Tag Archives: Reproductive Health

‘What The Health?’ Campaign Promises Kept, Plus ‘Nerd Reports’

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https://khn.org/news/podcast-khns-what-the-health-campaign-promises-kept-plus-nerd-reports/

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President Donald Trump managed to fulfill — at least in part — two separate campaign promises this week.

To the delight of anti-abortion groups, the administration issued proposed rules that would make it difficult if not impossible for Planned Parenthood to continue to participate in Title X, the federal family-planning program. And Congress cleared for Trump’s signature a “right-to-try” bill aimed at making it easier for patients with terminal illnesses to obtain experimental medications.

Also this week, the National Center for Health Statistics and the Congressional Budget Office issued reports about Americans both with and without health insurance and the cost of subsidizing health insurance to the federal government.

And May’s “Bill of the Month” installment features some very expensive orthopedic screws.

This week’s panelists for KHN’s “What the Health?” are Julie Rovner of Kaiser Health News, Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times, Sarah Kliff of Politico and Alice Ollstein of Talking Points Memo.

Among the takeaways from this week’s podcast:

  • The Trump administration’s proposed rule to cut Title X reproductive health funding for groups that perform abortions was designed to meet demands from the president’s religious supporters, but it could backfire by mobilizing liberal voters.
  • The changes being considered might also open the door for some religious-based groups that don’t support abortion — or perhaps even contraception — to get federal Title X funding.
  • Conservatives’ campaign to get a “right-to-try” bill through Congress has been driven in large part by individual patient stories.
  • New data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week shows the uninsured rate did not grow in 2017, despite a number of changes that the Trump administration made to the marketplace and federal promotion of it.

Plus, for “extra credit,” the panelists recommend their favorite health stories of the week they think you should read, too.

 

Is it a gag rule after all? A closer look at changes to Title X funding regarding abortion.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/05/23/is-it-a-gag-rule-what-changes-to-family-planning-funds-and-abortion-referrals-might-mean/

The Trump administration has released the language of a proposed rule on federal family planning funding, and abortion rights activists are raising alarm about it.

When health officials revealed Friday that they would be filing a change to which clinics would be eligible for funding, they emphasized that it was not a “gag rule.” Instead, they said they were proposing to strip away a current mandate. It requires organizations that receive Title X funding to counsel women about abortion and provide them with referrals to abortion services. Under the new rules, a provider wouldn’t have to talk about abortion at all.

This was part of a plan that would require “a bright line of physical as well as financial separation” between Title X family planning programs and ones in which abortion is “supported or referred for as a method of family planning.”

“Contrary to recent media reports,” the White House said in a statement that day, “HHS’s proposal does not include the so-called ‘gag rule’ on counseling about abortion.” The statement contrasted the new rule with a Reagan administration policy in 1988 that banned any mention of abortion.

The Department of Health and Human Services declined to make the full proposed rule available last week, but it was posted on the HHS website Tuesday. It’s consistent with the message the administration provided Friday but is more explicit about what can and cannot be said.

Page 119 states that “A Title X project may not perform, promote, refer for, or support, abortion as a method of family planning, nor take any other affirmative action to assist a patient to secure such an abortion.”

The one exception is if a woman “clearly states that she has already decided to have an abortion.” In this situation, a doctor or other provider should provide “a list of licensed, qualified comprehensive health service providers (some, but not all, of which also provide abortion, in addition to comprehensive prenatal care.)”

So is it or isn’t it a “gag rule”?

HHS’s view is that there is a difference between counseling and referrals. Counseling — as long as it is not “directive” or expressing an opinion — is allowed. It stated that referrals for abortion are, “by definition, directive” and, therefore, not allowed under its new interpretation of a 2000 regulation that pregnancy counseling be nondirective.

Planned Parenthood, which serves about 41 percent of the patients who receive services through Title X, and other groups that support abortion rights, beg to differ. On Wednesday, Planned Parenthood started a #NoGagRule campaign that will include a rally in front of the U.S. Capitol at 5:30 p.m.

“This is one of the largest-scale and most dangerous attacks we’ve seen on women’s rights and reproductive health care in this country. This policy is straight out of the Handmaid’s Tale — yet, it’s taking effect in America in 2018,” Dawn Laguens, executive vice president for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement that referenced Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel.

Georgeanne Usova, legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the policy is “putting the health and lives of countless people at risk in service of this administration’s extreme antiabortion agenda.”

Likewise Jenn Conti, a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, said the ” ‘gag rule’ is not only unconscionable, but it undermines medical ethics by allowing health-care professionals to withhold accurate and timely medical information from patients.”

 

 

California Suing Trump Administration Over Rollback Of Birth Control Rule

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https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/california-trump-birth-control_us_59d80b87e4b0f6eed35065d4

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“The California Department of Justice will fight to protect every woman’s right to healthcare, including reproductive healthcare.”

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) announced Friday he has filed a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s decision to end insurance coverage requirements for birth control.

Becerra’s suit comes hours after Trump’s administration announced a new rule that will allow all employers to opt out of including birth control in their health care plans, rolling back an Obama-era mandate that guaranteed 62 million women access to contraception at no cost.

“Donald Trump wants businesses and corporations to control family planning decisions rather than a woman in consultation with her doctor. These anti-women’s health regulations prove once again that the Trump Administration is willing to trample on people’s rights,” Becerra said in a statement Friday. “The California Department of Justice will fight to protect every woman’s right to healthcare, including reproductive healthcare. We’ll see the Trump Administration in court.”

In announcing the decision, the administration argued the coverage requirement created a “substantial burden” on employers’ free exercise of religion as protected by the U.S. Constitution. The new regulations will allow any employer to deny coverage for contraception on religious and/or moral grounds.

