The Michigan House has passed HB 5711, the nation’s most restrictive anti-abortion bill that combines some of the worst attacks on women’s access to abortion care into one bill. The massive 45-page, Republican-backed legislation limits when a woman could have an abortion and puts a greater, unnecessary burden on abortion providers.

Opponents have loudly protested against the measure that has been jammed through the legislature — it was introduced on May 31 and a committee approved it last week — and Democratic lawmakers spoke out against it before the House passed the bill 70-39. “This bill is not about protecting women’s health,” said state Rep. Kate Segal (D).

Here’s what you should know about these far-reaching anti-abortion bills:

1) Bans Abortions After 20 Weeks, Even For Rape And Incest Victims: A woman would not be able to have an abortion after 20 weeks of gestation based on the widely disputed idea that a fetus can feel pain after that point. The only exception would be if a woman’s life was in danger.

2) Transforms Doctors Into Detectives: The Republican-backed legislation would make it a crime for anyone to coerce a woman into having an abortion. Doctors will have to give their patients a questionnaire to inform them of the illegality of coercion and determine if the woman had been coerced or is the victim of domestic abuse before the abortion procedure.

3) Limits Access For Rural Women: Under the omnibus bill, doctors would have to be physically present to perform a medication abortion, thus preventing a doctor from administering abortion-inducing medication by consulting via telephone or internet. This would especially hurt rural women, who may have to travel hours to meet in-person with a specialist.

4) Requires Doctors To Purchase Costly Malpractice Insurance: If HB 5711 goes into effect, then doctors would be required to carry $1 million in liability insurance if they perform five or more abortions each month or have been subject to two more more civil suits in the past seven years, among other requirements. But the qualifications are so vague that almost all doctors who perform abortions could be required to carry the additional liability insurance at a potential cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

5) Regulates Clinics Out Of Existence: HB 5711 would create new regulations so that any clinic that provides six or more abortions in a month or one which advertises abortion services would have to be licensed as a “freestanding surgical outpatient facility.” That means that even if a clinic does not offer surgical abortions, it would be required to have a full surgical suite.

Now that the state House has passed the largest of the three bills, it will likely approve the two companion measures as well. Even though lawmakers rushed the bill through the House, the state Senate is not expected to vote on the measure until September. The body is composed of 26 Republicans and 12 Democrats.

Annie-Rose Strasser contributed to this report.

After pledging to fully repeal Obamacare for the last two years, a growing number of Republicans have expressed support for maintaing some of the law’s most popular provisions if the Supreme Court overturns the measure later this month. Health insurers UnitedHealthcare, Aetna, and Humana soon followed suit, pledging to keep children on their parents’ health care plan until age 26, maintain a ban on lifetime maximums on most benefit payouts, and provide some preventive care at no additional cost.

ThinkProgress spoke with several major health care insurers to see where they stood on maintaining other key parts of Obamacare and found limited interest in preserving the measures that could potentially drive up costs if there is no individual mandate adding healthy people into insurance pools:

– UNITED HEALTHCARE: The company “said it can’t cover children with pre-existing illnesses unless other insurers also agree to cover them, and that it would work with “all other participants in the health- care system.”

– AETNA: “[W]e recognize that the ACA has propelled interest in exploring new ways to deliver care. We believe that our work to collaborate with providers, such as Accountable Care Organizations, is key to building a more effective health care system. We are committed to leading the way in delivering solutions that transform our system and deliver on the goals of reform.”

– CIGNA: “Cigna believes in respecting the court’s process. We remain focused on our global customer programs, and are prepared to proceed as appropriate on behalf of our customers when the court deliberations reach their conclusion.”

– HUMANA: “We’ll have additional comment (beyond the statement we sent out yesterday) after the Supreme Court issues its ruling.”

Republicans are already pointing to the industry’s announcement as proof that the private market has somehow reasoned out health care reforms on its own, conveniently ignoring the industry’s multi-million dollar effort to prevent the measures from becoming law in the first place.

And while insurers’ willingness to maintain these measures is a good start, they would do little to help the millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions find affordable covrage or reduce health care spending.

– Steven Perlberg

As the Supreme Court readies to announce their decision on the individual mandate portion of the health reform, it has emerged that the largest health care lobbying group in the country spent a total of $102.4 million in just 15 months to prevent Obamacare from becoming law in the first place.

In 2009 alone, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) pumped $86.2 million into a conservative lobbying group, the US Chamber of Commerce, to combat President Obama’s health care reform plan. But with the added months of 2010 prior to the ACA’s March passage, AHIP piled on an additional $16 million to be used against the bill.

That staggering total, which the National Journal’s Influence Alley uncovered today, was not out in the open — rather, the funds were transferred through a secretive process and listed only by the organization as ‘advocacy’ spending:

The backchannel spending allowed insurers to publicly stake out a pro-reform position while privately funding the leading anti-reform lobbying group in Washington. The chamber spent tens of millions of dollars bankrolling efforts to kill health care reform.

The behind-the-scenes transfers were particularly hard to track because the law does not require groups to publicly disclose where they are sending the money or who they are receiving it from. [...]

The next year followed a similar pattern. In 2010, AHIP reported giving $16.5 million to unnamed advocacy organizations working on health care reform and the chamber reported receiving about $16.2 million from an undisclosed source, which the Alley has learned was AHIP. The $16.2 million accounted for about 8.6 percent of the total contributions and grants the chamber received that year.

This funneling scheme allowed health groups like AHIP to save face no matter whether the bill passed or not — if the bill failed, the groups figured, they would be able to point to their lobbying efforts against it. When it succeeded, AHIP and others remained quiet about any efforts against the legislation.

With the ruling coming down in the coming weeks from the Supreme Court, and with all the money spent to defeat the law, AHIP may be all to happy if it’s overturned.

Seniors have saved $3.5 billion on prescription drug costs thanks to an Affordable Care Act provision that closes the coverage gap — known as the “doughnut hole” — in their Medicare Part D plans. But if the Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare later this month, these drug savings could end, according to a drug industry spokesman.

Drug makers pledged $80 billion over 10 years to cut doughnut hole expenses for consumers during the health care reform debate. But without the law’s legal framework, “there are many questions that arise about whether the discount program could continue,” Matthew Bennett, a spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), told Kaiser Health News:

But if there is no law to ensure the coverage gap discount, drug makers are concerned that other laws might prohibit it, Bennett said.

For example, drug companies could try to offer the discounts on their own but that effort could run afoul of federal antitrust laws that generally prohibit businesses from agreeing together to set prices for their products. An individual drug company could offer Part D members coverage gap discounts, but it would have to steer clear of anti-fraud laws that ban a company from giving something of value to persuade beneficiaries to use its products.

Nearly one in four seniors “reported skipping doses, cutting pills in half or not filling a prescription, simply due to cost,” before health reform became law. And now, if the Supreme Court rules against the measure, it could put their drug discounts in danger.

At the same time, Medicare participants’ loss would be pharmaceutical companies’ gain because they would not have to shell out $80 billion to help fix the prescription coverage doughnut hole. One CEO estimated that closing the gap would cost his company between $20 million and $30 million in annual revenue. But without the Affordable Care Act, that would be $20 million to $30 million coming out of seniors’ pockets instead.

Obamacare is expected to completely close the prescription coverage gap by 2020.