The Michigan State Senate passed HB 5711, an omnibus anti-abortion bill that sparked widespread protests over the summer when it was first considered in the House, by a 27-10 vote on Wednesday afternoon. The legislation has been stalled since it passed Michigan’s House in June.

The measure represents one of the nation’s most far-reaching abortion restrictions. When Michigan lawmakers first took up HB 5711 over the summer, hundreds of protesters rallied against the massive 45-page, GOP-sponsored legislation. HB 5711 would impose a host of new restrictions on women seeking to terminate a pregnancy — such as requiring doctors to prove that their patients haven’t been “coerced” into having the procedure, limiting abortion access for women in rural areas, and imposing guidelines for disposing of fetal remains in the same way that the state disposes of dead bodies. The legislation also seeks to mandate unnecessarily and complicated regulations that could force the state’s abortion clinics out of business.

In addition to the recently approved anti-union legislation that Michigan lawmakers pushed through their current lame duck session, state legislators have also been busy advancing a slew of extreme anti-choice initiatives over the past week. The Michigan Senate approved measures that will prevent private insurance companies from offering coverage for abortion services and allow doctors to refuse to perform abortions based solely on their personal beliefs.

HB 5711 is now headed back to the House to be considered for final passage, since the Senate made a few minor changes to the legislation. Republicans hold the majority in the state’s House by a 59-51 margin.

The United Nations General Assembly, with support from the United States, appears likely to approve a resolution Wednesday calling on every country to implement universal health care systems. The resolution reaffirmed the holding in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that access to health care was a human right owed to all persons and, from that, concluded that member states should provide health care to all of their citizens:

Encourages Member States, in collaboration with other stakeholders where applicable, to plan or pursue the transition of their health systems towards universal coverage, while continuing to invest in and strengthen health-delivery systems to increase and safeguard the range and quality of services and to adequately meet the health needs of the population.

Post-Obamacare, all of the world’s 25 wealthiest nations provide universal health coverage. Citizens of poorer countries who do not enjoy universal access to affordable health care suffer far worse health outcomes: while infant mortality is relatively rare in more developed countries, to take one example, four million infants die before their first month of life worldwide. Before the United States had a universal health care system, roughly 45,000 Americans died per year because they lacked health insurance.

Government universal access programs are proven to improve access to health care, even in the developing world. India’s push to expand health care coverage roughly sextupled the number of people with access to basic health services between 2003 and 2010, and is on pace to double that number again by 2015.

Another recent U.N. vote on health care enshrined access to contraception as a universal human right.

Just like Texas lawmakers’ decision to restrict access to contraceptive services will lead to higher rates of unintended pregnancy in the state, Wisconsin’s new restrictions on first-trimester abortion services are already forcing women to put off the medical procedure, leading to an uptick in later term abortions.

Even though Wisconsin already requires written consent before doctors may perform an abortion, anti-choice lawmakers pushed through a new measure that imposes additional hurdles for women who seek medicine-induced abortions during their first nine weeks of pregnancy. Planned Parenthood’s Wisconsin affiliate is suing to restore women’s full access to reproductive services, arguing that the restrictive state law is ultimately resulting in increased later term abortions because it makes it more difficult for doctors to administer the abortion pill:

The suit alleges the law does not clearly spell out what a physician must do to satisfy all of the requirements of the law. [...] Planned Parenthood, which performed roughly two-thirds of the 7,019 abortions in Wisconsin last year, stopped offering medication abortions in April when the law took effect. Officials said they could not provide the best care for their patients while protecting their doctors from criminal liability. The nonprofit continues to offer surgical abortions at its clinics in Madison, Milwaukee and Appleton.

In an interview Tuesday, Dr. Douglas Laube of Madison said the reduction in pill abortions has forced some women to terminate their pregnancies later since surgical abortions can’t be performed in the first weeks of pregnancy. Surgery also can be more dangerous for patients with certain physical conditions, he said.

