Catholic leaders and the GOP presidential candidates have intentionally distorted the Obama administration’s new rule requiring employers and insurers to provide reproductive health benefits at no additional cost sharing. Conservatives are seeking a way to politically unite Republican voters around a social issue and portray the regulation as a big government intrusion into religious liberties. In reality, the mandate is modeled on existing rules in six states, exempts houses of worship and other religious nonprofits that primarily employ and serve people of faith, and offers employers a transitional period of one year to determine how best to comply with the rule.

It’s also nothing new. Twenty-eight states already require organizations that offer prescription insurance to cover contraception and since 98 percent of Catholic women use birth control, many Catholic institutions offer the benefit to their employees. For instance, a Georgetown University spokesperson told ThinkProgress yesterday that employees “have access to health insurance plans offered and designed by national providers to a national pool. These plans include coverage for birth control.”

Similarly, an informal survey conducted by Our Sunday Visitor found that many Catholic colleges have purchased insurance plans that provide contraception benefits:

University of Scranton, for example, appears to specifically cover contraception. The University of San Francisco offers employees two health plans, both of which cover abortion, contraception and sterilization…Also problematic is the Jesuit University of Scranton. One of its health insurance plans, the First Priority HMO, lists a benefit of “contraceptives when used for the purpose of birth control.”

DePaul University in Chicago covers birth control in both its fully insured HMO plan and its self-insured PPO plan and excludes “elective abortion,” said spokesman John Holden, adding that the 1,800 employee-university responded to a complaint from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission several years ago and added artificial contraception as a benefit to its Blue Cross PPO.

Christian Brothers University in Memphis, Tenn., offers employee health insurance via the Tennessee Independent Colleges and Universities Association, a consortium of Christian Bible and other private college and universities. Its plan excludes abortion, but probably covers artificial contraception as a prescription drug, said C. Gregg Conroy, the executive director of the TICUA Benefit Consortium.

Boston College, the six former Caritas Christi Catholic hospitals in Massachusetts, and other Catholic organizations that are located in one of the 28 states that already require employers to provide contraception benefits could have self-insured or stopped offering prescription drug coverage to avoid the mandate — but didn’t do so. Instead, they — like many Catholic hospitals and health care insurers around the country — chose to meet the needs of the overwhelming majority of Catholic women and offer these much needed services.

A new University of Memphis study estimates the number of uninsured Tennesseans will drop by more than 50 percent as 558,004 previously uninsured citizens under the age of 65 will gain coverage under the Affordable Care Act. The study is based on data collected in 2009 when 910,215 Tennesseans under age 65 — nearly 17 percent of Tennessee’s total population — were identified as uninsured:

Uninsured residents will have the option of seeking coverage though TennCare, Tennessee’s version of Medicaid, or qualifying for private insurance through the state’s own health insurance exchange. Others will qualify for coverage under their parents’ health care plans:

The study also reports that Tennessee will save $2.3 billion in cuts to bad debt and uncompensated care, which will aid in funneling more money into the state’s health care system. “Uncompensated care and bad debt will be reduced from $4.11 billion to $1.84 billion, a 55 percent decrease, the study said”:

In spite of this, Tennessee remains slow in making any sort of progress towards meeting federal deadlines for enacting legislation that must be in place in order to receive federal funding for the implementation of key parts of the health care bill. Much of their choice to hold off is based on whether the Supreme Court decides to overturn the ACA or if the potential election of a Republican president would lead to a repeal of the law.

– Fatima Najiy

While campaigning yesterday in Woodland Park, Colorado, GOP contender Rick Santorum told a sick child and his mother that they shouldn’t complain about the exorbitant cost of his medication because some people spend $900 on iPads. He appeared unmoved by the plight of the family, staunchly defending drug companies’ right to charge whatever they want.

The candidate also said that the parent and child unjustly felt entitled to get life-saving care at an affordable rate:

GOP contender Rick Santorum had a heated exchange with a mother and her sick young son Wednesday, arguing that drug companies were entitled to charge whatever the market demanded for life-saving therapies.[...]

“People have no problem paying $900 for an iPad,” Santorum said, “but paying $900 for a drug they have a problem with — it keeps you alive. Why? Because you’ve been conditioned to think health care is something you can get without having to pay for it.”

The mother said the boy was on the drug Abilify, used to treat schizophrenia, and that, on paper, its costs would exceed $1 million each year.

Santorum said drugs take years to develop and cost millions of dollars to produce, and manufacturers need to turn a profit or they would stop developing new drugs.

Santorum proceeded to lecture the mother and suggest she should be grateful to the drug companies for saving her son’s life. “He’s alive today because drug companies provide care,” Santorum said. “And if they didn’t think they could make money providing that drug, that drug wouldn’t be here.” He also claimed it would “freeze innovation” if pharmaceutical companies were required to offer their drugs at a reasonable price.

