In a study about what 1,000 cancer patients expected from their chemotherapy treatments, the majority of late-stage cancer patients thought the chemotherapy could give them a cure. The problem, though, is that chemotherapy treatments could only extend life for these patients, not cure it.

But despite the medical research to the contrary, 69 percent of lung cancer patients and 81 percent of colorectal cancer patients gave responses “that were not consistent with understanding that chemotherapy was very unlikely to cure their cancer,” Wonkblog’s Sarah Kliff reports. That was not what some of the researchers expected:

“I was really surprised,” says lead study author Jane Weeks, a professor at Harvard Medical School. “Prior studies have suggested maybe a third of patients don’t understand. Those studies are done in the optimal setting though, and this was the first to look at a big population. I thought the numbers were disturbingly high.”

The most surprising finding in this study, though, might come from when the researchers looked at what the patients’ thought of their doctors. The survey asked about how good their oncologists were at communicating about treatment.

Patients who rated their doctors as the very best communicators, the most open and honest, were the most likely to have the unrealistic, inaccurate expectations.

“This suggests that patients perceive physicians as better communicators when they convey a more optimistic view of chemotherapy,” the authors conclude. “Similarly, the finding that patients, especially those with colorectal cancer, who were treated in integrated networks were somewhat more likely to understand that chemotherapy is not curative suggests that providers may be able to improve patients’ understanding if they feel it is part of their professional role.”

The fact that patients think more highly of their doctors when they’re being told optimistic information about their treatments could be problematic as Obamacare regulation beginning this month will tie some hospital payments to how highly patients rate their hospital experience. “This is a cautionary tale,” Weeks told Wonkblog. “I think everybody agrees that satisfaction alone is an incomplete measure of quality. It doesn’t give you the whole story. I think this is an example of that.”

A 2011 poll about palliative care showed that 96 percent of doctors said that it’s more important to improve dying patients’ quality of life than to prolong their lives as long as possible. Presumably, the same idea should apply to patients going through cancer treatments so that they can know as much as possible about their treatments and understand the most likely outcomes.

While politicians clash over the details of health policy and President Obama’s landmark health reform law, social media often serves to cut through the political rhetoric and reveal the human impact of what’s at stake in this debate. When a musician tweeted about her experience going without insurance and received a flood of personal 140-character stories about the struggle to afford health care in response, it became clear that Internet tools can provide a platform for Americans to communicate the way that insurance — or the lack thereof — has changed their lives.

And NPR points out another corner of the Internet that reveals how much underinsured Americans are struggling to pay their health care costs: crowd funding sites like Kickstarter or GoFundMe. Although most Americans associate those sites with raising revenue for creative projects, there has also been an increase in the people who use them to raise money for their health care that they cannot otherwise afford:

One site that’s capitalized on personal-cause crowd funding is GoFundMe. CEO Brad Damphousse says in 2012 alone, the site’s users have raised more than $6 million for medical causes, and Medical, Illness & Healing is the site’s most popular category, attracting 17 percent of the site’s total donations.

In exchange for help with creating a donation Web page and making it easy to share it on social media, GoFundMe takes a 5 percent cut from all money raised. GiveForward and YouCaring are two other sites in the business of medical crowd funding (GiveForward charges a 7 percent fee on money raised), and they also attract millions in donations.

Some GoFundMe campaigns in the medical category range from modest requests for $1,000 to cover gas cards for parents to visit their baby son in the NICU, to ambitious goals to raise $200,000 for a medical trust fund (for one of the survivors of the Aurora theater shootings).

For the Americans who cannot afford insurance at some point in their lives, such as Aurora theater shooting victim Caleb Medley, just one unintended hospital visit can be catastrophic. Medley racked up nearly $2 million in medical bills after he was shot in the eye and slipped into a coma. And even the Americans who have insurance can accumulate charges they struggle to pay off in full, like the medical student who exceeded his insurance cap under his university health plan and turned to Twitter to raise the money for the rest of his bills.

Once Obamacare is fully implemented in 2014, the law will help address some of these cost barriers to care — particularly when it eliminates lifetime limits on health care plans, so Americans with chronic conditions don’t rack up costs that their insurance providers refuse to cover. But the soaring cost of health care still remains an issue for the millions of Americans who are uninsured and underinsured, and must turn to online tools when the rest of their options run out.

