Insurers may be allowed to remove contraception from coverage plans

The front page of the Washington Post (8/22, A1, Stein) reads,”The Bush administration yesterday announced plans to implement a controversial regulation designed to protect doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers who object to abortion from being forced to deliver services that violate their personal beliefs.”

If the new rule is established, federal health officials will be allowed “to pull funding from more than 584,000 hospital clinics, health plans, doctors’ offices and other entities if they do not accommodate employees who refuse to participate in care they find objectionable on personal, moral, or religious grounds.” 

People for and against the rule “said the regulation remains broad enough to protect pharmacists, doctors, nurses and others from providing birth control pills, Plan B emergency contraception, and explicitly allows workers to withhold information about such services and refuse to refer patients elsewhere.”

According to the Wall Street Journal (8/22, A3, Simon), “it is unclear how many women might be affected if the regulation takes effect as written. Catholic hospitals account for more than 10 percent of the nation’s emergency rooms, and many would like to be freed from state mandates requiring them to offer emergency contraception to victims of sexual assault.” Also, if “state laws requiring insurance companies to cover contraception” are allowed to expire, it is not clear “whether those insurers would remove birth control from their coverage plans.” Patients can still get any legal procedure, but the new rule may make those procedures harder to get, according to Mike Leavitt, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

“Abortion foes called it a victory for the First Amendment, but abortion rights supporters said they feared the rule could stretch the definition of abortion to include birth control, and served notice that they intend to challenge the administration,” the AP (8/22 Alonso-Zaldivar) reads. Leavitt said, “This regulation is not about contraception, it is very closely focused on abortion and physician’s conscience.”

Bloomberg (8/22, Marcus) says that “while the rule refers specifically to abortions, it also covers those who refuse to offer other services or procedures for which they have a religious or moral objection.”