A draft of a proposed rule change to the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate leaked to Vox suggests that the Trump administration is planning a major carve-out to the mandate, which has been subject of intense legal volleying and political debate.
The draft rule, dated May 23 and posted by Vox on Wednesday morning, would allow any employer—from small mom-and-pop shops to publicly-traded corporations—to opt out of the mandate on religious or moral grounds. It would also let insurers refrain from covering contraceptives for religious or moral reasons. The draft rule would allow individuals with religious or moral objections to refrain from participating in plans covering contraceptives.
The leak comes after the Trump administration signaled it would scale back the mandate via an interim final rule, a fast-tracked process that would allow the regulation to go into effect immediately after it’s finalized. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump signed a vague executive order on religious freedom, and a notice that a proposed rule had been sent to the Office of Management and Budget, which must approve it, was posted last week.
The draft rule published by Vox says that the goal of the departments behind the proposed regulation—the Department of Health and Human Services, the Treasury and the Department of Labor—”is to provide rules so that the healthcare system can be inclusive or people who have different conscientious views on certain sensitive matters.”
“Expanding the exemption removes religious and moral obstacles that entities and certain individuals may face who otherwise wish to participate in the healthcare market,” the draft rule goes on to say.
It requires religious objectors to communicate in their plan documents that contraceptive services would not be covered, and also to inform their employees of any change in benefits, according to Vox.
An accommodation process created by the Obama administration that triggered coverage of contraceptive services by a third party administrator would still be available to, but not required of, employers opting out of the mandate under Trump’s draft rule. Thus, it is possible and perhaps likely that women working for objecting employers would lose their birth control coverage.
The White House and the departments involved with the draft rule did not respond to Vox’s requests for comment.
Free birth control has very much reduced abortions. You can’t have it both ways. I am pro-life for the most part and therefore support free birth control.
Frankly I think this is all smoke and mirrors. 99.9% of employers would continue to offer BC coverage. The .1% aren’t worth working for anyway. Just one more gift to the idiots who can now run around banging pots over their heads celebrating pissing off libruls.
This is why so many women had IUDs implanted while they could. Fuck everything.
@kwoodgr And many alleged “pro-life” activists claim that contraceptives are abortifacients because all they really care about is stopping people from having sex. I’m grateful for honest people like you who are willing acknowledge the reality that birth control is a necessity if you actually care about limiting abortions.
Small potatoes, considering the AHCA already has a major carve-out that allows insurance companies and entire states to opt out of healthcare coverage if they have monetary, misogynistic, or socio-economic objections.
This is bad, but frankly I always thought it was a mistake to bring issues like contraception and abortion into the ACA. Yes, in an ideal world they should be covered, but we don’t live in an ideal world. Millions of people have highly emotionalized views on these subjects because of religious and other reasons.
The fact is that health coverage is about big ticket items: cancer, heart disease, diabetes, major accidents, etc. Contraception and abortion just don’t meet the test for what needs to be covered by insurance. We should never have jeopardized health reform be insisting on including these emotionalized issues that are relatively small ticket items anyway. Find another way to cover contraception and abortion and don’t weigh down the primary health reform with hot button issues.
In fact, the insistence on including contraception in the ACA is what led to the Hobby Lobby decision, which will have all kinds of negative spillover effects, and now contraception will be pulled from the ACA anyway. Was it worth it?