According to new findings by the National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems (NAPH), by 2019, safety net hospitals’ uncompensated care costs will be $53 billion higher than originally estimated if states don’t opt into the voluntary expansion of the Medicaid program under Obamacare.

Safety net hospitals considered “disproportionate share hospitals” (DSH) serve areas where, on average, 14.9 percent of the population is uninsured and 32.5 percent of the population relies on government-provided health coverage such as Medicaid. Current Medicaid reimbursements often fall short of the full cost of care, so programs such as federal DSH funding help make up the difference. Obamacare cuts DSH funding in half by 2019 in an effort to reduce national hospital payments — but only because the cuts to safety net hospitals were intended be offset by the vastly expanded pool of newly insured low-income Americans. But Republican governors across the country are digging in their heels and refusing to expand the Medicaid programs in their states.

As a consequence, safety net hospitals that care for America’s most vulnerable could face significant financial burdens by 2019, and millions of low-income and disabled Americans may lose access to the medical services they need:

Now, the cuts to DSH –- unchanged by the court’s decision –- will come against a backdrop of great uncertainty regarding expanded coverage and the potential for significant shortfalls in federal support for safety net hospitals. [...]

This imbalance will have disastrous consequences on the nation’s vulnerable populations, who rely on the safety net for their health care needs. [...] In addition to directly threatening patients’ access to medically necessary health care services, the significant decrease in DSH payments, coupled with continued high levels of uncompensated care, will strain state and local budgets. This financial burden could lead to reductions in the availability of lifesaving services for vulnerable patients.

The NAPH study concludes that Congress should vote to restore DSH funding to avoid disastrous consequences for the American poor. But a simpler — and more efficient — solution than trying to wrench more money out of Congress would be for states to use the funds Obamacare has already allocated for expanding their Medicaid pools.

Numerous studies have estimated that states would save billions of dollars in health spending and improve millions of Americans’ quality of life by accepting federal funds to expand Medicaid. Unfortunately, GOP governors in states that have seven of the ten least-insured American cities have explicitly refused to participate in the expansion, denying millions of low-income Americans access to health care and potentially straining the future viability of hospital safety nets.

Amherst College has come under fire over the past month for its lackluster response to issues of sexual assault and rape culture on campus — particularly after one student published an article chronicling her own sexual assault, and her subsequent experience with an Amherst sexual assault counselor who urged her to just “forgive and forget” rather than report her rapist to the police, that went viral. The small liberal arts institution was accused of creating a hostile environment for survivors of sexual assault in the interest of “keeping up appearances” at the elite college.

Setting a precedent for the colleges across the country that have struggled with allocating the correct resources for addressing rape culture on their campuses, Amherst officials responded to the backlash by pledging that things “must change, and change immediately.” As Bloomberg News reports, the administration is now taking several important steps to address student concerns, including amending their current policies and increasing resources on campus:

“We need to do everything in our power to become a leader in encouraging victims to report sexual assault,” [Amherst College President Carolyn Martin] said in a telephone interview. [...]

The president had already identified shortcomings at Amherst. In the past, the school relied on accusers to prove their cases; now, investigators will gather evidence, she said. Amherst also included students in panels considering complaints — a practice that might discourage classmates from reporting, she said.

The new “sexual respect” website asks victims to seek support and report offenses to campus police. The college also brought in counselors affiliated with Harvard University who are experts in addressing sexual misconduct. Martin said she will form a special committee, including students, to consider other steps.

Bloomberg also notes that Amherst — one of the wealthiest liberal arts colleges in the country, which remains extremely selective with a student body of around 1,800 — was initially founded as a men’s school in 1821. The college only started admitting women in 1975, and Martin is its first female president.

Other higher education institutions have also made strides in this area after making headlines for failing to adequately address issues of sexual assault. After the University of Montana underwent a Department of Justice investigation last year to look into the multiple allegations of sexual assault on campus, administrators now require all students to complete an online training and quiz on sexual violence. And just this week, Boston University announced the opening of its new sexual assault resource center following a panel review of allegations of rape on campus last spring.

In a blow to low-income Texan women, the Fifth Circuit federal appellate court has denied Texas Planned Parenthood’s request to receive a re-hearing before its full bench, allowing the state to move forward with its decision to defund the organization.

