Thread: $1 Abortion Surchange In Obamacare

Looks like they lied about Obamocare not using tax dollars for abortion. It would not of passed if this was disclosed earlier.





$1 abortion surcharge in Obamacare

Published: 1:18 PM 03/13/2012



By Caroline May
Bio | Archive | Email Caroline May


Caroline May is a reporter for The Daily Caller.



Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (Photo: AP)





The Department of Health and Human Services has finalized the policies governing state health care exchanges under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and with it the rules governing abortion coverage under the new law.
Life News reports that “the concern pro-life organizations had about the ObamaCare legislation funding abortions has been confirmed.”

Indeed pro-lifers have long known that the health care law, specifically Section 1303, would require enrollees in the health care exchanges to pay a separate monthly surcharge for abortion coverage.
With the final HHS rules set in stone, the surcharge is a dollar.
“We knew it would be there because of the law but they have confirmed now with their final rule that it will be a one dollar surcharge,” a pro-life House staffer told The Daily Caller.

“In all likelihood a lot of people are going to be purchasing a plan and if they are not paying attention when they purchase they are going to be paying a dollar a month surcharge for a service they are never going to use or want to use,” the staffer added. “Really it boils down to an accounting gimmick anyway.”
Pro-lifers are predictably not pleased.



“Obamacare nearly collapsed under the allegations that the law would use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions. Because of a useless executive order, which was supposed to forbid tax dollars from paying for abortions, that swayed self-professed pro-life Members of Congress to vote for the monstrosity, the bill passed,” Kristan Hawkins, executive director of Students for Life of America, told TheDC.
“Now final rules from HHS could not be clearer: taxpayers, whether they are pro-life or pro-choice, will certainly be paying for abortions,” said Hawkins.
The rules go into effect in 2014. The Office of Personnel Management will set specific standards for multi-state plans in future rule making, Life News reports.
Follow Caroline on Twitter






Read more: $1 abortion surcharge in Obamacare | Obamacare | HHS Rules | The Daily Caller

The next big scandal: taxpayer-funding for abortion

Published: 10:41 AM 03/13/2012



By Yates WalkerConservative Activist

Bio | Archive

Get Yates Walker Feed


If you thought the tea party was over, think again. Kathleen Sebelius just shot a flare into a dynamite factory.
On Monday night, Ms. Sebelius’s Department of Health and Human Services released a final decree concerning a troubling codicil in the individual mandate section of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Boil it down, and it comes to this: Next year, every American adult will be required by law to pay for abortions.
It’s not easy to pull the pin from the same grenade twice, but the Democrats continue to amaze.
I love this scandal. It doesn’t even have a name yet. It hasn’t even begun, and I’m already head-over-heels. It’s beautiful from so many angles. Let me count the ways.

First: There’s no way out.
Republicans aren’t interested in fixing the law. They’re committed to repealing Obamacare in its entirety, and the vast majority of Americans agree with them. As a corollary, the Democrats can’t even enter the “fix-it” conversation publicly because it’s a Pandora’s Box. There aren’t a few flaws that need to be fixed in Obamacare. As written, the law is flawed to its core. One policy analyst whose full-time job is to study Obamacare said, “It’s as if a bunch of plumbers, electricians and contractors showed up at the same work site and started to build without a blueprint.”
One fix would lead to another and another until the whole program became a laughingstock. Right now, over 60% of Americans disapprove of the law. The Democrats know that sunlight would be Obamacare’s death knell.
Second: Taxpayer-funded abortions
That hideous phrase is going to be tattooed on every local, state and federal Democratic candidate from now until November.
Roughly half of America believes that abortion itself is immoral and should be illegal, but a full 75% of our citizenry are against the use of our hard-earned tax dollars to pay for them. It’s difficult to get 75% of Americans to agree on the color of the sky. But when it comes to taxpayer-funded abortions, their minds are made up, and they are firmly in the GOP’s corner.
Third: This will kick-start the tea party.
Many on the left want to believe that the tea party is dead and gone. It isn’t. They haven’t been demonstrating, but they’re still meeting regularly in local chapters all over the country. They still send out email updates. They still get together to hear and vet candidates.
In June of 2009, they rose up and organized against Obamacare. They made their congressmen brave when they went back to Washington. Taxpayer-funded abortions are just as likely to draw their ire in 2012. And today, they’re battle-tested, seasoned activists.
Expect to hear from them soon.


