House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) held a hearing today about the Obama administration’s new regulation requiring employers and insurers to provide contraception coverage to their employees, but they prevented women from testifying on the issue.

Democrats had invited Sandra Fluke, a third year law student at Georgetown University, a Jesuit school, but Issa prevented her from testifying. Issa said that he had not found Fluke “appropriate and qualified” to testify before his committee. Fluke later posted her testimony on YouTube.

In her testimony, Fluke describes the financial barriers for female law students at Georgetown who need contraception because the school does not offer birth control coverage in its student health insurance plans. Contraception can cost women up to $3,000 over the course of law school without the coverage, she said, which adds up to an entire summer’s salary for students on public interest scholarships. And 40 percent of women at Georgetown Law say they struggle financially because of the policy. “Just on Tuesday, a married female student told me she had to stop using contraception because she couldn’t afford it any longer,” Fluke wrote.

For some women, the consequences of forgoing birth control can be severe:

A friend of mine, for example, has polycystic ovarian syndrome and has to take prescription birth control to stop cysts from growing on her ovaries. [...] After months of paying over $100 out of pocket, she just couldn’t afford her medication anymore and had to stop taking it. [...] Without taking the birth control, a massive cyst had grown on her ovary. She had to have surgery to remove her entire ovary. [...]

Since last year’s surgery, she’s been experiencing night sweats, weight gain, and other symptoms of early menopause as a result of the removal of her ovary. She’s 32 years old. As she put it: “If my body is indeed in early menopause, no fertility specialist in the world will be able to help me have my own children.”

Watch Fluke offer her testimony here:

Fluke’s testimony and the experiences of her fellow law students could have been important stories for members of Congress to hear about the real impact that having or not having insurance coverage for contraception can have on women.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) has been catching flack for holding a panel today relating to women’s access to birth control that featured zero women, but Issa won’t let the fact that few Americans agree with his position deter him. Taking to Twitter this evening, he fired back with a always-appropriate Martin Luther King Jr. comparison:

Indeed, as King knew, the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” and depriving women who work for Catholic hospitals of affordable birth control. Issa’s hearing also featured giant posters of King and other historical greats whose footsteps the panel was apparently following in, like President Kennedy, and Mohandas Gandhi.

But as Adam Serwer points out, King actually wrote that he hoped state and federal governments would appropriate “large sums of money” to educate people about birth control.

On Wednesday over two dozen Republican House and Senate members held a press conference in support of the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, which would allow any and all insurers and employers to deny their employees health benefits and services required by federal law based on their personal religious or moral objections.

The lawmakers each condemned President Obama’s contraception rule as an infringement of religious liberty, before TPM’s Sahil Kapur asked, “Would any of you refuse to support a presidential candidate who enacted a similar mandate,” referring to Mitt Romney’s rather complicated past with birth control requirements. The former Massachusetts governor remained mum as the legislature implemented a law requiring insurers to provide contraception in 2003 and his health department issued regulations requiring all hospitals — including Catholic institutions — to offer emergency birth control to rape victims in 2005. The Republicans seemed unsure of how to respond:

There were uncomfortable smiles across the stage. “Somebody else want to do that?” asked Fortenberry, stepping aside from the podium and looking around at his colleagues as they let out a mixture of laughs and groans. A few seconds went by and none volunteered.

“Would anybody be willing to rule that out?” I pressed.

“We’re focused on this,” said Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH).

“The bill before us…” one of her colleagues began and was cut off. “Don’t try to distract!”

“That’s not the issue!” declared Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) in an indignant tone.

Fortenberry then took the mic and addressed the question… sort of.

“This is a legislative initiative that we’re trying to undertake,” he said. “Of course, we’d like our eventual nominee — but this is a bipartisan bill. I mean, I would hope that people who are cosponsors of this bill would urge President Obama to sign this because he has stated that he supports the principles of religious liberty. And so I think he should be comfortable with this measure.”

At least five of the lawmakers who attended Thursday’s press conference in support of the Fortenberry bill — Reps. Sandy Adams (R-FL), Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Diane Black (R-TN), Patrick McHenry (R-NC), and Jeff Miller (R-FL) — have also publicly endorsed Romney’s bid for the GOP presidential nomination. Yet, House GOP remain evermore reluctant to address such an egregious case of cognitive dissonance.

