In a major victory for women’s health advocates, Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) has publicly backtracked from his support for a bill requiring women to undergo an invasive transvaginal ultrasound before having an abortion. In a statement released this afternoon, McDonnell offered an amendment that would not force women to receive the procedure. “Mandating an invasive procedure in order to give informed consent is not a proper role for the state,” McDonnell said:

I am requesting that the General Assembly amend this bill to explicitly state that no woman in Virginia will have to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound involuntarily. I am asking the General Assembly to state in this legislation that only a transabdominal, or external, ultrasound will be required to satisfy the requirements to determine gestational age. Should a doctor determine that another form of ultrasound may be necessary to provide the necessary images and information that will be an issue for the doctor and the patient. The government will have no role in that medical decision.

The state Senate has already passed the bill, and the House is expected to pass the ultrasound bill as soon as today. McDonnell has previously backed the bill, saying that “the concept that a woman should have all of the information possible before she makes a decision about terminating a pregnancy” and that he would sign the bill.

But the ultrasound bill is still unnecessary. Studies have shown that viewing an ultrasound does not change a woman’s mind before an abortion, and the Guttmacher Institute reports that requiring an abortion only adds to the cost of an abortion. “Since routine ultrasound is not considered medically necessary as a component of first-trimester abortion, the requirements appear to be a veiled attempt to personify the fetus and dissuade a woman from obtaining an abortion,” the group writes.

Seventy-five percent of low-wage workers lack access to employer-provided healthcare coverage says a new study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), while nearly 40 percent have no health insurance whatsoever, private or public — up from 16 percent in 1979. The Health-insurance Coverage for Low-wage Workers, 1979-2010 Beyond report, which was authored in conjunction with the Georgetown University Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, notes that over the past 30 years, employer-provided insurance has declined for all workers, but low-wage workers have been hit hardest. In 2010, only 26 percent had health insurance through their employer, while in 1979 the number was at a solid 43 percent.

Coverage through public insurance programs has been the only area where low-wage workers have experienced any improvement, with 10 percent gaining coverage through Medicaid, which is double 1979′s rate of 5 percent.

For the purposes of the study, low-wage workers are identified as people in the bottom 20 percent of hourly pay.

The report also estimates the future effects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on insurance rates for low-wage workers using outside projections and the experience of the Massachusetts state health system, which shares many similarities with the ACA. The report concludes that the full implementation of the ACA — particularly the expansion of the Medicaid program — will slice non-coverage rates for low-wage workers in half from nearly 40 percent to somewhere below 20 percent.

– Fatima Najiy

If President Obama’s newly-proposed budget were to be enacted, its long-run projections show U.S. debt stabilizing as a percentage of GDP until approximately 2030, after which it begins to rise again indefinitely. Last Thursday, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) decided to take Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to task over those numbers:

RYAN: Leaders are supposed to fix problems… Our government is making promises to Americans that it has no way of accounting for them. And so you’re saying, “Yeah, we’re stabilizing it but we’re not fixing it in the long run.” That means we’re just gonna keep lying to people. We’re going to keep all the empty promises going.

The most important thing to remember about the debt increase from 2030 onward is that it’s driven almost entirely by health care costs:

Some of this is the retirement of the baby boomers, and the resulting increase in retirees as a share of the population. Though Social Security is also effected by this, and its per year expenditures stabilize after a few decades at 6 percent of GDP. Some of this is also technological advancement, which just naturally makes health care more expensive as it’s able to do more things. Every advanced country’s health care is rising as a percent of GDP, but none are as high or rising nearly as quickly as the U.S. The fundamental problem is the cost of health care in America is rising at a much faster rate than overall economic output. And that’s the costs for everyone: Individuals, private insurers, and government alike. As a result, the amount of money the government is scheduled to spend each year on health care, the lion’s share of which goes to Medicare, is predicted to grow indefinitely as a percentage of GDP. Simply put, the thing Medicare buys is becoming ever more expensive, so Medicare’s budget is becoming ever larger.