Last week, the Texas Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) green-lighted rules to cut off federal funding to the state’s Women’s Health Program, after Texas officials targeted Planned Parenthood as an “abortion affiliate” that shouldn’t be eligible to participate in the program. A three-judge panel from the Fifth Circuit ruled that Texas could move forward with discriminating against Planned Parenthood, and the court’s move to deny Planned Parenthood’s re-hearing prevents the organization from contesting that decision.

In a press release, Planned Parenthood of Texas President Kenneth S. Lambrecht slammed the court for failing to recognize Texas HHS’s new rules as a politically-motivated attack on the essential medical services that his organization provides, as well as the low-income women in Texas who depend on them:

Planned Parenthood has been in Texas for more than 75 years, and we’re not going anywhere. We are here for the patients who rely on us and we will continue to evaluate every possible option to protect the health of our patients.

This case has never been about Planned Parenthood — it’s about the Texas women who turn to us every day. Politics should never come between a woman and her health care. Further consideration by the full court was needed to protect nearly 48,000 low-income Texas women’s access to preventive health care such as life-saving breast and cervical cancer screenings, birth control and STD screenings.

In the wake of Texas HHS’s and the appellate court’s decisions, over 100 providers are expected to lose their funding, denying preventative screenings and other health services to thousands of low-income women in Texas — a state where over 160,000 women are already forgoing such care due to state budget cuts and regulatory restrictions. Earlier this week, a federal appellate court in Indiana and a federal judge in Arizona blocked those states from following in Texas’ footsteps and defunding their own Planned Parenthood affiliates.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) — who came under fire after asserting that “legitimate rapes” don’t often result in pregnancy — was arrested multiple times in the 1980s for protesting outside of abortion clinics in St. Louis. Between 1985 and 1987, Akin worked with other anti-choice activists to physically block women’s access to reproductive health clinics in the city, during what RH Reality Check describes as a “hotbed of anti-choice violence and harassment” in St. Louis. At that time, Akin went by his given first name, William, rather than the middle name he currently uses.

Anti-abortion harassment has not certainly not faded away since Akin’s days as a participant. Incidents of violent harassment have been on the rise, prompting some cities like New York to implement clinic escort programs to safely accompany women into health clinics, and an anti-abortion harassment resulted in a stabbing incident in Oregon just yesterday.

Despite the outrage that Akin’s comments about women’s reproductive systems sparked — such as the long list of his Republican colleagues who called for him to drop out of the Missouri Senate race, although Akin did not heed their advice — a number of right-wing groups continue to financially back his campaign.

Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee are threatening to subpoena the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) over the Obama Administration’s use of public relations contracts to advertise their landmark health care reform law, even though the Bush Administration spent even more money on campaigns to publicize its Medicare program.

Republicans are implying that the Administration’s efforts to raise awareness about core Obamacare provisions is a politically-motivated misuse of public funds. As the Hill reports, GOP members claim that previous requests to HHS for documentation regarding the public relations campaign have gone unanswered, and say that they will be forced to issue subpoenas barring a response by the end of the month:

Ways and Means Republicans previously requested documents about the PR work, but said the administration failed to respond.

“Either the Department is unable to keep track of the work products it buys with taxpayer dollars or the Department is trying to delay any response until after this year’s election,” the lawmakers wrote. “Neither explanation is acceptable.”

They threatened to issue subpoenas if HHS doesn’t respond by Oct. 31. The letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was signed by Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Charles Boustany (R-La.).

Since an overhaul of Obamacare’s magnitude typically requires some form of public education to prevent confusion, HHS signed a $20 million contract to set aside funds for PR campaigns to explain the new consumer benefits under the reform law, as well as an additional $3.1 million contract to inform consumers about state-level health insurance exchanges. Some states, such as California, have used federal grants to promote their state’s own health exchanges.

And federal PR campaigns about major government programs are nothing new. After President Bush’s successful effort to pass the Medicare prescription drug benefit (Medicare Part D), the Bush Administration undertook a significantly larger campaign to inform seniors about their new benefits — also with money specifically set aside by the reform law.

Unlike the current Obamacare PR efforts, however, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the Bush Administration broke several federal laws by distributing videos that made their narrators appear to be impartial reporters instead of spokesmen hired by the Bush HHS. GAO also found a two-page flier about Medicare Part D that the Bush Administration sent out to 36 million households to not be “totally free of political content” and contain “notable omissions and other weaknesses.”