– Fatima Najiy

In the escalating war on women’s rights in statehouse across the country, Iowa state Rep. Kim Pearson (R) may have just dropped the biggest bomb yet. Pearson, a freshman Tea Party lawmaker so extreme that she’s already drawn scorn from fellow Republicans and decided not to run for re-election, introduced a bill yesterday morning that would completely outlaw all abortions.

Among other things, the bill make it so a doctor that performs and abortion commits “feticide” — a Class A felony, which is punishable by life imprisonment without the chance for parole:

The bill makes “attempted feticide,” where the fetus does not die, a Class B felony, punishable by 25 years in prison. Iowans can even be punished for helping someone else perform an abortion, as, “joint criminal conduct shall apply to persons knowingly participating or concerned in the commission of feticide or attempted feticide under this section.”

Democrats complained the the bill — which would almost certainly violate Roe v. Wade — was a waste of time when there are pressing economic problems facing the state. “House Republicans and their colleagues in the Senate would rather put the lives of women in danger than have a real discussion about how we create jobs and move Iowa forward,” Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Sue Dvorsky said in a statement.

While the prospects of Pearson’s bill are unclear, a state House committee is currently debating a separate anti-abortion measure that would make doctors show a woman sonogram of the fetus before terminating a pregnancy. The focus on abortion does seem to violate a pledge made by Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen (R) when he said in November, “we’re also not interested in squandering Iowans’ time” on divisive social issues.

In what could only be described as a major retreat from Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) original Medicare premium support proposal, Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Richard Burr (R-NC) have unveiled a new Medicare reform plan that expands the involvement of private insurers in the Medicare program, but maintains traditional Medicare. Beginning in 2016, under Coburn/Burr, the Medicare benefit would be transformed into a “premium support” subsidy and seniors would have the option of purchasing insurance from traditional fee-for-service Medicare or an exchange of private policies. Unlike Ryan, the annual contribution is not indexed to an arbitrary indicator. Rather, the “premium support” would increase with health care costs and rely on market competition to control health care spending. From the plan:

[W]e would require traditional Medicare Fee-For-Service (FFS) and private plans to compete with each other. In 2016, the first year of bidding, FFS Medicare and Medicare private plans would participate in competitive bidding at a regional level to offer a package of health care benefits actuarially equivalent to the previous year’s Medicare benefit. While there would not be a specific, required benefit package required for new Medicare plans that would be spelled out in detail, all plans would be required to cover basic hospital, surgical, physician, and emergency care. [...]

[S]eniors would receive their Medicare benefit as a defined contribution. Key to making this proposal work is to give seniors in a region a fixed amount from the government for which to buy a Medicare plan. The government administered plan and private plans would both bid to provide the Medicare benefit for a region. The Federal Government’s contribution for the first year’s bid would be the Government’s share of spending (in Parts A and B) for the prior year. The Federal contribution for each senior would be tied to the weighted average bid. The defined governmental contribution would be adjusted for income levels, so the wealthiest seniors would pay more and the lower-income seniors would pay less. However, the contribution would not increase if a given senior simply picked a more expensive plan – the amount of the governmental contribution would be fixed, regardless of what plan a senior chose. The dollar amount of the defined contribution would increase each year based on the competitive bidding system that accounts for the prior year’s expenses and enrollment.

The proposal is very similar to the bipartisan framework outlined by Ryan and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) last year and adds little to the Medicare reform debate. Without attracting another Democratic co-sponsor, the two Republicans seemingly walked back Ryan’s original Medicare proposal — by maintaining the existing Medicare program and giving up on the ambitious indexing of inflation plus 1 percent — and introduced a plan that could potentially serve as a new foundation for future reform and momentum.

But the policy is still shaky at best. Like Ryan and Wyden before them, Coburn and Burr are willing to set the nation on an untested path of private competition that breaks up the large market clout of Medicare and pushes seniors into less efficient private insurers. Under Coburn/Burr’s loose regulations, private plans will be able to cherry-pick the healthiest beneficiaries and leave sicker applicants to the government. In fact, without having to offer a defined package of benefits, private insurers could attract a healthier population by simply ratcheting down services that sicker beneficiaries rely on (like chemotherapy) and building up coverage for healthier applicants (like preventive services). Should they succeed, traditional Medicare costs will skyrocket, forcing even more seniors out of the government program. Seniors who are priced out of traditional coverage over time would enroll in private plans and receive care through more restricted provider networks relative to what they currently enjoy (where nearly all hospitals, doctors, nursing homes participate). Although the Coburn/Burr incorporates “a risk-adjustment process,” existing mechanisms are still “less than fully effective in adjusting payments downward based on how much healthier these enrollees are” and private plans participating in Medicare Advantage continue to, on average, enroll healthier beneficiaries.

