The Justice Department announced on Monday that it will allow the most popular morning after pill, Plan B, to be available over the counter to women of all ages, dropping its appeal of a federal court order.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in a statement that it has “asked the manufacturer of Plan B One-Step to submit a supplemental application seeking approval of the one-pill product to be made available O.T.C. without any such restrictions” and “intends to approve it promptly.” Generic versions may also be eventually approved. The morning after pill prevents conception “if taken within 72 hours after sexual intercourse.”

The decision comes after a federal judge in April ordered the FDA to lift restrictions on the morning-after pill. The administration responded to the ruling by lowering the age restriction from 17 to 15, sparking the ire of health groups and district Judge Edward Korman, who, in a series of contemptuous opinions, called the administration’s defiance an insult to the intelligence of women” and “a charade” meant to stall his original order. Last week, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the administration to make two-pill versions of emergency contraception immediately available over the counter to women of all ages.

Women’s health groups embraced the administrations’ decision on Monday, calling it a “huge breakthrough for access to birth control and a historic moment for women’s health and equity.” “The FDA’s decision will make emergency contraception available on store shelves, just like condoms, and women of all ages will be able to get it quickly in order to prevent unintended pregnancy,” Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Cecile Richards said in a statement.

Medical experts have consistently argued that the administration’s arbitrary age limits have no basis in scientific research, as multiple studies have found Plan B to be safer than aspirin for all ages. In December 2011, the FDA approved Plan B for over the counter use for all women, but amended its policy after Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled the agency, claiming that “the manufacturer had failed to study whether the drug was safe for girls as young as 11.”

A new analysis of advertisements about Obamacare aired since 2010 finds that the health law’s critics have spent a whopping $400 million on television spots criticizing the law. That’s over five times the $75 million that the law’s supporters have spent on ads promoting Obamacare and outreach efforts meant to educate Americans about reform.

Anti-Obamacare ad spending was most pronounced during the 2012 campaign cycle. But conservative groups such as the Koch brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity have spent another $2.5 million on T.V. ads slamming the law since then, mostly in support of local Republican political candidates.

In one ad run of behalf of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), a narrator proclaims, “It’s already causing layoffs. Higher premiums are next. Mitch McConnell saw it coming. Leading the fight against Obamacare.”

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other groups trying to educate Americans about the law’s benefits have only spent about half what Obamacare detractors have on advertising since the election.

Republican politicians and Obamacare detractors have balked at even that small level of spending. Much of their ire has been directed at HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who they claim has been abusing her authority by “soliciting” the health care industry to help her implement the law by reaching out to regular Americans through educational campaigns.

Several Republican lawmakers have questioned the legality of Sebelius’s actions. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) went so far as to compare HHS’s public-private partnership outreach efforts to the Reagan-era Iran-Contra scandal, and Sebelius to convicted felon Oliver North.

Sebelius swatted away allegations of wrongdoing at a House committee hearing on Tuesday. She pointed out that the Clinton administration employed similar solicitations of private groups when promoting the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and that the Bush administration did so when reaching out to American seniors about Medicare’s Part D prescription drug benefit.

The educational efforts are necessary considering the sheer scope of the reform law, which will affect tens of millions of Americans’ health coverage beginning in 2014. Americans still have major misconceptions about what Obamacare actually does — likely fueled by the deluge of politically-motivated misinformation campaigns against the law being waged by conservatives.

States such as Colorado aren’t even mentioning the terms “Obamacare” or “health care reform” in their own educational outreach efforts, instead opting to just describe its new benefits and protections for consumers. That’s not surprising, given how hard Obamacare critics have worked — and how much money they’ve spent — poisoning the well against the health law.

Ten-year-old Philadelphia resident Sarah Murnaghan only has a couple weeks to live unless she receives a lung transplant soon. Sarah, who has end-stage cystic fibrosis, has waited for over a year to receive a lung from a child donor, even though she is at the top of the pediatric organ list. Because there are no child donors available, Sarah is also on the list to receive an adult organ — but at the very bottom, due to a rule that requires that all adults waiting for a lung in her region get priority before children under 12, regardless of the severity of their condition. If Sarah were just two years older, she would likely be at the top of the adult list.

Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, has ordered a review of the policy, but stopped short of personally intervening in the process. The Murnaghan family is now appealing to the public, begging for anyone with a viable lung donation to designate it for Sarah. They’ve also circulated a petition with over 339,000 signatures asking the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) Lung Review Board to make an exceptional ruling to give Sarah the lung that could save her life.

