Happy to allow a debate on birth control in 2012, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will give Republicans a vote on an amendment to the surface transportation bill authored by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), known as the “Freedom of Conscience” amendment. The amendment, sponsored by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), would let employers opt out of [...]

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops have now either reversed field from their previous reaction to the Obama Administration’s birth control accommodation policy announced yesterday, or they’re in negotiation mode. That’s what we can make of their latest missive, laden with unnecessary bold-facing, on the birth control access issue. The bishops made it fairly clear [...]

Senior Administration officials outlined the imminent compromise to be announced by President Obama, which follows the “Hawaii compromise” by mandating that insurance companies reach out directly to employees at religiously affiliated institutions and offer them contraceptive care. The officials described a process that “accommodates religious liberty while protecting the health of women.” Under the new [...]

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has reportedly rejected a proposed compromise with the Obama Administration on birth control access rules for religiously affiliated institutions. The working assumption was that the “Hawaii compromise” would come into play. Under this regime, any exempt religious organization would have to tell enrollees how they could directly access contraceptive [...]

Adding another to a string of small victories as we begin this election year, the Obama Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services announced that employers will need to cover contraception in their health insurance plans, ensuring close to universal contraceptive coverage. Earlier, the Administration added birth control to the essential benefits package on the [...]

Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 would save the government $148 billion from 2012 to 2021. For context, letting the Bush tax cuts expire would save $3.6 trillion over the same ten-year window. So anyone who tells you that we must increase the Medicare age [...]

If people want to say that Mitt Romney “likes to fire people,” I’m not going to stop them. Lord knows that liberals have put up with egregious misstatements of fact and lines ripped out of context for years, if not decades. In fact, Romney did it just a couple months ago. So blowback’s a bitch. [...]

Now that Democratic politicians have taken their shot at Ryan-Wyden, liberal wonks are having their turn puncturing the Medicare/premium support hybrid plan. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is pretty unsparing in their analysis. Here’s a taste: Its sponsors say the proposal would avoid shifting health costs to beneficiaries, but that’s not so. It [...]

While less prominent than the Ryan-Wyden plan yesterday, the Obama Administration took a step to actually implement its health reform product, by denying a waiver to the state of Florida on the medical loss ratio. Previously, the Administration approved waivers on the MLR for six states – Nevada, Iowa, Kentucky, Georgia, New Hampshire and Maine. [...]

On yesterday’s Virtually Speaking Sunday, Stuart Zechman and I spent the first segment discussing Rick Ungar’s article theorizing that the medical loss ratio is a “bomb” inside the Affordable Care Act waiting to explode. The MLR mandates a minimum percentage of insurer premiums that must be spent by insurance companies on medical treatment. There’s a [...]

With continued uncertainty with the Super Committee and the future of the safety net, I feel compelled to once again explain why raising the Medicare eligibility age is a completely misguided idea. Here is Matt Tobias with yet another set of particulars: A report by the Kaiser Family Foundation said that much of the cost [...]