The vouchers seniors will receive are no longer indexed by inflation. They instead rely on actual average bids in any given geographic area and would do a better job of keeping up with health care costs every year than the original Ryan proposal. But seniors in high cost Medicare areas could still experience a cost-shift and would be responsible for the difference between the amount of the premium credit and the actual cost of the policy.

So there, in a nutshell, is the problem — at least from a policy perspective. Despite its concessions, Coburn/Burr moves the health care system closer to the Ryan ideal, in which future Congresses would be able to reduce federal costs by eating away at the premium credit seniors receive. The plan does little to address the root of the cost problem — changing how we pay doctors and hospitals by moving away from fee-for-service payments — and instead limits the government’s commitment by shifting more costs to beneficiaries.

Appearing of MSNBC with Andrea Mitchell today, Foster Friess, the main donor to the Super PAC backing Rick Santorum’s presidential bid, dismissed the controversy surrounding President Obama’s new birth control rule by suggesting that women should just keep their legs shut. Asked if he worried that Santorum’s Puritanical views on sex and social issues could hurt the candidate in the general election, Friess offered a more home-spun family planning scheme:

FRIESS: On this contraceptive thing, my gosh, it’s so inexpensive. You know, back in my days, they used Bayer Aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.

Watch it:

Given that Aspirin is not a contraceptive, Friess seems to be suggesting that women keep the pill between their knees in order to ensure they legs stay closed to prevent having sex. Conspicuously, Friess doesn’t put the same burden on men.

Friess’ general attitude seems consistent with the candidate he supports. Santorum personally opposes contraception, has pledged to lecture women on the dangers of birth control if elected president, and thinks states have the right to outlaw it.

According to an October 28, 1990 write-up published in The Pittsburgh Press, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum once referred to himself as a “progressive conservative” within the pages of the campaign manual for his successful first run for Congress against Rep. Doug Walgren (D-PA), a description that runs counter to Santorum’s current image as a “true conservative” who has “fought for conservative values his entire life.” In that same October 28 article, Santorum refused to take a position on abortion, a stance at odds with the hardline pro-life rhetoric he espouses now.

The Pittsburgh-Post Gazette similarly quoted Santorum described himself as a “moderate on labor issues” and maintained that he supported right-to-work laws, and was also said to have “supported cuts in defense spending” and “more research into alternative energy source[s].”

– Fatima Najiy

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) echoed Democrats’ concerns about Republicans excluding female witnesses from a hearing focusing on President Obama’s new regulation requiring insurers and employers to provide birth control in their health insurance plans. “This is an issue about women’s health and I believe that women’s health should be covered in all fo the insurance plans,” Pelosi insisted at her press briefing this morning, refuting the GOP’s claim that the debate should focus on “religious liberties.”

“Where are the women? And that’s a good question for the whole debate. Where are the women?” she asked. “Imagine, having a panel on women’s health and then not having any women on the panel, duh!”:

PELOSI: What is it that men don’t understand about women’s health and how central the issue of family planning is to that? Not just if you’re having families but if you need those kinds of prescription drugs for your general health, which was the testimony they would include this morning if they had allowed a woman on the panel. I think the fact that they did not allow a woman on the panel is symbolic of the whole debate as to who is making these decisions about women’s health and who should be covered.

Watch it:

Last Friday, the Obama administration addressed the GOP’s concerns that Catholic-affiliated colleges and hospitals would have to provide contraception coverage that is inconsistent with their religious beliefs by issuing a revised regulation that will allow these nonprofit institutions to stop offering birth control. The change pleased several moderate Catholic organizations, but most Republicans — and some conservative Catholic organizations — continue to insist that women in their employment should not have access to these medications.

This morning, Democrats tore into House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) for preventing women from testifying before a hearing examining the Obama administration’s new regulation requiring employers and insurers to provide contraception coverage to their employees. Republicans oppose the administration’s rule and have sponsored legislation that would allow employers to limit the availability of birth control to women.