As the petition explains, children under 12 were excluded from a policy change in 2005 that allowed people with urgent medical need to skip the long line for transplants. As a result of the more need-based organ allocation system, the number of patients who died while waiting for a transplant plummeted by half. The average waiting time for all adult patients also immediately decreased from 800 days in 2004 to 130 days in 2006.

In general, the tough decision process of who should receive the very limited number of donor organs has become more flexible in a number of ways. Besides the prioritization of emergency cases, the types of allowed organ donors have also been expanded. Transplants have historically relied on donors who have been declared brain-dead even though their heart is still beating. But now, more organ donations are permitted from people whose circulatory system has shut down. This has especially helped children waiting for transplants. As these organs become more available, far fewer children have died while waiting for a transplant, making Sarah’s case thankfully rare.

While Sebelius may not have the authority to intervene in Sarah’s case, the Murnaghans’ plight is helping to raise questions about a formerly obscure policy, which they themselves did not even learn about until last week. “All we want is fair treatment for all of these children, including Sarah,” they said in a statement.

On Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius fired back at Republican lawmakers who accused her of improperly soliciting funds from private companies to help fund an effort to increase enrollment in the Affordable Care Act.

Appearing before the House Education & the Workforce Committee, Sebelius confirmed reports that she asked two private organizations that are not regulated by HHS — H&R Block and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — to contribute to Enroll America, a 501 (c)(3) dedicated to implementing the health care law, and insisted that she was operating under authority found out in the Public Health Service Act and relying on the precedent of predecessors who also formed public-private partnerships to promote health initiatives. The Act allows the secretary to “support by grant or contract (and to encourage others to support) private nonprofit entities working in health information and health promotion, preventive health services, and education in the appropriate use of health care.”

“There were a very small handful of calls I made at the request [of Enroll America] and two involved actual fundraising solicitations, exactly what my predecessors have done, exactly the kind of public-private partnership that we anticipated would happen,” Sebelius told Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), promising to “make available” the history of officials in the Bush and Clinton administrations raising private funds for programs like Medicare Part D and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

“I could legally solicit funds from anybody regulated by our office, I chose not to do that, but promoting a public-private partnership, you bet,” she explained. Sebelius noted that she made five phone calls on behalf of Enroll America aside from H&R Block and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, including Johnson & Johnson, Essentia Health, and Kaiser, but did not ask those organizations for financial contributions.

Indeed, it appears that Bush administration officials relied on similar authority to promote enrollment in Medicare Part D, a drug benefit for seniors.

Beginning in 2004, the Bush administration worked with nonprofits through the Access to Benefits Coalition (ABC) to ensure that “lower income beneficiaries know about and can make optimal use of new Medicare prescription drug benefits and all other available resources for saving money on prescription drugs.”

In a May 2004 press release HHS announced that it is “making an additional $4.6 million available to organize and fund community-based organizations to help low-income beneficiaries learn about the Medicare drug discount card program and how to enroll.”

“We have an energetic coalition from the public and private sectors that wants to make sure seniors take advantage of the substantive savings the Medicare-approved cards provide,” then- Secretary Tommy Thompson said. “We want to be aggressive in reaching out to these beneficiaries so they don’t miss out on this meaningful benefit to help pay for their medicines.”

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) — the GOP’s most vocal critic of Sebelius — likened her outreach efforts to the Iran-Contra scandal, though he himself raised money from private companies while serving as President George H. W. Bush’s education secretary.

A top Senate Republican is comparing Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to convicted felon Oliver North for soliciting private donations to help implement the Affordable Care Act.

In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) charged that Sebelius circumvented Congress’ refusal to provide funds for the administration’s health care law by raising those dollars from outside groups, just as “Col. North was accused of using money raised in an arms-for-hostages swap with Iran to fund and work with private organizations providing military support to rebel armies in Nicaragua.”

In 1987, North admitted that he lied to Congress about his role in the Iran-Contra scandal — in which officials secretly sold arms to Iran to fund a resistance movement to the government in Nicaragua — and shred documents to cover-up the government’s actions. He was indicted on 16 counts and convicted of three: accepting an illegal gratuity, aiding and abetting in the obstruction of a congressional inquiry, and ordering the destruction of documents.