This, Becerra argues, violates the Constitution as well as federal law.

The complaint makes the case that the rollback violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause by allowing employers to use their religious beliefs to deny women a health care benefit.

Becerra also argues the regulations violate the Fifth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

The new rules “specifically target and harm women,” reads the complaint. “The [Affordable Care Act] specifically contemplated disparities in health care costs between women and men, and specifically sought to rectify this problem by giving women cost-free preventative services. The new [regulations] undermine this action and is discriminatory to women.”

 The suit also contends the rules violate the federal Administrative Procedure Act, which requires a notice and comment period for major policy changes, and that the new rules will harm the state of California by burdening it with additional costs to fill coverage gaps.

“Millions of women in California may be left without access to contraceptives and counseling and the State will be shouldering that additional fiscal and administrative burden as women seek access for this coverage through state-funded programs,” reads the complaint.

Read the full complaint here.

Becerra filed the suit Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a similar suit Friday, also arguing the rules violate the Establishment and Equal Protection clauses.

“The Trump administration is forcing women to pay for their boss’s religious beliefs,” ACLU senior staff attorney Brigitte Amiri said in a statement.

Women’s health groups have also pushed back on the move, noting the low unintended pregnancy rates, as well as low abortion rates, since the birth control coverage mandate went into place.

Trump revives policy eliminating funding for foreign groups that provide abortion services

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Trump revives policy eliminating funding for foreign groups that provide abortion services

President Trump on Monday reinstated a US policy preventing foreign nonprofit groups that receive federal funds from administering abortions or providing abortion counseling or referrals.

Originally enacted by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, the “Mexico City Policy” was rescinded by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — and reinstated by George W. Bush and now Donald Trump — in the first days of each new administration.

Known as the “global gag rule” by pro-abortion rights groups, the Mexico City Policy goes a step further than existing legislation, which prevents federal dollars from being used for abortions. Instead, it prevents organizations that receive any federal funds from paying for their own abortion programs.

Existing legislation known as the Helms Amendment already prevents federal funding of foreign abortions “as a method of family planning,” a restriction abortion rights advocates say has led to excessive interpretation. George W. Bush’s administration clarified that the amendment exempted abortions performed in cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life would be endangered by the pregnancy.

Trump’s move forces nonprofit groups to choose between cutting abortion services altogether or looking to fill a major budget gap left by the withholding of federal dollars.

The executive order comes as part of a broader salvo on federally funded abortion and contraceptive coverage.

Separately, a bill under consideration by the House rules committee aims to change the Hyde Amendment, a provision in annual appropriations bills that prohibits federally funded abortions, into permanent law. The proposal would also make employers with insurance plans that cover abortion ineligible for tax credits under the Affordable Care Act.

Trump also issued an executive order on Friday that, depending on how the Department of Health and Human Services interprets it, could eliminate the ACA requirement that private insurers include contraception in their coverage.

Women’s March: Protesters fight for healthcare access, reproductive health

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Fears that the new White House administration will limit Americans’ access to healthcare inspired many physicians and healthcare advocates to join thousands of protesters and take to the streets Saturday as part of the Women’s March on Washington.

The protest was organized in response to the election of President Donald Trump. But concerns over the future of healthcare in the United States drove many to join the hundreds of thousands of women and men in rallies all over the country and the world.

“Right now, women’s health is in greater danger than it has been at any time in the last 3 or 4 decades,” Kyle Ragins, M.D., a board member of Doctors for America and an emergency resident at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Medscape Medical News.

Healthcare providers not only fear the impact of a repeal of the Affordable Care Act leaving millions without healthcare coverage, but they also worry that lawmakers aim to limit access and coverage for contraception, abortion and other women’s health services, and change the vaccination criteria for U.S. children.

Many protesters carried signs and banners with messages that support reproductive rights and “Medicare for All,” noted MedPage Today.

“We want women to have access to anything they need to make the right choices for their bodies,” Katie MacMillan, a fourth-year medical student at Quillen College of Medicine in Johnson City, Tennessee, told the publication.

The most immediate threat to healthcare access is the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Shortly after Donald Trump was sworn in as president, he issued an executive order to push for a quick repeal of President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare legislation.

Although many of the physicians interviewed by MedPage Today noted that the ACA was flawed, they also praised the fact that 20 million previously uninsured people received healthcare coverage under the health reform law. It was one reason why Ragins joined the protest. He told Medscape that he wanted Congress and the Trump administration to know that doctors see the benefits of the ACA every day.

But protesters vowed to fight for their right to healthcare. During a postmarch event, Planned Parenthood urged participants to call their senators urging them to protect their access to healthcare, The New York Times reported. Repeal of the ACA and defunding Planned Parenthood is going to “create havoc,” Cecile Richards told David Axelrod on “The Axe Files,” a podcast from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN.

Snapshot of Where Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Stand on Seven Health Care Issues

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Snapshot of Where Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Stand on Seven Health Care Issues

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While health care has not been central to the 2016 Presidential campaign, the election’s outcome will be a major determining factor in the country’s future health care policy. A number of issues have garnered media attention, including the future of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), rising prescription drug costs, and the opioid epidemic.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have laid out different approaches to addressing these and other health care issues. Central among these is their position on the future of the ACA. Hillary Clinton would maintain the ACA, and many of her policy proposals would build on provisions already in place. Donald Trump, in contrast, would fully repeal the ACA, and although his policy proposals and positions do not offer a full replacement plan, they do reflect an approach based on free market principles.

See where the candidates stand on seven key health policy issues.