The Affordable Care Act expands health coverage to millions of uninsured Americans and creates minimum requirements of what insurance plans must cover. And enforcing the basic standards is causing the end of limited-benefit plans that capped benefits and don’t meet ACA guidelines, leaving consumers with better health care options. But according to the Wall Street Journal, this is leading a few colleges to drop their low quality, low cost student insurance plans in isolated cases because those types of plans are being phased out by the more comprehensive standards:

The new rules are likely to affect a broad swath of American colleges, particularly small ones. Some 60% of schools’ plans had coverage of $50,000 or less for specific conditions, and almost all of the rest had some sort of payout caps that they will have to do away with by 2014, the [Government Accountability Office] study found.

The Obama administration argues that the most-limited-benefit plans colleges previously offered hardly counted as coverage at all.

“Given today’s health system,” the plans “wouldn’t represent a good value,” said Michael Hash, director of the Office of Health Reform at the Department of Health and Human Services. Plans with caps starting at $5,000 or $10,000 “would likely not begin to cover the first day in the hospital,” he said.

About 600,000 students — 7 percent of 18 to 23-year-olds in college — bought insurance through their school’s plans, according to the GAO. Some of these schools require students to have insurance, but the plans some schools offer are mini-med plans that provide almost no protection when students actually get sick or injured. Upping the standards may lead a few schools, like Bethany College in Kansas, to drop student plans, but it will lead to much better coverage for more students.

And dropping coverage or face rising costs is not the only option for colleges that offer student health insurance plans. In Massachusetts, for example, colleges regularly imposed a range of benefits at varying costs for student plans before 2009. To address the problem, a number of schools joined together to buy coverage collectively for 12,000 students without dramatically increasing premiums.

The example in Massachusetts shows that colleges have more options that increasing their prices or dumping coverage. That way, students can still have access to insurance through their schools, but they will be guaranteed it’s better coverage because of the health care reform law’s regulations.

Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-MN)

The measure, sponsored by Minnesota Rep. Erik Paulsen (R), would repeal taxes on medical devices that finance part of the cost of the coverage expansion provisions in the Affordable Care Act, and pay for the revenue loss by cutting into the subsidies offered to individuals and families who will purchase health care coverage in the new exchanges:

The $43.9 billion plan would “recapture” overpayments under a new health insurance tax credit to offset the estimated $29 billion in revenue that would be lost over the next decade by repealing the medical device tax. The repeal of that tax is a top priority for Minnesota’s large medical technology industry.

Republican leaders plan to introduce the downsized subsidy measure before the House votes on Paulsen’s bill later this week, GOP sources have told the Star Tribune.

The new GOP proposal would make people fully reimburse excess tax credits they receive under the new health care law’s government-sponsored insurance exchanges. Currently, eligibility can be based on 2-year-old tax returns, and there’s a cap on liability for overpayments.

The proposal would increase the amount families who are receiving health subsidies pay back the government if their incomes fluctuate throughout the year, and dissuade them from claiming credits in the first place.

Under current law, the premium support is paid out as an advance refundable amount to insurance companies based on an estimate of annual income (the assistance is available, on a sliding scale, to families of four making up to $90,000 a year). Should a family’s income change during the year, it will have to pay the government back a specific dollar amount come tax season. Congress has already increased that amount twice since health care reform was enacted into law and Paulsen’s measure would further raise the penalty by requiring an individual to pay the full amount of the overpayment.

The Joint Committee on Taxation has found that the policy would lead 350,000 people to lose coverage and could “especially hurt women.” A 2008 study by the Congressional Budget Office found that “women experience more large changes in earnings from year to year than men” and thus removing the repayment cap “will leave women who enrolled in coverage but had an income change mid-year…vulnerable to an unaffordable tax bill. As a result, hundreds of thousands of women will refuse coverage for fear of the repayment penalty,” the National Women’s Law Center has said.

But some lawmakers — particularly those who have received thousands from the medical device industry — are willing to increase health care costs for Americans in order to aid their campaign contributors.