“With Iran-Contra, Congress had also prohibited support for the rebels, while in the case of health-care funding, Congress has refused to provide the amounts that the administration has asked for,” Alexander wrote. “But the principle and the legal prohibitions are the same.” Republican chairmen and ranking Republicans on five congressional committees have asked the Government Accountability Office to look into the matter.

Obama administration officials insist that Sebelius was following authority laid out in the Public Health Service Act — which allows the secretary to “support by grant or contract (and to encourage others to support) private nonprofit entities working in health information and health promotion, preventive health services, and education in the appropriate use of health care” — but “has made no fundraising requests to entities regulated by HHS.” The New York Times reported on May 12 that Sebelius did solicit donations from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and H&R Block.

Indeed, asking private organizations to contribute to administration causes is old practice in Washington, as Alexander himself knows.

In 1991, while serving as Secretary of Education for President George H. W. Bush, Alexander actively and enthusiastically sought private dollars to fund the administration’s education initiative, America 2000. Alexander crisscrossed the country to sell the program after Congress failed to approve Bush’s education funding request.

As he explained in a San Diego Union-Tribune op-ed on Sep. 27, 1992, “President Bush asked Congress to appropriate a half-billion dollars to redesign such new American schools. Congress balked, the business community didn’t. The president has asked American businesses to raise $200 million to fund design teams to help communities create such schools.”

Bush made the fundraising pitch in the Rose Garden in July of 1991 during an event with private donors, with Alexander standing by his side. “Funds are pouring in — I don’t want to say ‘pouring,’ because we’re going to put the arm on you all on in a minute here — but funds are coming in well,” the president said. “[A]lready $30 million has been raised, much of it from the corporations that are represented here today.”
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A top Senate Republican who compared the Obama administration’s efforts to solicit private donations for a campaign encouraging Americans to enroll in the Affordable Care Act to the Iran-Contra scandal asked for private donations to fund education reform while serving in the George H. W. Bush administration.

On Saturday, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) criticized Sebelius for asking businesses and other community organizations to support an enrollment campaign spearheaded by Enroll America, a nonprofit organization working to convince people to sigh up for health care coverage. Alexander said Sebelius’ actions should “cease immediately and should be fully investigated by Congress.”

He cited a report by the Iran-Contra Congressional Joint Select Committee, which says “Congress’s exclusive control over the expenditure of funds cannot legally be evaded through the use of gifts or donations to the executive branch.” Since news broke of Sebelius’ activities on Friday, Republicans have argued that the secretary is raising private funds to work around Congressional refusal to appropriate federal dollars for implementation. Administration officials insist, however, that Sebelius was following authority laid out in the Public Health Service Act and “has made no fundraising requests to entities regulated by HHS.”

But in 1991, while serving as Secretary of Education for President George H. W. Bush, Lamar actively and enthusiastically sought private dollars to fund the administration’s education initiative, America 2000. The plan encouraged states and localities to commit themselves to six broad national education goals and standards and aspired to establish 535 “New American Schools” by the year 2000.

Alexander crisscrossed the country to sell the initiative on behalf of the administration after Congress failed to approve Bush’s education funding request. The president announced the formation of the nonprofit New American Schools Development Corp. and tasked it with raising $200 million to design new school models that communities can adopt, even planning a special meeting with businesses at Camp David to drum up support for more donations.

“Funds are pouring in — I don’t want to say ‘pouring,’ because we’re going to put the arm on you all on in a minute here — but funds are coming in well,” Bush said at the White House in July of 1991. “[A]lready $30 million has been raised, much of it from the corporations that are represented here today,” he added.

The administration continued to fundraise for the effort, with Alexander himself making a pitch. Responding to a Associated Press report from August of 1991, which noted that businesses are hesitant to commit additional dollars to new causes during the recession, Alexander said, “In my opinion, the more you ask for the more you get. We’ve been very timid about asking American businesses to support elementary and secondary education, tiptoeing around the edges,” he added. “We shouldn’t do that. This is a big, rich generous country and we’ve got plenty of money for all the innovations, especially innovations in excellence.”

Bush ultimately let the America 2000 legislative effort die in Congress, “gambling that he would have a second term to try once again with his initiatives.”

A top Republican senator is comparing Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ ongoing effort to implement the Affordable Care Act in partnership with the health care industry and nonprofit organizations to the Iran-Contra scandal, during which officials secretly sold arms to Iran to fund a resistance movement in Nicaragua.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) made the comments on Saturday, after the Washington Post reported that Sebelius is asking industry groups and other community organizations to support efforts encouraging people to enroll in the new health care exchanges established under the health care law.