This week, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously endorsed Propisition 37, a ballot initiative that would require companies to label food made from genetically modified plants or animals and prevent them from advertising that food as “natural,” joining a long list of other supporters of the proposed measure. Council member Paul Koretz, the resolution’s author, called it “a no-brainer” and said the Council was “proud to be a part of this true grassroots campaign in our struggle against the biggest pesticide and junk food companies in the world.”

If voters pass the ballot initiative this November, California will become the first state to require labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The point, which over 90 percent of Americans support, is to simply let consumers know what is in their food. Over 60 countries — including China and the EU — already require this kind of GMO transparency.

However, a handful of powerful multi-national corporations — the leading donors of which are not based in California, or even within the United States — are spending millions of dollars to defeat the GMO labeling initiative. The opposition is bankrolled by corporate giants like Monsanto, Coca Cola, and Nestle and, after spending more than $41 million on advertisements against Prop 37, their negative ads appear to be having an effect. A poll conducted in late September found 76.8 percent of likely voters supported Prop 37, but a Los Angeles Times poll released October 24 showed just 44 percent of voters in support.

When considering the campaign supporting the measure has raised just $6.7 million, the fight over Prop 37 has reached David vs. Goliath proportions. Still, the political director of the Prop 37 campaign told the Examiner that he was “thrilled” with the City Council’s endorsement. “The Council joins millions of moms, dads, family farmers, doctors, scientists, and grocery store owners in saying, very simply, that we have the right to know what’s in our food,” he said.

– Greg Noth

At Paul Ryan’s speech on poverty yesterday in Ohio, he intended to explain how the Republican party’s platform would help combat poverty in America. But he made it clear that those GOP-endorsed policies don’t involve ensuring that women have access to affordable preventative health care.

As Talking Points Memo flagged, the vice presidential candidate cited the popular Obamacare birth control mandate — which eliminates cost barriers to contraception by requiring employer-based insurance plans to provide contraceptive services without a co-pay — as an example of a “threat” to the poor Americans who rely on assistance from government safety nets and religious charities:

Nothing undermines the essential and honorable work these groups do quite like the abuse of government power. Take what happened this past January, when the Department of Health and Human Services issued new rules requiring Catholic hospitals, charities and universities to violate their deepest principles. Never mind your own conscience, they were basically told –- from now on you’re going to do things the government’s way.

This mandate isn’t just a threat to religious charities. It’s a threat to all those who turn to them in times of need. In the name of strengthening our safety net, this mandate and others will weaken it.

But rather than existing as a “threat” to the low-income women who may need to turn to religious charities “in times of need,” Obamacare actually guarantees that those women will not have to pay up to thousands of dollars each year for their preventative health care, correcting the previously existing gender imbalance in health care costs. And the contraception mandate does not actually require Catholic-affiliated institutions to directly provide their female employees with any birth control services they object to, since it includes a workaround that allows those religious organizations to shift the costs of contraception coverage onto insurance companies.

Studies predict that the health reform law’s birth control policy will almost certainly lower abortion rates, since removing the cost barriers to contraception encourages low-income women to choose longer-lasting, more effective forms of birth control that lower their risk for unintended pregnancy. And women themselves report that they value access to birth control because it helps them achieve economic autonomy for themselves — giving them the ability to finish a degree, keep a job, or support their family — when they know they cannot afford the cost of another child. In Paul Ryan’s mind, however, the social safety net is weakened by fewer abortions and enhanced economic mobility.

Mitt Romney’s plan for Medicaid actually comes in two distinct parts: One, block grant the program, thus turning administration of it completely over to state governments. Two, cut the program as a share of the economy by a third over the next decade, and keep cutting after that. The plan Paul Ryan laid out for Medicaid in the latest House GOP budget is essentially identical. Romney, Ryan, and their cohorts typically defend this scheme by claiming it will open up Medicaid to greater innovation at the state level.

But, as the Huffington Post’s Jeffrey Young noted yesterday, there is a bitter self-contradiction in this argument. Romney’s cuts to Medicaid would almost certainly stifle the very state-level innovations he’s praising:

“Arizona has always been operating in the current financing and entitlement structure of Medicaid. They’re not operating the structure that Mitt Romney wants to go to,” said Joan Alker, co-executive director of the Georgetown Center for Children and Families in Washington.

