedom taken away.” The move is the latest in a concerted campaign effort to rally the conservative base around a supposed “war against religion” and misrepresent or outright lie about a new regulation requiring employers and insurers to offer contraception coverage.

“We must have a president who is willing to protect America’s first right, a right to worship God, according to the dictates of our own conscience,” Romney told an audience of nearly 3,000 people in Colorado. “We’ll either have a government that protects religious diversity and freedom, or we’ll have a government that tells us what kind of conscience they think we ought to have.” But Romney’s new-found outrage is a stark contrast from his record as Massachusetts governor, when he tacitly endorsed a very similar coverage mandate and greatly expanded government-funded contraceptive services.

In 2002 — the very same year Romney campaigned for governor of Massachusetts — the state enacted a “contraceptive equity” law that required insurers that provide outpatient benefits to cover hormone replacement therapy and all FDA-approved contraceptive methods. Similar to the Obama regulation, the law exempted “an employer that is a church or qualified church-controlled organization” from the requirement and the legislature soundly defeated an amendment that “would have allowed affiliated institutions such as hospitals, universities, and nursing homes to deny their employees coverage.” The defeated amendment closely mirrors the expanded conscience protections religious groups are now clamoring for.

Romney remained mum on the requirement — which passed unanimously in the Senate and in a 140 to 16 vote in the House — and pledged to maintain the status quo on family-planning related policy throughout his gubernatorial campaign. He even promised to expand access to emergency contraception and restore state funding for family-planning and teen pregnancy prevention programs.

After all, before deciding to run for President, Romney had been a strong supporter of expanding public access to birth control. In 2007, the Boston Globe reported that “Romney’s wife, Ann, made a $150 contribution to Planned Parenthood in 1994, the year Romney ran for Senate as a candidate supporting abortion rights” from “the Romneys’ joint checking account.” And in 2005, he “signed a bill that could expand the number of people who get family-planning services, including the morning-after pill.” Romney even pressured the state Department of Health and Human Services to issue regulations that required Catholic hospitals to issue the morning after pill to rape victims, despite initially vetoing the bill and claiming that the pill constituted an “abortifacient.”

But perhaps his greatest contribution to expanding the public availability of birth control came from his health care reform law. The state’s Commonwealth Care, which offers subsidized, low or no-cost insurance program for low-income residents without access to employer-sponsored health insurance, offers primary and preventive care that includes “family planning services” and prescription contraceptives.

Today, Karen Handel, Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s controversial Senior Vice President of Public Policy, resigned in protest of the organization’s decision to consider reinstating funding for cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood health centers.

Handel has been at the center of the firestorm surrounding the organization’s unpopular decision to sever ties with Planned Parenthood — a decision that was reversed just a few days later following a massive backlash from supporters and its own employees.

In her resignation letter, Handel openly acknowledges her integral role in formulating the policy designed to cut off Planned Parenthood funding. Just a few days ago, Komen founder and president Nancy Brinker claimed, “Let me just tell you for the record that Karen did not have anything to do with this decision.”

Handel does not specifically defend the rules she pushed through, but decries the charity’s decision to reverse course, arguing that the proper procedure was followed:

We can all agree that this is a challenging and deeply unsettling situation for all involved in the fight against breast cancer. However, Komen’s decision to change its granting strategy and exit the controversy surrounding Planned Parenthood and its grants was fully vetted by every appropriate level within the organization.

At the November Board meeting, the Board received a detailed review of the new model and related criteria. As you will recall, the Board specifically discussed various issues, including the need to protect our mission by ensuring we were not distracted or negatively affected by any other organization’s real or perceived challenges. No objections were made to moving forward.

I am deeply disappointed by the gross mischaracterizations of the strategy, its rationale, and my involvement in it. I openly acknowledge my role in the matter and continue to believe our decision was the best one for Komen’s future and the women we serve. However, the decision to update our granting model was made before I joined Komen, and the controversy related to Planned Parenthood has long been a concern to the organization.

Neither the decision nor the changes themselves were based on anyone’s political beliefs or ideology. Rather, both were based on Komen’s mission and how to better serve women, as well as a realization of the need to distance Komen from controversy.

The idea that Komen wanted to stop funding cancer screenings for poor women to distance itself from controversy is particularly ironic, given that their decision accomplished just the opposite. The organization’s popularity has plummeted and they are already struggling to lure back donors.

Handel not only has a long anti-choice history, but pledged to eliminate grants for Planned Parenthood to provide breast and cervical cancer screenings when she ran for governor of Georgia in 2010.

In the letter, Handel declines any severance package, which will allow her to speak openly about her differences with Komen.

Catholic leaders and the GOP presidential candidates have intentionally distorted the Obama administration’s new rule requiring employers and insurers to provide reproductive health benefits at no additional cost sharing. Conservatives are seeking a way to politically unite Republican voters around a social issue and portray the regulation as a big government intrusion into religious liberties. In reality, the mandate is modeled on existing rules in six states, exempts houses of worship and other religious nonprofits that primarily employ and serve people of faith, and offers employers a transitional period of one year to determine how best to comply with the rule.

It’s also nothing new. Twenty-eight states already require organizations that offer prescription insurance to cover contraception and since 98 percent of Catholic women use birth control, many Catholic institutions offer the benefit to their employees. For instance, a Georgetown University spokesperson told ThinkProgress yesterday that employees “have access to health insurance plans offered and designed by national providers to a national pool. These plans include coverage for birth control.”

Similarly, an informal survey conducted by Our Sunday Visitor found that many Catholic colleges have purchased insurance plans that provide contraception benefits:

University of Scranton, for example, appears to specifically cover contraception. The University of San Francisco offers employees two health plans, both of which cover abortion, contraception and sterilization…Also problematic is the Jesuit University of Scranton. One of its health insurance plans, the First Priority HMO, lists a benefit of “contraceptives when used for the purpose of birth control.”

DePaul University in Chicago covers birth control in both its fully insured HMO plan and its self-insured PPO plan and excludes “elective abortion,” said spokesman John Holden, adding that the 1,800 employee-university responded to a complaint from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission several years ago and added artificial contraception as a benefit to its Blue Cross PPO.

Christian Brothers University in Memphis, Tenn., offers employee health insurance via the Tennessee Independent Colleges and Universities Association, a consortium of Christian Bible and other private college and universities. Its plan excludes abortion, but probably covers artificial contraception as a prescription drug, said C. Gregg Conroy, the executive director of the TICUA Benefit Consortium.

Boston College, the six former Caritas Christi Catholic hospitals in Massachusetts, and other Catholic organizations that are located in one of the 28 states that already require employers to provide contraception benefits could have self-insured or stopped offering prescription drug coverage to avoid the mandate — but didn’t do so. Instead, they — like many Catholic hospitals and health care insurers around the country — chose to meet the needs of the overwhelming majority of Catholic women and offer these much needed services.