Alexander said Sebelius’ actions should “cease immediately and should be fully investigated by Congress.” He cited a report by the Iran-Contra Congressional Joint Select Committee, which says “Congress’s exclusive control over the expenditure of funds cannot legally be evaded through the use of gifts or donations to the executive branch.” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) agreed, telling the Post, “I will be seeking more information from the Administration about these actions to help better understand whether there are conflicts of interest and if it violated federal law.”

Administration officials insist, however, that Sebelius was following authority laid out in the Public Health Service Act and “has made no fundraising requests to entities regulated by HHS.” “For the last several months the Secretary has been working with a full range of stakeholders who share in the mission of getting Americans the help they need and deserve,” Jason Young, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, told ThinkProgress.

He explained that Sebelius is operating under a special section of the Public Health Service Act that allows the secretary to “support by grant or contract (and to encourage others to support) private nonprofit entities working in health information and health promotion, preventive health services, and education in the appropriate use of health care.”

Indeed, officials from Republican administrations appear to have relied on similar authority to promote health initiatives, suggesting that the GOP’s attacks may be motivated by politics rather than preventing wrongdoing.

Shortly after President George W. Bush’s Medicare Part D reforms went into effect in January of 2006, Mark McClellan, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), told the House Ways and Means Committee that the Bush administration “began reaching out to develop partnerships” with industry and community groups since 2004, “held training sessions around the country to education our partners” and ran “print, radio and television advertisements” to “raise awareness and assist beneficiaries and their care givers in making decisions about prescription drugs.”
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Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced on Monday that, for now, states will not be able to receive full federal funding if they choose to implement partial Medicaid expansions. States will need to fully expand the program to be eligible for the matching funds under Obamacare that will offset the cost of the program.

Although the Supreme Court upheld the bulk of the landmark health reform law last summer, Obamacare’s proposed Medicaid expansion was scaled back when the court ruled that states should be able to decide whether or not to expand their programs. Since then, GOP governors have been digging in their heels against reform, refusing to expand their states’ Medicaid pools to extend affordable insurance to millions of low-income Americans. That’s led lawmakers in several GOP-run states, such as Texas and Louisiana, to toy with the idea of partially expanding Medicaid in individual counties as a way of overcoming their governors’ continued obstruction.

But Sebelius has confirmed that pursuing that option will make states ineligible for the matching funds that the federal government will offer to the states that choose to fully expand Medicaid:

[W]e explain how Exchanges and Medicaid administrative costs will be funded and how we will continue exploring opportunities to provide States additional support for the administrative costs of eligibility changes. We clarify in our new guidance that states have the flexibility in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program to provide premium assistance for Exchange plans as well as to adopt “bridge plans” that offer coverage through both Medicaid and Exchanges – keeping individuals and families together when they cross the line between Exchanges and Medicaid. And, while the law does not create an option for enhanced match for a partial or phased-in Medicaid expansion to 133 percent of poverty, we will consider waivers at the regular matching rate now and, in 2017 when the 100 percent federal funding for the expansion group is slightly reduced, broad-based State Innovation Waivers.

We hope states will take advantage of the substantial resources available to help them insure more of their residents. As an independent report highlighted, “Accounting for factors that reduce costs, states as a whole are likely to see net savings from the Medicaid expansion.”

In fact, several independent reports have highlighted the cost-cutting potential of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.

Without full federal matching funds for partial expansions, the stakes have been raised for recalcitrant GOP governors and legislatures, who control the state governments of seven out of the ten least-insured cities in America.

Friday marks exactly one year since the Health and Human Services Department overruled the FDA to restrict access to emergency contraception for women under the age of 17, disregarding the FDA’s recommendation that Plan B — which medical research shows is actually safer than aspirin — should be available to women of all ages. When HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius rejected the FDA’s guidelines on emergency contraception last year, some Democratic lawmakers suggested that decision was politically motivated rather than scientifically based.

Now, with the presidential election behind them, women’s health advocates are renewing their pressure on the Obama administration to reverse that policy:

“We are asking Secretary Sebelius to go back and take another look at the science, the medical evidence … and see if there’s a way to come to agreement to make this product more easily available to the women who need it,” says Kirsten Moore, president and CEO of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project. [...]

Moreover, Moore says, she thinks the election shows that there would be no political price to be paid by the administration for making what advocates say is the science-based decision.