In recent years, Arizona has raised co-payments and frozen enrollment for poor adults — and is weighing a request for additional federal money to preserve coverage for about 150,000 people and reopen the program to new applicants. The state also put limits on coverage of organ transplants in 2010, but rescinded the policy the following year.

Rhode Island obtained a “waiver” from federal Medicaid rules in 2009 that enabled the state to establish a cap on its spending between 2009 and 2013. The Rhode Island initiative has been hailed by conservatives as a model for future block grant programs because the state has reduced its spending. But Rhode Island implemented its Medicaid reforms with extra federal money and the savings turned out not to be as large as originally believed, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that cites the findings of a report commissioned by Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee (I).

Ironically, the same could be true of the Massachusetts health care reform Romney himself passed into law as governor of that state. Romney negotiated an increase in the federal Medicaid funding going to Massachusetts. That money funded Commonwealth Care, a subsidized market of private coverage for people living under 300 percent of the poverty line — essentially, the Massachusetts version of Obamacare’s exchanges. John McDonough, one of the plan’s main designers, told the Boston Globe, “It would have been impossible for Massachusetts to do what it did without increased federal Medicaid support.”

Oregon is also running a reform experiment that relies on an increased contribution from the federal government. In a move hailed by conservatives, Florida is trying to expand a health care reform pilot program state-wide. An assessment by the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute determined the program was unlikely to save the state costs, suggesting a much lower level of federal funding would do the experiment no favors.

Of course, Republican lawmakers in Florida see the Romney-Ryan budgets as dovetailing with their state-level plans, which include shifting costs onto Medicaid enrollees through increased fees and reduced benefits. In the end, the state-level innovations most threatened by Romney and Ryan’s plans are the ones that don’t compute with conservatives’ pre-conceived policy preferences.

Our guest blogger is Sally Steenland, Director of the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Indiana Senate nominee Richard Mourdock (R)

Mourdock’s views are harsh and extremist — and they represent an attempt to impose his unforgiving theological views on millions of Americans who hold very different beliefs. Religious leaders, including clergy and faith experts at CAP’s Faith and Reproductive Justice Institute, are weighing in to condemn his views:

“Rape is an act of overt personal violence and an egregious abuse of power that the God I believe in does not sanction. A woman who is faced with a pregnancy from such a traumatic attack on her body and soul must have all options available to her when deciding whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, including the right granted to her by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 to a safe and legal abortion.” — Rev. Elizabeth Barnum, United Church of Christ minister serving in Rhode Island

“As a Christian pastor, I am deeply offended by Indiana Senate Candidate Richard Mourdock’s claim that the God of compassion and justice would re-victimize a survivor of sexual violence. To believe that God would choose to impose a pregnancy on someone whose most basic bodily agency has been violated is to completely misunderstand God’s agency for those most in need. Scripture commands us: Do not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, and the idea that God would “gift” a survivor of rape with a pregnancy is exactly that. It’s blasphemy.” — Rev. Matthew Westfox, Associate Pastor of All Souls Bethlehem Church in Brooklyn, NY, and Director of Interfaith Outreach for the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

“As a pastor who has counseled hundreds of women regarding unintended pregnancies, including women who have suffered awful violence in their lives, I was both saddened and horrified hearing the callousness of Richard Mourdock’s words. How could his heart be so hard? God compels us towards acts of profound justice, compassion, and peace. God calls us to be in caring relationships with those who have suffered the most in this world. We are to bear witness and listen, mindful to not let our arrogance and hubris lead us astray.” — Rev. Darcy Baxter, Director of Family Ministries, Starr King Unitarian Universalist Church, Hayward, CA

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Even though President Obama signed into law the Food Safety Modernization Act — giving the Food and Drug Administration wider power to stop foodborne illness outbreaks before they start — the number of Americans who become sick or die because of contaminated food has increased 44 percent over the last two years, according to a new report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

This adds up to about 48 million people getting sick. But Republicans have threatened to defund the law that helps curb salmonella outbreaks. Meanwhile, the FDA remains unable to implement the reforms because of underfunding:

But while some parts of the law have been enacted, the vast majority of the law’s regulatory framework remains in limbo, sitting in the White House Office of Management and Budget, with no clear timetable for implementation.

“In February, the president’s budget requested $4.5 billion for the Food and Drug Administration. But budget proposals in both the Senate and the House fall below this target, coming in $600 (million)-$700 million below full funding, which the Office of Management and Budget has called ‘harmful’ to food safety regulations,” the Public Interest Research Group says. [...]