Fourth: It was foreseeable and entirely avoidable.
When Scott Brown won “The People’s Seat” and Ted Kennedy’s old office, the Democrats knew that they couldn’t send Obamacare to the Senate. Brown won his historic election on the promise that he would be the deciding vote against Obamacare. With the path to remedial arbitration gone, the Democrats had two choices: Scrap the bill and try again in a bipartisan fashion or ram through the fatally flawed, politically toxic, abortion-laden HR 3200. They chose the latter, and their just deserts are about to be served.
Fifth: Obama gets caught in a bald-faced lie
I don’t have personal enmity for the president, but he lied and lied big on March 21st, 2010, and I’m glad he’s getting caught on such a public stage.
Just shy of two years ago, pro-life Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak and a small band of his cohorts became the final Democratic House votes needed to pass Obamacare. The federal abortion provisions in HR 3200 made Stupak’s group uncomfortable. As they were getting ready to buckle, Bart Stupak asked Barack Obama to lie for him, so that he could lie to his constituents. And the president did. He issued an executive order which stated that no public funds would be used to pay for abortions.
Of course, the executive order was as meaningless then as it is today, but at the time, people believed him. Obama used the weight of his office to intentionally deceive Americans so that he could pass legislation they didn’t want. And now his deceit is public.
Sixth: Political climate change
God knows that if anyone can screw this up, the Republican Party’s leadership can. But, for the moment, the GOP was just dealt a fistful of aces.
Enough of the lachrymose wailings about weak candidates. Enough with the detail-quibbling. It’s time to go on offense. Our activists and candidates need to start every interview with “taxpayer-funded abortions” and end them with “abortions, funded by American taxpayers.” There’s no effective defense for that part of Obamacare. That line is a weapon. We need to wield it ad nauseum.
Politically, conservatives should be thrilled with the opportunity this new dynamic presents. The one thing that the Democrats do infinitely better than the Republicans is attack. Because we stand on principles, we get too comfortable in a defensive posture. The Democrats stand on emotion, so they have no choice but to attack. In politics, unfortunately, the general perception is that whoever is on offense must be making the better argument.



On the broader scale, this unfolding abortion fiasco is deeply troubling. It’s beyond politics. Our president and his administration have shown a unique and truly breathtaking combination of thoughtlessness and arrogance. Even if one believes all of the silly, hideous motives and actions that were assigned to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in the run-up to the Iraq war, at least their evil was wrought on non-Americans. At least it could be written off plausibly as national defense, an agreed-upon public good.
Obamacare, as it stands, forces Americans to buy something they may not want and subsidize something they find morally reprehensible. Both the individual mandate and taxpayer-funded abortions are attacks on American citizens’ freedom. The latter, according to Christianity, Judaism and Islam, essentially compels the religious citizen to sin in the eyes of God. These mandates are unique in American government and foreign to American history and culture, yet our president doesn’t seem to be struggling with their issuance.
Thomas Jefferson famously wrote, “When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”
Judging recent activity, I think it’s pretty clear that our government isn’t afraid of us anymore. If we’re at a point of balance, last night’s news from Sebelius’s office could well be a catalyst that drives us toward either of Jefferson’s endpoints.
Yates Walker is a conservative activist and writer. Before becoming involved in politics, he served honorably as a paratrooper and a medic in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. He can be reached at yateswalker@gmail.com.


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/13/th...#ixzz1p6WgQ5IM


Read more: The next big scandal: taxpayer-funding for abortion | The Daily Caller



Read more: The next big scandal: taxpayer-funding for abortion | The Daily Caller

Obamacare $1 Abortion Payment Surcharge Upsets Pro-Lifers

by Steven Ertelt | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 3/14/12 11:56 AM

Leading pro-life organizations are upset by the news that the Obama administration has issued the final rules on abortion funding governing the controversial health care law allowing for a $1 abortion insurance payment surcharge.

As LifeNews initially reported, the Department of Health and Human Services has issued a final rule regarding establishment of the state health care exchanges required under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

As a knowledgeable pro-life source on Capitol Hill informed LifeNews, as authorized by Obamacare, “The final rule provides for taxpayer funding of insurance coverage that includes elective abortion” and the change to longstanding law prohibiting virtually all direct taxpayer funding of abortions (the Hyde Amendment) is accomplished through an accounting arrangement described in the Affordable Care Act and reiterated in the final rule issued today.

“To comply with the accounting requirement, plans will collect a $1 abortion surcharge from each premium payer,” the pro-life source informed LifeNews. “The enrollee will make two payments, $1 per month for abortion and another payment for the rest of the services covered. As described in the rule, the surcharge can only be disclosed to the enrollee at the time of enrollment. Furthermore, insurance plans may only advertise the total cost of the premiums without disclosing that enrollees will be charged a $1 per month fee to pay directly subsidize abortions.”