“It is legislated medicine rather than evidence-based practices,” said Laube, past president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Under Wisconsin’s law, women must visit the same doctor three separate times before they can take the RU-486 abortion pill — including once for a “counseling session” so their doctor can determine they’re not being “coerced” into the procedure. And since the doctors who don’t follow the new requirements can be subject to criminal charges, other women’s health clinics in the state have also followed Planned Parenthood’s lead and stopped offering medical abortions because they believe it is too legally risky.

Despite the fact that medicine-induced abortions during the first trimester of pregnancy are noninvasive, safe, and effective, right-wing lawmakers often push to restrict women’s access to the abortion pill. In rural areas where women may not have access to nearby abortion doctors, telemedical abortions — allowing doctors to prescribe and administer the RU-486 pill over a video conference — can help decrease the number of second trimester abortions by allowing women to access abortion services sooner, but anti-choice lawmakers have still insisted on working to outlaw the practice.

Adding to the ongoing indictment of unfair cost-sharing in employer-sponsored health insurance, a new study from the Commonwealth Fund finds that employees’ contributions to health plans has skyrocketed — even though wages haven’t.

According to the report, workers in every single state have seen their health care contributions to family health plans increase by 74 percent since 2003, while the average premiums for such plans have risen by 62 percent in the same time period. At the same time, the number of workers forced to pay deductibles on their coverage has appreciated significantly, and the average workers’ deductible has doubled — all while wages saw a meager 10 percent increase over the last eight years:

Saddled with the rising cost of health care, employers have increasingly resorted to pushing their coverage costs onto workers through asymmetric cost-sharing and a growing reliance on risky, inefficient high-deductible insurance plans. The Commonwealth Fund’s report confirms earlier findings that worker contributions to premiums have been increasing at a faster rate than general premium inflation, despite the fact that corporate profits remain at an all-time high and workers’ wages have sunk to an all-time low.

And although Obamacare will actually reduce health care costs for small employers — while increasing larger employers’ costs only marginally — that hasn’t stopped some businesses from trying to frame the landmark health care law as a fiscal burden, and facing public backlash after threatening to cut their employees’ hours and wages.

Indiana state treasurer Richard Mourdock Richard Mourdock (R-IN) lost the election in November to Sen.-elect Joe Donnelly (D-IN) by around 6 percent. Early in the race, most polls showed Mourdock ahead, but voters seemed to abandon the candidate after he made a controversial comment about rape. “I struggled with myself for a long time but I came to realize life is that gift from God,” Mourdock said, “even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape. It is something that God intended to happen.”

Now that he’s lost, Mourdock isn’t blaming the comments themselves; instead, he faults the “liberal media” for making him look bad. In an email asking supporters for money, obtained by The Hill, Mourdock’s campaign blamed the media for making him look bad:

“After a bitter, hard-fought campaign, many Republicans all over the country were forced to accept defeat rather than celebrate victory. In our case, we found our campaign caught in the liberal media crosshairs. Never has Indiana seen a more obvious example of media bias by reporters more interested in defeating conservatives than reporting the news,” Mourdock Finance Director Ashlee Walls writes in a fundraising plea to supporters.

“We fought back and invested heavily in a last-minute push to combat the slew of false accusations Democrats and the liberal media churned up to distract voters.”

Mourdock’s rape comments were made at a debate — he was in no way trapped by the media when he chose to call a baby born of rape a “gift from God.” And, though there’s no way to enumerate explicitly why he lost female voters, his loss can largely be attributed to the number of women who opposed him. Exit polls in Indiana showed that 52 percent of women supported Donnelly, while only 42 supported Mourdock.

3,000 former football players suffering from various ailments that they claim are a consequence of head trauma suffered while playing the sport professionally have been locked in a titanic lawsuit against the National Football League (NFL), asserting that the league underplayed the risks associated with concussions and other head injuries.

