Our guest blogger is Emily Oshima Lee, a research associate on the health policy team at the Center for American Progress.

In its first specific response to the recent CAP Action Fund report that detailed the exorbitant extra costs all seniors would have to pay under the Romney-Ryan premium support plan, Romney’s campaign claims that the CAPAF analysis is incorrectly based on the assumption that Romney’s premium support proposal includes a voucher cap. The CAPAF analysis did, indeed, assume that Romney’s premium support proposal would include a voucher cap – because he endorsed such a plan in December 2011.

The structure of the voucher program CAPAF used in its analysis is, in fact, identical to the cap Rep. Paul Ryan proposed in his 2012 House Budget Plan, which Romney has heartily endorsed multiple times, calling the plan “marvelous,” “an excellent piece of work,” and stating that he was “very supportive” of the plan that was “very much consistent with what [he] put out earlier.” A top Romney adviser even stated that Romney “would have signed” the Ryan budget, although Romney’s advisers have had trouble articulating which policies, exactly, he would support in the past. CAPAF felt that it was fair and reasonable to use the details of the Romney-endorsed Ryan budget to analyze the effects of the plan because Romney has failed to outline the specifics of his premium support proposal.

The question on the amount of the voucher, in fact, is featured as one of several “Frequently Asked Questions About Mitt’s Plan” on his campaign website. The question and response on his website read:

How high will the premium support be? How quickly will it grow?

Mitt continues to work on refining the details of his plan, and he is exploring different options.

The response does not provide any information on which options Romney is exploring, and certainly does not specify the rate of growth. As a recent Boston Globe article noted, “Romney’s plan is not clear about how quickly premium support payments would grow, and it does not explicitly reject the idea of a cap…Romney makes no guarantees that vouchers will keep up with insurance costs.” Yet, even as Romney fails to provide any specifics, his camp asserts that “there has been insufficient attention paid to the details of the various proposals.” Other than his statements of support for the 2012 House Budget Plan, Romney has not provided any details that might allow the public to figure out how his proposals, when implemented, would affect seniors, the national budget, and the solvency of Medicare.
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Opponents of President Obama’s health care reform law often justify their position by claiming Obamacare will hurt small businesses. But research on the subject in Massachusetts — where the health care reform that Mitt Romney enacted during his time as governor provides a test case for national health reform policy, thanks to its similarities to Obamacare — disproves this conservative talking point.

Economic researchers on a recent Georgetown University panel all agreed that Massachusetts’ small business owners were actually bolstered by health care reform, as the number of small businesses offering health care to their employees increased from 70 percent to 77 percent in the time since Romney enacted the reform in 2006. Linda Blumberg, an economist and senior fellow at the Urban Institute, said her organization’s research confirmed that small business owners are not struggling to afford the insurance plans that the health reform law requires them to provide for their employees:

“Our research demonstrated very clearly that there is no evidence that the reforms have had any negative impact on employment at all,” Blumberg said. Her organization studied specifically some industries that might feel a greater impact under the law—small employers or the retail and restaurant industries, which often don’t offer health insurance—and concluded the same. “In none of these sectors did we see reduced employment,” Blumberg said.

In fact, said Jack Connors Jr., a founding partner at Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos, Inc., a Boston marketing firm, one of the largest in the United States, businesses could see a benefit when health insurance is “accepted as part of the compensation package for employees.”

“Many business leaders would say we have a competitive advantage,” Connors said.

Just like Obamacare, Romney’s health reform in Massachusetts is predicated on an individual mandate that requires employers to provide adequate health insurance coverage to their employees or risk paying a penalty. Although Republican lawmakers have decried Obamacare for strangling small business owners and middle-class workers, and have wasted about 89 hours and $51 million dollars in their attempts to repeal the law, the evidence from Romney’s home state suggests their efforts are doing little to protect small business interests.

Blumberg explained that her research on the economic effects of health care reform has left her confused about why Obamacare remains so politically contentious. “This was very much a compromise between liberal sensibilities and business sensibilities,” she explained. “So the entire perception of the federal law has been shocking to me, because this was really laid out as a moderate approach.”

A new tell-all book by Karen Handel, the former Senior Vice President for Public Policy at Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, alleges that during the organization’s weeks-long confrontation with progressives outraged at their decision to pull funding from Planned Parenthood, Republican strategist Karl Rove was advising that Komen reverse course.

In her book Planned Bullyhood, Handel recounts one conversation towards the end of the scandal with Komen Founder and CEO Nancy Binker:

“…If we blink now, it’s over and no one will know what Komen stands for,” I implored.

Nancy’s reply stunned me. “Karen, I’ve talked to a lot of people. And even Karl says we have to backtrack. There’s just no other way.”

“Karl? Who’s Karl?”

She looked at me strangely as if I should know exactly who she was talking about. She said, “Karl Rove!”

If true, it would be an odd juxtaposition with Rove’s tireless work to elect conservatives who have vowed to defund Planned Parenthood to federal office. “Planned Parenthood, we’re going to get rid of that,” Mitt Romney told a Kirkwood, Missouri interviewer in March. Karl Rove, who advises the Romney campaign, has yet to comment on the allegations made in the book or whether he disagrees with the Republican presidential candidate that Planned Parenthood should be defunded.