There are two ways to solve this. One, the government can simply buy less health care over time — and by extension leave every American who has relied on that support to find some other way to make up the difference. That’s what Ryan and the Republicans did in their 2011 budget which passed the House last April. Ryan’s budget would’ve transformed Medicare into an exchange providing private insurance plans, with premium support to help seniors buy those plans. Ryan and the Republicans would then have slashed that support so drastically that by 2030 the typical 65-year-old would be paying 68 percent of their health care costs, according to the CBO. Absent those changes to Medicare, that amount would not rise above 30 percent. Ryan’s budget also called for severe cuts to Medicaid and discretionary spending, two-thirds of which would’ve fallen on the shoulders of America’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens. Read more

A depiction of the procedure

But now McDonnell is backing away from his previous wholehearted support of the measure. Earlier, he told ABC News he supports “the concept that a woman should have all of the information possible before she makes a decision about terminating a pregnancy.” Now, his office has clarified that he will “review” the bill if it passes the General Assembly:

“Our position is: If the General Assembly passes this bill the governor will review it, in its final form, at that time,” McDonnell spokesman Tucker Martin said in a statement. He declined to explain the change in approach, but Virginia’s governors can sign, veto or amend legislation.

The House and Senate have approved their versions of the bill. On Tuesday, the House postponed a final vote on the legislation…for the second day in a row. [...]

The officials with knowledge of Tuesday night’s Republican meeting said GOP leaders hope to introduce amendments on Wednesday, but it is unclear whether the rank and file would support them.

Virginians opposed to the ultrasound bill held a silent protest on Tuesday. Wearing stickers that said, “Say No to State-Mandated Rape” and “Private Property: Keep Out,” several hundred demonstrators locked arms outside of the Capitol. And a new poll shows that a majority in the state oppose the requirement, which has been spoofed by NBC’s Saturday Night Live and mocked on The Daily Show. “This is like a TSA pat-down inside their vagina,” Jon Stewart explained, contrasting McDonnell’s support for this measure and his opposition to TSA pat-downs.

But while Virginia’s governor is backing away from the invasive bill, legislators in Alabama and Pennsylvania are considering the same ultrasound policy. Even though studies show that viewing an ultrasound does not change a woman’s mind about having an abortion, Pennsylvania Rep. Marcy Toepel (R) argued that “Getting an ultrasound is a good thing for pregnant women.”

Seven states already mandate that an abortion provider perform an ultrasound on women seeking abortions and provide women an opportunity to view the image. In Virginia’s proposed law, a woman would have to sign a statement and have the ultrasound image added to her medical records if she refuses to view it.

A Democratic lawmaker in Georgia is responding to a Republican-backed effort to prevent women from receiving abortions 20 weeks after fertilization with a tongue-in-cheek measure that seeks to limit men’s health care choices: legislation that “would limit vasectomies only to men who will die or suffer dangerous health problems without one.” “Thousands of children are deprived of birth in this state every year because of the lack of state regulation over vasectomies,” said Rep. Yasmin Neal (D) explained. “It is patently unfair that men can avoid unwanted fatherhood by presuming that their judgment over such matters is more valid than the judgment of the General Assembly, while women’s ability to decide is constantly up for debate throughout the United States.”

The anti-abortion bill (HB 954), offered by Rep. Doug McKil­lip (R), “would effectively outlaw abortion 20 weeks after an egg is fertilized, the point where the lawmaker said fetuses can feel pain,” but would allow for exceptions in cases where a pregnancy threatens the life or health of the women. The bill also does not include exemptions for rape or incest and stipulates that doctors “performing abortions without the justifications the bill requires would be subject to a prison sentence of one to 10 years.”

Fourteen states have imposed prohibitions on abortions after a certain number of weeks, generally 24, and 6 of these states ban abortion at 20 weeks on the grounds that the fetus can feel pain at that point in gestation — a claim disputed by doctors:

Doctors’ groups and other experts testified during a committee hearing that establishing a 20-week rule could force prospective parents to make a decision on ending pregnancies before having all the information available from genetic tests that can reveal whether a fetus has severe physical problems.

“People could be making decisions on information that is not definitive,” said Dan Wies­man, a certified genetic counselor at Emory Health­care.

The concept of “fetal pain” is widely panned by many in the medical field, with the Journal of the American Medical Association determining that “pain perception probably does not function before the third trimester.” So discredited is the concept of fetal pain that even a Kansas Republican slammed the “false research,” adding “I would be embarrassed to be a state that bases its laws on untruths.”

Under current Georgia law, women can have abortions until 26 weeks after fertilization. Beyond that point, the procedure can only be performed “if three physicians agree that the woman needs it for medical reasons that can include mental health issues.”

“The Republican attack on women’s reproductive rights is unconscionable. What is more deplorable is the hypocrisy of HB 954’s author,” House Democratic Leader Stacey Abrams (D) said. “If we follow his logic, we believe it is the obligation of this General Assembly to assert an equally invasive state interest in the reproductive habits of men and substitute the will of the government over the will of adult men.”