Instead of improving, the problem of foodborne outbreaks is getting worse, the report says.

“When comparing 2010 infection incidences with national health objective targets … the only incidence rate that meets the target goal was the incidence of infection with E. coli O157,” the report says. “The incidence of salmonella was three times the 2010 national health objective target, which is especially alarming, as salmonella causes the majority of hospitalizations and deaths from foodborne disease.”

The problem is not limited to U.S. food suppliers, and in its report, the Public Interest Research Group adds that the FDA can’t keep up with demand. About two-thirds of the fruits and vegetables that Americans eat come from foreign food suppliers, but the FDA only inspected 153 of the 189,000 registered foreign food facilities.

As the regulations to inspect food suppliers remain underfunded, the federal government has outsourced much of its food inspection to responsibilities to third-party companies that aren’t transparent, have no oversight, and have approved food that sickened thousands of people. Consequently, more Americans will continue to get sick from tainted foods like peanut butter, meat, and cantaloupe.

A Pennsylvania House bill seeks to limit the amount of TANF assistance that low-income women receive based on the amount of children they give birth to while covered under the program.

Despite the fact that low-income women who give birth to children would logically need increased assistance to care for their larger family, Pennsylvania lawmakers — State Reps. RoseMarie Swanger (R), Tom Caltagirone (D), Mark Gillen (R), Keith Gillespie (R), Adam Harris (R), and Mike Tobash (R) — don’t want their state’s welfare program to provide additional benefits for that newborn. If a woman gives birth to a child who was conceived from rape, she may seek an exception to this rule so that her welfare benefits aren’t slashed, but only if she can provide proof that she reported her sexual assault and her abuser’s identity to the police:

In determining the amount of assistance payments to a recipient family of benefits under the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) Program, the department shall revise the schedule of benefits to be paid to the recipient family by eliminating the increment in benefits under the program for which that family would otherwise be eligible as a result of the birth of a child conceived during the period in which the family is eligible for benefits under the TANF Program. [...]

Elimination of benefits under subsection (d) shall not apply to any child conceived as a result of rape or incest if the department: (1) receives a non-notarized, signed statement from the pregnant woman stating that she was a victim of rape or incest, as the case may be, and that she reported the crime, including the identity of the offender, if known, to a law enforcement agency having the requisite jurisdiction or, in the case of incest where a pregnant minor is the victim, to the county child protective service agency and stating the name of the law enforcement agency or child protective service agency to which the report was made and the date such report was made.

The language of the bill goes on to note that a sexual assault victim applying for an exemption will be required to sign a statement affirming she understands that “false reports to law enforcement authorities are punishable by law,” and stipulates that Pennsylvania will report any “evidence of false statements or fraud” to the correct department, all the way up to the Attorney General’s office.

Aside from punishing women who have children — particularly low-income women who may not have reliable access to affordable contraception — the proposed bill perpetrates a dangerous attitude toward survivors of sexual assault. Forcing women to prove the legitimacy of their sexual assault, and warning them about the serious consequences of “crying rape” to cheat the system, puts forth the misguided assumption that victims of sexual violence are not to be believed. Furthermore, countless women choose not to report their rapists to the police because they fear repercussions from their abusers, who could threaten their lives. An estimated 54 percent of sexual assaults are not reported to the authorities.

This is not the first type of legislation of its kind. Last month, New Mexico proposed a bill that would have required women seeking childcare assistance to prove they were “forcibly raped,” although Gov. Susana Martinez (R) has requested to remove that language.

(HT: Donnie Johnson)

Last month, the Hobby Lobby craft chain sued for the right to deny their employees access to affordable contraceptive services through their insurance plans. The company’s conservative Christian owners claim that the Obamacare provision that requires employer-based insurance plans to provide contraception without a co-pay is a violation of their religious conscience, although several Christian groups protested against the owners’ decision to prioritize their own religious beliefs over the beliefs of the tens of thousands of people that Hobby Lobby employs.

Now, the federal government is weighing in, urging a district judge to deny Hobby Lobby’s request to exempt themselves from the health reform law’s birth control provision. According to the Associated Press, U.S. government attorneys maintain that “Hobby Lobby cannot claim to exercise religion in an effort to avoid laws designed to regulate commercial activity.”