Tony Perkins of the Family research Council was quite upset by the news.
“The day that Bart Stupak said would never come is here. Almost two years after the former congressman agreed to an executive order “banning” abortion funding in ObamaCare, the President finally proved how useless it was. For all the time spent trying to shield taxpayers from any involvement in the abortion business, the executive order dissolved this week into what it always was: a meaningless piece of White House letterhead,” he said. “As part of the new regulations on how state health exchanges will work, anyone enrolled in an insurance plan that covers abortion will be responsible for sharing the cost.”

He pointed out how HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius explained this way back in 2009. “[W]hether you’re male or female, whether you’re 75 or 25, you would all set aside a portion of your premium that would go into a fund, and it would not be earmarked for anything, it would be a separate [abortion] account that everyone in the exchange would pay… It is a bit confusing, but it’s really an accounting that would apply across the board and not just to women, and certainly not just to women who want to choose abortion coverage.”

“For all intents and purposes, this is just another mandate on abortion, which, like its contraception counterpart, makes no exemptions for people with moral objections. Despite the accounting gimmicks, taxpayers will still have to reach into their own pockets and fund the procedure,” Perkins continued.
The Life Legal Defense Foundation also complained about the new rules.


“The rule provides for taxpayer funding of insurance plans that include elective abortion. This departure from the longstanding policy is accomplished through an accounting arrangement described in the Affordable Care Act and reiterated in the final rule,” the pro-life legal group said.

LLDF continued: “To comply with the accounting requirement, plans collect a $1 abortion surcharge from each premium payer. The enrollee will make two payments, $1 per month for abortion and another payment for the rest of the services covered. As described in the rule, the surcharge can only be disclosed to the enrollee at the time of enrollment. Furthermore, insurance plans may only advertise the total cost of the premiums without disclosing that enrollees will be charged a $1 per month to directly subsidize abortions.”

“The final rule mentions, but does not address concerns about abortion coverage in “multi-state” plans administered by the Federal Government’s Office of Personal Management (OPM). There is nothing in the Affordable Care Act to prevent some OPM (government administered) plans from covering elective abortion, and questions remain about whether OPM multi-state plans will include elective abortion. If such plans do include abortion, there are concerns that the abortion coverage will even be offered in states that have prohibited abortion coverage in their state exchanges. The final rule indicates that specific standards for multi-state plans will be forthcoming in future rules from OPM,” LLDF said.
The group concluded: “The final rule extinguishes the hope that the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would respect the rights of the unborn and the religious liberty of pro-life citizens who have conscientious objections to their tax dollars being used to fund abortion.”

The pro-life women’s group Feminists for Life also complained about the $1 abortion surcharge.
“The President’s promise to women and children has been broken,” said FFL President Serrin Foster. “This is most disappointing because it affects those most vulnerable–the poor and working poor, young working women who are otherwise uninsured, and students who are not on their parents plan, and who now be forced to pay $1 for an abortion surcharge through the exchange. A dollar is a dollar too much for abortion. Abortion does nothing to address the unmet needs of women.”

“If abortion was such a great thing, why keep this coverage such a secret?” Foster asked.

Nestled within the “individual mandate” in the Obamacare act — that portion of the Act requiring every American to purchase government — approved insurance or pay a penalty — is an “abortion premium mandate.” This mandate requires all persons enrolled in insurance plans that include elective abortion coverage to pay a separate premium from their own pockets to fund abortion. As a result, many pro-life Americans will have to decide between a plan that violates their consciences by funding abortion, or a plan that may not meet their health needs.

As LifeNews reported, the final HHS rule mentions, but does not address concerns about abortion coverage in “multi-state” plans administered by the Federal Government’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
“There is nothing in the Affordable Care Act to prevent some OPM (government administered) plans from covering elective abortion, and questions remain about whether OPM multi-state plans will include elective abortion,” a pro-life source on Capital Hill said. “If such plans do include abortion, there are concerns that the abortion coverage will even be offered in states that have prohibited abortion coverage in their state exchanges.”
The final rule indicates: “Specific standards for multi-state plans will be described in future rulemaking published by OPM…”
Set to go into effect in 2014, the unconstitutional provisions found in Section 1303 of the Obamacare Act compel enrollees in certain health plans to pay a separate abortion premium from their own pocket, without the ability to decline abortion coverage based on religious or moral objection.
That provision was the subject of a legal document that Bioethics Defense Fund’s Dorinda C. Bordlee, lead counsel for the group, submitted to the Supreme Court in February.