When the Virginia legislature voted to classify abortion clinics as hospitals instead of doctors’ offices, organizations suddenly faced onerous new restrictions establishing standards about hallway widths and how many parking spots the clinics must have. Emergency regulations went into place on January 1, and now the Virginia Health Department has released its final proposed regulations. On June 15, the state Board of Health will vote on these new rules, which critics argue will force some of the Virginia’s 23 abortion providers out of business.

GOP Gov. Bob McDonnell’s office said in December that the “common-sense regulations will help ensure that this procedure takes place in facilities that are modern, safe, and well-regulated.” Women’s health advocates say it will add unnecessary architectural and building code regulations. The new requirements are expected to be similar to what has been in place since January:

The proposed regulations are similar to the emergency regulations, which are considered some of the toughest in the country. They regulate the size of exam rooms and hallways and the number of parking spaces; and address requirements for inspections, medical procedures and record-keeping.

Erik Bodin, of the department’s licensure and certification office, said some changes were made to conform to recent amendments to the informed-consent abortion law and to ensure that clinic employees who are legally mandated to report suspected child abuse comply with those requirements.

The Virginia Coalition to Protect Women is encouraging people to sign peititions against the new rules and to contact McDonnell and voice their opposition to the new rules.

The consistently anti-abortion governor has said that the law is “in the interest of health,” but the Virginia ACLU’s Katherine Greenier said the proposed regulations are politically driven and “medically irrelevant.” Depending on how the board votes on the proposed requirements, a legal challenge could be likely against the rules that would effectively limit women’s health care options.

Tomorrow, Californians will vote on a ballot measure that would raise the state’s cigarette tax by one dollar a pack.

There has been a contentious fight over the measure, known as Proposition 29 or the California Cancer Research Act. On one side, big tobacco has framed the proposal as another high tax to fuel a useless bureaucracy, while anti-smoking advocates point out its myriad health and revenue benefits that would help with California’s constant budget woes.

Here are the top eight facts you should know before tomorrow’s vote:

1. California has one of the lowest taxes on cigarettes in the country, ranking 33rd (PDF) in the nation with an 87 cent tax per pack. The bill would raise that by one dollar to $1.87 per pack.

2. California’s tobacco tax would still be 16th in the nation. Should the proposition pass tomorrow, California would still rank relatively low on tobacco taxes. This is particularly odd for a state with one of the lowest rates of smoking in the country.

3. Big money is pouring in from big tobacco. Tobacco companies have apparently spent almost $50 million to fight the bill. Around $30 million of that came from just Philip Morris (Marlboro) and RJ Reynolds (Camel).

4. The state legislature has voted down a tobacco tax more than 30 times in 30 years. Legislators often rely on big tobacco for political funding, which may explain why they have not supported a cigarette tax in the last 30 years. In 2006, California voters also shot down a similar tobacco tax after big tobacco shelled out $67 million to run a campaign against the tax.

5. The proposition would raise $810 million in much-needed tax revenue for a state with serious budget shortfalls. The California Legislative Analyst’s offiice highlights the staggering amount of revenue the bill would bring in: “We estimate that the increase in cigarette excise taxes required by this measure would raise about $615 million in 2012‑13 (partial-year effect) andabout $810 million in 2013‑14 (the first full-year impact).”

6. Health groups support Proposition 29, including the “American Cancer Society, which contributed $8.4 million, the Lance Armstrong Foundation, which gave $1.5 million, the American Heart Association, which gave $550,149, Michael Bloomberg, who contributed $500,000 and the American Lung Association, which gave $415,986.

7. Advocates’ money is only a quarter of Big Tobacco’s. The big money from these supporters is only equal to about a quarter of what big tobacco companies have spent to influence the election. That money may not be enough, especially since big tobacco could still spend more.

8. Big tobacco is hiding its influence. The two big cigarette producers have made ads that are supposed to “educate” the public about the measure, with their names hidden at the bottom of the page. Here is one from Phillip Morris and here is one from RJ Reynolds. They also produced this scary ad that shows a “doctor” explaining the harm of the measure, but ignoring the fact that she is being paid by the people who make cancer-causing tobacco products:

Tomorrow’s vote is likely to be a toss up, despite the fact that cigarette taxes have proven an extremely effective way to encourage people to quit smoking. While originally the proposal had 62 percent support, with Big Tobacco increasingly pushing its agenda, that number is now down to just 50 percent.