Ranking committee member Elijah Cummings (D-MD) had asked Issa to include a female witness at the hearing, but the Chairman refused, arguing that “As the hearing is not about reproductive rights and contraception but instead about the Administration’s actions as they relate to freedom of religion and conscience, he believes that Ms. Fluke is not an appropriate witness.”

And so Cummings, along with the Democratic women on the panel, took their request to the hearing room, demanding that Issa consider the testimony of a female college student. But the California congressman insisted that the hearing should focus on the rules’ alleged infringement on “religious liberty,” not contraception coverage, and denied the request. Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) walked out of the hearing in protest of his decision, citing frustration over the fact that the first panel of witnesses consisted only of male religious leaders against the rule. Holmes Norton said she will not return, calling Issa’s chairmanship an “autocratic regime.”

Watch a compilation of the heated exchange:

A picture of the witness table:

Issa also dismissed the Democrats’ woman witness as a “college student’ who does not “have the appropriate credentials” to testify before his committee.

Our guest blogger is Lindsay Rosenthal, the Special Assistant for Domestic Policy at the Center for American Progress.

During an interview on MSNBC Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) said she was “dumbfounded” that in 2012 Democrats are still having to battle with conservative lawmakers over basic women’s health care like access to contraception. “If my Republican colleagues want to continue to take this issue head on,” she said, “we stand ready to oppose any attacks launched against women’s rights and women’s health.”

Indeed, when you look at the overwhelming evidence of the benefits to women and society that will result from providing no-cost contraceptive coverage, it’s hard not to be baffled by the opposition to what is clearly a vital component of women’s healthcare. Here are the top 5 reasons why the Obama Administration’s regulation requiring insurers and employers to provide contraceptive coverage at no additional cost is so important:

1) Birth control is expensive. Costs are a major barrier to women’s access to contraception. High costs for contraception decrease women’s utilization of prevention methods and often cause them to turn to less effective methods that are more affordable. Studies show that even women with private insurance pay a significant portion of their contraceptive cost. A recent study found that insured women paid about 50 percent of the total costs for oral contraceptives, even though the typical out-of-pocket cost of non-contraceptive drugs is only 33 percent. Oral contraceptives can cost as much $1,210 dollars a year for women without insurance. As a result, nearly one in four women with household incomes of less than $75,000 have put off a doctor’s visit for birth control to save money in the past year. Half of young adult women report using their method inconsistently because of high costs.

2) Contraception has numerous health benefits. A Harvard Medical School study found that oral contraceptives reduced the risk of ovarian cancer by 10 to 12 percent during the first year of use and by about 50 percent after five years of use. It also prevents significant health risks to women and infants by allowing women and couples to achieve healthy birth intervals and prevent unintended pregnancy. Having too short a gap between pregnancies has been linked to negative health outcomes, like low birth weight, preterm birth, and small size for gestational age. Unintended pregnancy is also linked to several negative outcomes for women and children’s health, including delayed attainment of prenatal care, economic hardships, and relationship problems. Publicly funded contraceptive services have decreased unintended pregnancy among health center clients by as much as 78 percent, studies show.

3) Birth control usage is nearly universal. Conservative efforts to deny access to contraception are fundamentally out of step with the values and practices of the American people. Ninety-nine percent of all sexually active women, and 98 percent of sexually experienced Catholic women have birth control other than a natural method in their lifetime. Recent polls show that most Americans support access to birth control and don’t believe an employer should be able to decide what kind of medical care a woman should receive.

4) Providing no-cost contraceptive coverage is cost effective. A recent study shows that it costs employers 15-17 percent more not to provide coverage for contraception than to provide it. Every dollar invested by the government in contraception saves $3.74 in Medicaid expenditures for care related to unintended pregnancies. In 2008, services provided at publicly funded family planning clinics resulted in a net savings of $5.1 billion.

5) It’s about more than birth control. As important as contraception is, the preventive care regulation is about more than access to birth control. It covers a wide range of services specific to women’s health, including cancer screening with Pap smears, HPV DNA testing, mammograms, and colonoscopies; domestic violence screening and counseling; and breastfeeding supports, among others. It also insures services like immunizations, dietary counseling, and cholesterol and blood pressure screening, to name only a few, to 54 million men, women, and children.