“This violates the Free Exercise Clause because religious exemptions are made for groups such as the Amish who morally object to purchasing any insurance, but no exemptions are made for Americans who have religious or moral objections to abortion,” Bordlee said.
“President Obama’s healthcare overhaul includes an ‘abortion premium mandate’ that blatantly violates the conscience rights and First Amendment religious rights of millions of Americans,” AUL president Charmaine Yoest said. “Nowhere in the Constitution does it require Americans to violate their beliefs and pay for abortions.”

ADF Senior Counsel Steven Aden says Americans should not be compelled to pay for other people’s elective abortions.


“No one should be forced to violate their conscience by paying for abortions, but that’s precisely what ObamaCare does,” he explained. “ObamaCare requires that employees enrolled in certain health plans pay a separate insurance premium specifically to pay for other people’s elective abortions and offers no opt-out for religious or moral reasons. Such a mandate cannot survive constitutional scrutiny.”
BDF president and general counsel Nikolas Nikas said the individual mandate not only forces individuals into private purchases, it also effectively mandates personal payments for surgical abortion coverage, without exemption for an individual’s religious or moral objections.

He told LifeNews in an email, “Like a Russian nesting doll, the individual mandate has nestled within it a hidden, but equally unconstitutional scheme that effectively imposes an ‘abortion premium mandate’ that violates the free exercise rights of millions of Americans who have religious objections to abortion.”
Obamacare $1 Abortion Payment Surcharge Upsets Pro-Lifers | LifeNews.com

First Abortion Pills For All, Now Surgical Abortions, Too?

• 
• Alan Sears
  
  

Mar 15, 2012


When the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, i.e., ObamaCare, was being debated in public and in Congress during 2010, Americans who supported life were told again and again that the legislation would not cover abortion. But like so many other aspects of Obama’s healthcare overhaul, what was promised and what was received turned out to be two different things – especially considering that many legislators read the bill only after they signed it into law.
For example, the Obama administration has now made it clear that the individual mandate in ObamaCare will contain a charge—an “abortion premium mandate”—to forcibly collect monies from millions of Americans who participate in state-administered “insurance exchanges” to pay for elective abortions. And nothing in the final rule that the Department of Health and Human Services issued March 12 concerning the establishment of exchanges required by ObamaCare alters that in the least.
The administration’s plan is to “collect a $1 abortion surcharge from each premium payer” once ObamaCare goes into effect in 2014. Or to put it another way, Americans enrolled in federally-subsidized ObamaCare plans will pay $1 a month to subsidize the abortion industry whether they are pro-life or pro-death, religiously opposed to abortion or religiously indifferent, morally outraged by killing children in the womb or morally obtuse on the matter.
This means President Obama’s war on rights of conscience continues apace.
But since Americans should not be compelled to pay for other people’s elective abortions, the Alliance Defense Fund joined the Bioethics Defense Fund in filing a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of numerous pro-life medical groups on Feb. 13.
The brief lays out the case by highlighting the “inescapable requirements upon all individuals who are, even unwittingly, enrolled in a health plan--either on their own or by their employer--that happens to include elective abortion coverage.” These “enrollees are compelled by the Act to pay a separate premium from their own pocket to the insurer’s actuarial fund designated solely for the purpose of paying for other people’s elective abortions.” Moreover, the requirement denies “enrollees the ability to decline abortion coverage based on religious or moral objections.”
Sadly, it appears that just as Congress passed ObamaCare under the cover of night in March 2010, the aspects of the legislation tied to the abortion mandate were done in an underhanded fashion as well:

Due to the public uproar [over]…elective abortion coverage, the drafters [of the Act] devised a scheme to avoid the direct federal funding of abortion. This goal of avoiding the use of tax-payer subsidies for abortion coverage was unfortunately achieved by a means that violates the First Amendment; namely, by compelling the taxpayer to personally pay a separate abortion premium.

There is too much at stake for Americans to simply look the other way on this particular issue. The same president who issued a mandate in February to force most employers, including religious ones, to provide insurance that covers contraceptives and abortifacients for their employees—whether the employer has a faith-based objection or not—is also telling Americans they will fund the elective, surgical abortions of other Americans.
The First Amendment and our rights of conscience are at stake. No less than freedom itself is threatened by this mandate.


First Abortion Pills For All, Now Surgical Abortions, Too? - Alan Sears - Townhall Conservative Columnists - Page 1