Hobby Lobby was the first commercial business to file a lawsuit against Obamacare, although it is certainly not alone in its legal challenge of the health reform law’s contraception mandate. Over 100 plaintiffs representing right-wing Christians institutions, particularly Catholic- and Protestant-affiliated universities, have filed over 35 lawsuits against Obamacare’s birth control provision, although several have already been dismissed because they cannot provide enough evidence of religious discrimination. In fact, Obamacare already provides an religious accommodation that shifts the cost of birth control onto insurance companies so that religious institutions do not have to pay for contraceptive services that they oppose.

The majority of Americans, including a plurality of Catholics, believe that religiously-affiliated institutions should provide health plans that offer contraceptive coverage at no additional cost to their employees. Although Hobby Lobby’s owners are personally religious, the craft store is not officially affiliated with any organized religion.

Since January 2011, Obamacare has prohibited insurers from denying coverage to children younger than 19 with pre-existing conditions. The measure is one of the health law’s most popular consumer protections and among its first to be implemented, and by 2014, this same protection will be expanded to all Americans with pre-existing conditions.

But in the meantime, Obamacare’s staggered implementation timeline has led to some unintended consequences. Concerned that guardians might take advantage of the law’s protections and only purchase dependent coverage when a young dependent gets sick — consequently raising insurance costs and overall market premiums — many insurers stopped offering child-only health policies on the individual market.

Fortunately, a new Commonwealth Fund study finds that 22 states and the District of Columbia have taken steps to encourage providers to keep offering child-only policies until Obamacare takes full effect. As Kaiser Health News reports, the states have used various regulatory carrots and sticks to encourage insurers to maintain such plans, ranging from mandates to pre-defined enrollment periods, in an effort to protect this small but vulnerable insurance market:

The child-only policies, which were available in most states before the 2010 law, are sold on the individual insurance market for children younger than 19 who don’t have a parent or guardian covered under the same policy. It’s not a big market – roughly 10 percent of the individual policies sold, according to the report — but to those people who need the coverage, it can be critical.

Children whose parents’ coverage doesn’t include dependents sometimes need such policies, say children’s health advocates, as do children who are being raised by older parents or grandparents who are insured through Medicare.

States have taken different approaches to encourage insurers to sell child-only policies. Some required insurers to offer child-only policies if they want to sell other individual policies in the state. Some established specific enrollment periods to sign up for child-only policies, to discourage parents from waiting until a child needs coverage to buy it. Still others established reinsurance mechanisms that compensate insurers if they incur high costs covering high-risk kids.

By the time that the rest of Obamacare’s provisions take effect, these kinds of insurance dilemmas will be a thing of the past, as all Americans will be required to have affordable coverage and no insurance companies will be able to discriminate against those with pre-existing conditions. With a vastly expanded pool of healthy Americans to mitigate any potential risk from the ill, insurers will no longer have incentives to pull out of certain markets.

Yesterday, a 22-year-old woman kicked an anti-abortion protester’s sign as she made her way into an Oregon-area Planned Parenthood clinic, and the protester pushed her in response. The woman returned with her father, who instigated a physical confrontation with the protester — later identified as 54-year-old Christopher R. Tolhurst — which resulted in Tolhurst repeatedly stabbing the man. The Oregonian reports that he remains in the hospital recovering from seven stab wounds to the abdomen.

A spokesperson for Planned Parenthood for Southwestern Oregon explained to the Associated Press that the clinic that inspired the violent confrontation only provides health services, such as contraception and cancer screenings, and doesn’t perform any abortion services. Nevertheless, residents of the neighborhood confirmed that Tolhurst regularly harasses the clients who visit the health clinic:

Neighbor Charlotte Cook said the protester would accost people coming and going through the area.

“It was an accident looking for a place to happen,” she said.

Cherie Adams said he would yell obscenities at her when she walked past him, and she changed her route to work.

“He’s been out there for months,” she said. “He’s screaming at people. I had a feeling something like this would happen.”

Over the past two decades, violent anti-abortion harassment has been on the rise, and some studies have suggested the problem is exacerbated by restrictive anti-abortion legislation that may encourage right-wing protesters’ fervor. Earlier this month, repeated harassment at a New York City health clinic forced it to stop providing abortion services altogether. To help mitigate the potentially damaging effects of harassment at abortion clinics, New York City has just launched a clinic escort program to help ensure women can safely walk past anti-abortion protesters and enter reproductive health clinics.