Earlier this year, Komen found itself in the middle of a self-inflicted imbroglio when they abruptly announced a new policy that immediately disqualified Planned Parenthood — and only Planned Parenthood — from receiving one of the organization’s sizable grants. The backlash against Komen was immediate and unrelenting, ultimately resulting in the firing Handel, a chief architect of the plan to defund Planned Parenthood. Even months after Komen backtracked, the organization was still suffering the consequences of their initial decision.

Although Republican governors in Southern states like Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Florida have pledged to reject Obamacare’s expansion of the Medicaid program — a move that will cost their states billions in federal funding and leave millions of their low-income residents without access to health insurance — new polling from Reuters suggests they may be in direct opposition with the majority of their constituents.

In a survey of low- and middle-class white Southerners, Reuters found that although this demographic group opposes the health care reform law as a whole, almost two-thirds of respondents favor the Medicaid expansion:

Overall, 54 percent of Americans — and a decisive 69 percent of white low- and median-income Southerners — opposed Obamacare, according to the Reuters/Ipsos data. But when asked about specific parts of the law, the results largely favored the president. [...]

Almost two-thirds of both groups supported a central element of Obamacare: extending Medicaid — the federal-state program that covers healthcare for the poor — to families earning less than $30,000 a year. Romney and Ryan seek to cut the growth of Medicaid by capping federal contributions and shifting responsibility to the states.

This is consistent with previous polling demonstrating that Americans overwhelmingly support the main provisions in the health care reform law, despite their stated opposition to Obamacare as a whole. As Southern governors like Rick Scott (R-FL) and Rick Perry (R-TX) dig in their heels in against Medicaid expansion in their states — and Mitt Romney, who has pledged to repeal Obamacare in its entirety if he wins in November, joins them in their opposition — they may find that their resistance to providing low-income Americans with health coverage is not a very popular position among their base.

First responders to World Trade Center have suffered major medical problems, both physical – caused by exposure to toxic dust – and mental. Some 1,000 deaths have been linked to illnesses caused by the environmental hazards at Ground Zero.

Now, following an advisory committee’s recommendation, the National Institute for Occupational Safety has announced that more than 50 types of cancer will now be covered by the health care program for 9/11 first responders. The BBC reports the decision entitles 70,000 surviving emergency service workers and other survivors to free care.

Compensation for cancer was held up because there was debate over whether there is a direct link between first responders and cancer risk. However, as ABC News reported in September 2011, there is a clear link between the two:

Those who worked at the WTC site seem to be at increased risk of cancer, especially thyroid cancer, melanoma and lymphoma. According to a study released of nearly 10,000 New York firefighters (half of whom worked at the WTC site), those from the site are 32 percent more likely to have cancer.

John Howard, administrator of the World Trade Center Health Program, said Monday’s announcement marked “an important step in the effort to provide needed treatment and care to 9/11 responders and survivors.” Most prior compensation was only for respiratory diseases caused by dust and debris. The cancers to be covered now include lung, colorectal, breast, bladder, leukemia, melanoma and all childhood cancers.

– Greg Noth

Anti-abortion groups have made Planned Parenthood into their most prominent target in the ongoing War on Women, using a variety of tactics against the organization — such as cutting off its state and national funding, attempting to deny its pharmacy licenses, and embroiling it in unnecessary lawsuits — with the ultimate goal of limiting women’s access to reproductive services. In Illinois, anti-choice activists are employing yet another strategy to compromise Planned Parenthood’s work: perpetrating misinformation about abortion procedures.

Indiana Right to Life is attempting to shut down a Planned Parenthood in Lafayette, Indiana, under claims that it violates state law by performing abortions without a license. But the Lafayette branch does not perform surgical abortion procedures. Rather, it prescribes the RU-486 pill — which was approved by the FDA over a decade ago — that can end a pregnancy up to nine weeks after implantation. RU-486 is not the same as a surgical abortion procedure, despite anti-choice activists’ attempt to conflate reproductive services:

A spokesman for the Indiana State Department of Health would not comment on the clinic’s licensing status or whether abortions with RU-486 are treated the same as surgical abortions under state law. The drug was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2000.

“The ISDH will have to investigate the specific facts before determining if this practice violates any laws of Indiana for which ISDH is responsible for enforcing,” spokesman Ken Severson said in an email. [...]

Planned Parenthood of Indiana President Betty Cockrum said in a statement that all of the organization’s clinics comply with state law. “While we’re not shocked that these extremists would stoop to these tactics, we are disappointed that they would flat-out lie,” Cockrum said.”The fact is that our health center in Lafayette, like our other 27 health centers across the state, provides its services in accordance with Indiana law, without fail.”

Anti-abortion advocates often spout misinformation about women’s bodies, conception, pregnancy, and abortion procedures in their attacks against reproductive freedom. Unfortunately for low-income women across the country, that misinformation has been successful enough to transform Planned Parenthood into a symbol in the abortion debate — resulting in significant drops in access to women’s health services.