Fix Health Care Policy

Gimmicks Won’t Resolve HHS Mandate’s Religious Liberty Assault

Friday afternoon announcements from the Obama Administration are the norm when the news is going to be controversial. In a late afternoon info dump yesterday, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) laid out further details on its so-called “accommodation” to the Obamacare anti-conscience mandate.

HHS released an advance notice of proposed rulemaking, soliciting comments (due 90 days after publication in the Federal Register on March 21) on its intended policy for religious employers who are not exempted from the anti-conscience mandate. As predicted, the suggested compromise is the same unworkable “accommodation” the Administration attempted to sell to the American people in a February 10 press conference.

This is just another attempt by Administration officials to dampen the widespread outcry over its coercive mandate that almost all employers provide and pay for abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization—regardless of moral or religious objections to such services.

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: document dump, HHS anti-conscience mandate, Obama administration, unworkable accommodation

President Obama’s Unworkable Non-Solution on Conscience

Today, President Obama unsuccessfully attempted to extricate himself from a political crisis of his own making.

The issue is Obamacare’s requirement that health insurers and employer-sponsored health plans cover federally mandated “preventive services” in their benefit packages—with no co-pays for enrollees—and the Administration’s subsequent regulatory requirement that those mandated preventive services include contraceptive products and services—including abortion-inducing drugs.

The “compromise” the President announced today is that contraception coverage “will be offered to women by their employers’ insurance companies directly, with no role for religious employers who oppose contraception. Insurance companies will be required to provide contraception coverage to these women free of charge.”  (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: abortifacients, compromise, contraceptives, Obama administration, preventive services, religious employers

Morning Bell: Obamacare’s Latest Victim Is Religious Freedom

It has not even been two years since Obamacare was enacted, and already the President’s health care law has taken another victim — the religious freedoms Americans hold dear, as reflected by the First Amendment.

The Obama Administration recently reaffirmed a rule under Obamacare that requires many religious employers to provide health care coverage for all FDA-approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and related education and counseling. On the grounds that certain FDA-approved contraceptive methods can sometimes “cause the demise of embryos both after and before uterine implantation,” many groups also believe that the rule forces them to cover abortion.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is calling the contraception mandate an “unprecedented” attack on religious freedom. And in statement after statement issued in diocese after diocese, many bishops are publicly declaring that they “cannot” and “will not” comply with “this unjust law.” As Cleveland Bishop Richard Lennon explained, “Unless this rule is overturned, Catholics will be compelled either to violate our consciences or to drop health care coverage for our employees.”  (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: Catholic Church, contraceptives, HHS rules, Obama administration, ObamaCare

Obama Donor Gets Plum Appointment on Federal Health IT Advisory Panel

A major donor to the Democratic Party has received favorable treatment from the Obama administration, including a choice appointment to a federal advisory committee, and lavish praise from the president himself.

Yet health information technology vendor Epic Systems Corp. opposes a key administration position on health IT. Its founder, Judith Faulkner, has spoken out on numerous occasions against “interoperability” in electronic medical records technology.

So why was Faulkner appointed to a 13-member panel charged with recommending how $19 billion in stimulus money be spent? One can’t help but notice that Faulkner and other epic employees have given nearly $300,000 to Democrats since 2006.  (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: Epic Systems Corp., federal advisory committee, health IT, Obama administration, ObamaCare

Hospitals’ Skepticism of New Obamacare Medicare Payment Scheme Grows

A frequent accusation against conservative Medicare reform proposals is that they would “end Medicare as we know it.” But the reality is that Obamacare has already accomplished this. One example is a new program that will, for the first time, attempt to pay for quality by penalizing hospitals that fail to meet bureaucratically created standards for quality and efficiency.

Achieving better value in Medicare should be a goal of any serious reform plan, but the new law’s solution is unlikely to succeed. Instead, it will negatively impact patients and the hospitals that serve them.

Obamacare sets up “value-based purchasing” for hospital payments under Medicare. Starting in October 2012, hospitals and other providers will see payments redistributed based on performance scores calculated according to the methodology chosen by the Obama Administration. Payments will be reduced across the board to a new, lower “base” payment, after which hospitals could receive “bonuses” for performing well on the quality measures.  (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: Medicare reform, Obama administration, ObamaCare, physician payments

Survey Cites Growing HSA Adoption

Healthcare Finance News reports on a new survey that shows a growing adoption of health savings accounts (HSAs) in health coverage. From January 2008 through January 2009, Celent’s latest HSA survey found a 46.1 percent increase among participants using the accounts. In the same period, respondents said their asset base grew 62.6 percent.

The article cites Celent executives projecting that HSAs “should survive current efforts by Congress and the Obama administration to reform health care because they represent one of the fastest-growing retail banking products.”

Tags: health savings accounts, HSA, Obama administration