But beyond highlighting the potential dangers stemming from football-related head trauma, the New York Times reports that the litigation may have far-reaching implications for contact sports leagues across America and the insurance companies that do business with them.

At issue is how much liability the 32 insurers associated with the NFL have when it comes to paying legal fees stemming from the litigation — and how much in claims they may have to pay out if the former players win their case. While a mammoth corporation like the NFL can bear that financial burden, high schools and smaller contact sports organizations don’t share in that luxury, and fear of litigation could lead to a race to the bottom in which insurers hike up their prices for contact sports coverage — or stop covering head injuries altogether:

“Insurers will be tightening up their own coverage and make sports more expensive,” said Robert Boland, who teaches sports law at New York University. “It could make the sustainability of certain sports a real issue.” [...]

Fearful of future lawsuits, insurers may start raising premiums or excluding concussions and other injuries from their policies not just for the N.F.L., but also for hockey and lacrosse and other contact sports. As information about the link between head trauma and long-term injuries has grown, coaches, athletic directors and others will have a harder time claiming they did not know of the connection if they are named in lawsuits.

“A common misconception is that no one’s going to sue their youth league or nonprofit, but that’s not the case,” said Dan Pullen, who runs an insurance brokerage in Fort Worth that specializes in policies for teams, players and leagues. “Maybe the league isn’t negligent, but there might be $50,000 in legal claims” for a lawyer to chase.

The obvious solution would be enacting more rigorous protections for those who play high-contact sports, as well as setting higher accountability standards for sports organizations themselves. This would help spread out some of the risk that insurers bear when they cover players. But the fear and motivation induced by dollar signs could make such collaborative efforts difficult to achieve. Discontinued coverage for sport-related injuries would be the worst possible consequence of the litigation by far.

As the serious long-term ramifications of football injuries have come under increased scrutiny in recent years, there have been some attempts to promote player safety in the NFL. Over the next two seasons, the entire league will begin monitoring players’ head injuries with high-tech electronic medical records — a policy that was actually enacted as a condition of the most recent collective bargaining arrangement negotiated between current players and the NFL. The future of American contact sports might depend on continued cooperative efforts like that.

Gov. Brian Sandoval (R-NV) told the Associated Press on Tuesday that he plans to accept Obamacare’s expansion of the Medicaid program to extend coverage to additional low-income residents in his state. Sandoval is the first Republican governor to commit to expanding Medicaid, as GOP leaders across the country have continued to resist that crucial provision of the health care reform law despite several reports confirming the economic benefits from the provision.

The governor acknowledged that even though he remains a staunch opponent to the Affordable Care Act, expanding the state’s eligibility will help tens of thousands of people who would not otherwise been able to access health coverage. About 22 percent of his residents are currently uninsured, and participating in the Medicaid expansion will allow Nevada to add 78,000 low-income residents to its rolls:

“All in all, it makes the best sense for the state to opt in,” he said. “This is a way for me to protect these people.” [...]

Sandoval scoffed at being compared to other Republican governors who have opposed expanding Medicaid or setting up health insurance exchanges, something he agreed to two years ago.

“I have to look at Nevada,” he said. “I’m not going to compare myself to any other governor. I have to look at the consequences of this very complicated law.”

And since the federal government will cover the cost of the expansion for the first several years, Sandoval noted that expanding his state’s Medicaid program will actually save Nevada money. The state will be able to put $16 million in federal funding toward its mental health programs, which otherwise would have been funded though Nevada’s general fund.

Even though Sabdoval declined to compare himself to the other GOP governors who are rejecting the Medicaid dollars, those lawmakers could benefit from taking a page out of his book. Some of the loudest Obamacare opponents are Republican governors from sates with the highest rates of uninsurance in the nation — but unlike Sandoval, they would rather prioritize their political opposition to the health reform law over the strategies that would benefit their poorest residents.

In addition to Nevada, 17 other states led by Democratic governors are planning to expand their Medicaid programs.