“If there was concern that doing the right thing by emergency contraception was going to get people into trouble,” she says, “I think that question’s been asked and answered politically.”

Under the current federal guidelines, women younger than 17 years old must obtain a prescription from their doctor before being able to purchase Plan B. And the age restrictions have further complicated the stigma around emergency contraception, so even those over the age of 17 run into roadblocks when they attempt to legally purchase Plan B over the counter. Pharmacists often falsely tell women they may not purchase emergency contraception without a prescription, or incorrectly deny Plan B to men, or simply refuse to dispense emergency contraception for their own personal reasons.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has criticized the Obama administration’s age restrictions for posing a significant hurdle to the young women who need access to emergency contraception in a timely manner, especially since Plan B is the most effective when it’s taken within 24 hours of sexual contact. And the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recently recommended that all forms of birth control should be easily accessible over the counter, since women more regularly take effective forms of birth control when they don’t face any roadblocks to accessing them.

Kirsten Moore also believes the voters who reelected President Obama sent a strong message to his administration about their position on these issues — and Obama now has an obligation to follow through for them. “The voters said very clearly this past November that when it comes to women’s health, they think that prevention is a good thing; providing contraception is a good thing; reducing barriers to access, whether it be cost, is a good thing,” she explained to NPR. “And they supported a candidate who clearly made that a part of his message.”

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a slew of important new Obamacare rules and regulations today, continuing a widely expected post-election effort to successfully implement President Obama’s landmark health care reform law by 2014.

In a call with reporters, CMS and HHS outlined the new proposed rules, which instruct insurers, providers, and governmental institutions on how they must proceed in implementing Obamacare measures — ranging from a ban on discriminating against Americans with pre-existing medical conditions to public wellness initiatives such as coverage for employees’ gym use. Here are the three most important things you need to know about the new rules:

1) Insurers will be prohibited from discriminating against Americans with pre-existing conditions. Long considered one of the health insurance industry’s most odious practices, refusing to extend coverage to Americans suffering from a pre-existing medical condition will soon be a thing of the past. The first of CMS’s proposed rules mandates that insurance companies will need to base their premium rates solely on an individual’s age, family size, geography, and history of tobacco use — preventing discrimination against Americans for any other reason, such as their gender or their chronic illnesses. The rule will also set strict limits on how much insurers can vary the premiums they charge Americans based on these factors, marking an end to gender rating practices that charged women more than men for the same medical services. This will be a boon to the over 120 million Americans who suffer from a pre-existing condition in one form or another.

2) State exchanges will establish a standard of “essential health benefits” that every plan will be required to cover. Obamacare will require the plans offered under state-wide health insurance exchanges in 2014 to clear federal benchmarks across ten “essential health benefit” categories, including access to maternal care, mental health services, preventative health care, and prescription drug coverage. These assured benefits — which are supposed to reflect the level of coverage offered by a typical employer-sponsored plan — will help correct for spotty coverage that does not actually meet Americans’ medical needs. CMS’s proposed rule requires state exchanges to offer to the same level of coverage as a statewide benchmark health plan of the state’s choosing. If a state’s chosen benchmark plan does not cover all of Obamacare’s required benefit categories — for instance, by not offering mental health services — then the federal government will intervene and supplement that plan so that it does meet the health law’s coverage requirements. The rule also creates standards for prescription drug coverage so that such coverage actually meets Americans’ health care needs and prohibits health plans from designing their benefits in a way that discriminates against certain groups of Americans.

3) Wellness programs will help promote public health and curb health care costs. The last of the three proposed rules is joint guidance from HHS, the Treasury, and the Department of Labor regarding sponsorship of workplace wellness programs. Obamacare encourages preventative health initiatives and a transition from “sick care” to actual “health care” in an effort to both improve Americans’ quality of life and lower national health spending. Under the proposed rule, employers are encouraged to continue both participatory and health-contingent wellness programs — such as subsidizing the cost of employees’ fitness center memberships or enrolling employees in tobacco-cessation programs — in exchange for federal rewards.

These rules will give states more clarity as they move forward in implementing the Affordable Care Act. Although many Obamacare details must still be worked out — particularly regarding the statewide insurance exchanges — the reform law has made enormous strides in the last year that will result in a fairer, more accessible, and more affordable American health care system that is a marked improvement over the pre-Obamacare era. “It’s important to remember what this market looked like back in 2009… We were definitely headed in the wrong direction,” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said on the conference call.