Although Santorum has been a vocal opponent of health care reform, his callous reaction is somewhat surprising given that he himself is the father of a daughter with a rare genetic disorder. But if the Colorado mother thought Santorum might be sympathetic to families in similar situations who happen to be less wealthy, she was sadly mistaken.

The Virginia legislature is starting off 2012 with a bicameral attack on a woman’s right to choose. The General Assembly’s very first bill, House Bill 1, is a “personhood” amendment that seeks to essentially outlaw abortions. Over in the state senate, Sen. Jill Vogel (R) has introduced a bill that would require all women seeking an abortion “to have an ultrasound image taken to determine the gestational age of the fetus.” Piqued by the unnecessary intrusion into a woman’s doctor-patient relationship, state Sen. Janet Howell (D) sought to level the playing field.

“If pregnant women should have to get an ultrasound before having an abortion, men should have to undergo additional medical procedures before getting a prescription for erectile dysfunction,” she noted, and introduced an amendment to Vogel’s bill requiring that men “undergo a digital rectal exam” for pills like Viagra:

On Monday Howell expressed her disdain for legislation requiring the ultrasound by proposing an amendment she described as a simple matter of fairness. Her amendment said that before being treated for erectile dysfunction, a man would have to undergo a digital rectal exam and a cardiac stress test.

“We should just have a little gender equity here,” Howell said.

Vogel argued that “erectile dysfunction, in this context, is different from pregnancy,” and the “gender equity” amendment failed in a 21 to 19 vote mostly along party lines. Vogel’s ultrasound bill will receive a final vote today, and is expected to clear the full Senate.

Aware that such measures are a blatant attempt to obstruct and intimidate women from considering their constitutional right to an abortion, Howell pointed out that the ultrasound is also “adding to the cost” and “opening up [women] to emotional blackmail.”

Our guest blogger is Emily Oshima, a Research Associate/Policy Analyst with the Health Policy team at American Progress.

On Monday, Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts again urged state lawmakers to address rising health care costs in his annual state of the state address. Patrick first introduced a bill, “An Act Improving the Quality of Health Care and Controlling Costs by Reforming Health Systems and Payments,” in February 2011 in an effort to achieve comprehensive delivery system and payment reform.

Patrick’s proposal calls for replacing the current fee-for-service payment system, which creates incentives for providers to deliver more services – even unnecessary care, with a global payment system, which encourages more coordinated patient care and rewards providers for better patient health. It aims to “significantly reduce” fee-for-service payments by the end of 2015 and, as Patrick explained, “stop paying for the amount of care, and start paying for the quality of care.”

The Massachusetts bill encourages greater price transparency, consumer protections against rate increases, and medical malpractice reform to reduce the costs of defensive medicine. The legislation creates incentives for providers to better coordinate patient care and lower costs through Accountable Care Organizations (ACO). Such arrangements have already improved care for more than 100,000 Blue Shield of California patients in California and San Francisco, where better coordination among health care providers has flattened premium increases, lowered hospital readmissions by more than 20 percent, and saved $20 million in 2011.

Numerous hospitals, physician groups and insurers across the nation are adopting the ACO model in hopes of duplicating this success. For instance, Massachusetts is already home to nine ACO entities and 32 health care organizations are participating in HHS’ Pioneer ACO initiative to improve care and lower costs for Medicare patients.

Health reform in Massachusetts was wildly successful in expanding coverage to more than 98 percent of the population and now lawmakers must tackle their next big challenge: cost control.

At last night’s GOP presidential debate, Rick Santorum challenged Mitt Romney on the similarities between the health care reform he signed into law as governor of Massachusetts and President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. “Your mandate is no different than Barack Obama’s mandate. It is the same mandate,” Santorum charged. “You take over 100 percent, just like he takes over 100 percent, requires the mandate. The same fines that you put in place in Massachusetts are fines that he puts in place in the federal level. Same programs.”

The comparison immediately put Romney on the defense, who claimed, “I didn’t say I’m in favor of top- down government-run health care,” and explained that he expanded access to “private insurance” and allowed people to “choose any plan” within a state-run exchange. “There’s no government plan,” he added. “And if you don’t want to buy insurance, then you have to help pay for the cost of the state picking up your bill, because under federal law if someone doesn’t have insurance, then we have to care for them in the hospitals, give them free care. So we said, no more, no more free riders.”

Romney’s description of his plan sounded so much like Obama’s rational for the federal health care law that ThinkProgress has compiled a video comparing how both politicians describe their reforms. Watch it:

Indeed, Romneycare and Obamacare share more than a dozen common provisions, for a full comparison, click here.

At last night’s CNN presidential debate in Jacksonville, Florida, the GOP candidates told an unemployed woman in need of health insurance that they would repeal the health reform law that could help her find coverage and giver her a tax deduction to go out and find her own insurance.

The woman — Lynn Frazier — said she found herself “unemployed for the first time in 10 years and unable to afford health benefits.” Under the Affordable Care Act, Frazier may qualify for temporary insurance in the state’s high-risk pool, which already provides coverage for 3,285 Floridians who can’t find affordable coverage elsewhere. In two years, she’ll be able to pick out a health policy through the state’s Exchange. All private insurers will offer a comprehensive basic set of benefits and allow consumers like Frazier to compare and contrast different plans to find the coverage that works best for them and their family. Insurers won’t be able to deny insurance based on past illness or rescind coverage unexpectedly, as they often do in today’s health market, and Frazier will pay a “community” rate and may even qualify for tax credits to help her afford her premiums and out of pocket cost-sharing expenses.

The Republican candidates pledged to undo these benefits and instead encouraged her to find coverage “as an individual” — on her own — with the help of a government tax deduction:

– RON PAUL: And you should have an opportunity — medical care insurance should be given to you as an individual, so if you’re employed or not employed, you have — you just take care of that and you keep it up.

– NEWT GINGRICH: She ought to get the same tax break whether she buys personally or whether she buys through a economy. She should also be able to buy into an association so that she’s buying with lots of other people so it’s not single insurance, which is the most expensive kind.

– MITT ROMNEY: What we should do is allow individuals to own their own insurance and have the same tax treatment as companies get. You do that and people like this young woman would be able to own her insurance. The rates would be substantial lower for her buying it individually than if she had to buy it individually today.

– RICK SANTORUM: All three of these folks sound great and I agree with them. I would just add that health savings account, which I introduced 20 years ago with John Kasich, is really the fundamental reform of getting consumers back involved in the health care system.

Watch the exchange:

In reality, sending off Americans to face health care insurers on their own without first reforming the individual health care market — so that companies can no longer deny coverage due to pre-existing conditions, rescind insurance, or charge sicker and older people substantially more — is an inadequate solution that will do little to lower the number of uninsured or reduce health care costs.

Since insurers are hoping to attract the most profitable beneficiaries, individual plans offer “coverage so riddled with loopholes, limits, exclusions, and gotchas that it won’t come close to covering their expenses if they fall seriously ill.” As a Consumer Reports investigation concluded, individual insurance policies are “more costly than the equivalent job-based coverage, and for those in less-than-perfect health, unaffordable at best and unavailable at worst.” The lack of effective consumer protections in most states also allows insurers to trick consumers by selling plans with “affordable” premiums “whose skimpy coverage can leave people who get very sick with the added burden of ruinous medical debt.”

Thus, if an individual falls ill under the GOP’s proposal, the cost of the medical episode and the inadequate insurance will outweigh any beneficial tax treatment and deplete any health savings account they may have.

The latest Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll finds that Americans are still split on their support for the Affordable Care Act, “with a slightly higher share expressing an unfavorable (44 percent) rather than a favorable view (37 percent).” Half of all respondents still said they “prefer to either expand the law (31 percent) or leave it in its current form (19 percent), while slightly fewer would like the law repealed, either outright (22 percent) or repealed and replaced with a Republican‐backed
alternative (18 percent).”

Interestingly, the survey also explores why so many — 67 percent — oppose the individual mandate: the most common reasons offered in their own words include that the government shouldn’t be able to force people to do something they don’t want to do (30 percent), that health insurance is too expensive (25 percent), and complaints about the fine for non‐compliance (22 percent):

That top reason sounds an awful lot like a GOP talking point and may say more about the public’s general weariness for larger government than its distaste for this particular provision. But once the requirement kicks in and Americans realize that the law offers a wide array of coverage options without any singular government mandated plan, their trepidation about paying a penalty for going uninsured will likely dissipate.

An earlier Kaiser poll found that people become more supportive of the mandate once they learn more about it. Support substantially grew, for instance, once voters are told that “without the mandate, people might wait until they are seriously ill to obtain coverage, driving up insurance costs for everyone.” Another pro-mandate argument tips the public even more in favor of the provision: “Sixty-one percent of those surveyed support it when told most Americans would still get their coverage through their employers and thus wouldn’t be affected by the mandate.”

Tim Pawlenty — who famously characterized the Affordable Care Act as “Obamneycare” because it is so heavily modeled on Mitt Romney’s health care law in Massachusetts — doubled down on his argument that President Obama and the Democrats relied on Romney’s law as a blueprint for national reform in the spin room of Thursday night’s GOP presidential debate in South Carolina. But then, the former Minnesota governor went further, suggesting that Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have also embraced “elements of Obamacre”:

PAWLENTY: Newt Gingrich embraced the individual mandate and elements of Obamacare as well. Rick Santorum has embraced other elements of health care reform that are problematic relative to Democrats and Barack Obama. So don’t single Mitt out with respect to your question.

Watch it:

Indeed, all three candidates supported the individual requirement to purchase health insurance coverage and Romney and Gingrich backed exchange-like mechanisms where individuals and small businesses have the advantages of large employers in purchasing coverage. They also embraced regulations that prohibited insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and subsidizing coverage for lower-income Americans. For more on the similarities between Gingrich’s and Romney’s health care proposals and the Affordable Care Act, click here and here.