The price of the Charleston Crab House’s $26.99 “World Famous Crab House Crab Pot” could go up next year, but not because of the price of crabs or a potential seafood shortage. It’s about health care.

John Keener, who owns both Charleston Crab House locations, on James Island and on Meeting Street, is one of many Charleston restaurateurs trying to make sense of the federal Affordable Care Act and how his business will be affected.

Two things are certain: Keener will need to offer his employees health insurance starting in 2014, and he will likely pass the associated costs of that coverage onto his customers.

Read it all from the local paper.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * South Carolina

Sandra Duck thinks she’s the victim of an undeclared Medicaid boycott. And she’s probably right.

When her artificial right hip became infected with the superbug MRSA in late 2009, Dr. Dale Mitchum, a general surgeon, drained, cleaned and closed the infected area. But when the infection returned in early 2010, Mitchum knew Duck needed another hip replacement surgery, which he couldn’t perform. He tried to find an orthopedic surgeon who would operate. More than a year later, he’s still trying.

“I cannot find a living soul that will touch her,” he said recently. “And I’ve tried everywhere, from Tallahassee to Pensacola.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Personal Finance • The U.S. Government • Medicaid • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Many part-timers are facing a double whammy from President Obama's Affordable Care Act.

The law requires large employers offering health insurance to include part-time employees working 30 hours a week or more. But rather than provide healthcare to more workers, a growing number of employers are cutting back employee hours instead.

The result: Not only will these workers earn less money, but they'll also miss out on health insurance at work.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

My read of the evidence is that the Affordable Care Act will have a much tougher first year than was initially anticipated but it won’t be the catastrophe that Republicans hope. The exceptions will be a handful of states where Republican governors have purposefully made it a catastrophe, but that’s likely to make the Republican governors look bad, particularly if the law is working smoothly in states that have tried to make it a success.

Conservative commentary on the law, with its continuous predictions of explosive premium hikes (and continuous omissions of the offsetting subsidies) and gleeful celebration anytime anything looks to be going wrong, is risking the mistake that the Obama administration made early on with the sequester. When the predictions of pain and chaos didn’t instantly come true, the whole narrative shifted in an instant.

Republicans have done a very good job prepping the country for the pain of Obamacare. They’ve not done a good job prepping the country for the people who will be helped by Obamacare.

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Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, one of the health reform law's chief authors, says he’s worried about a “huge train wreck coming down” if the Obama administration doesn’t improve its public outreach about the legislation.

Baucus, a Montana Democrat who is up for reelection in 2014, sharply criticized the administration’s outreach efforts in a budget hearing on Wednesday. He told Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that people and businesses “have no idea what to do, what to expect” from the law.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Personal Finance • The U.S. Government • Medicare • Politics in General • Senate • State Government • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Yummy Mummy, a little boutique on New York's Upper East Side, has suddenly become a health care provider/online superstore. The company has been hiring like crazy, and just opened an online call center and a warehouse in Illinois. Yummy Mummy even hired somebody to talk to customers' health insurance companies.

And new moms now seem more likely to splurge on fancy new breast pumps. Caroline Shany, a Yummy Mummy customer, spent her own money to buy a breast pump for her first baby. She may buy another one now because insurance will pick up the tab.

"Why not?" she says.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Philosophy • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • Politics in General

A new fight is brewing over health insurance companies letting millions of Americans renew their current coverage for another year — and thereby avoid changes under the federal healthcare law.

That may offer a short-term benefit for certain consumers and shield some of those individual policyholders from potentially steep rate increases. But critics say this maneuver could undermine government efforts to remake the insurance market next year and keep premiums affordable overall.

At issue is a little-known loophole in President Obama's landmark legislation that enables health insurers to extend existing policies for nearly all of 2014. This runs contrary to the widespread belief that all health insurance must immediately comply with new federal rules starting Jan. 1, when most provisions of the law take effect.

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Unable to meet tight deadlines in the new health care law, the Obama administration is delaying parts of a program intended to provide affordable health insurance to small businesses and their employees — a major selling point for the health care legislation.

The law calls for a new insurance marketplace specifically for small businesses, starting next year. But in most states, employers will not be able to get what Congress intended: the option to provide workers with a choice of health plans. They will instead be limited to a single plan.

This choice option, already available to many big businesses, was supposed to become available to small employers in January. But administration officials said they would delay it to 2015 in the 33 states where the federal government will be running insurance markets known as exchanges. And they will delay the requirement for other states as well.

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On Jan. 30, the Obama administration unveiled a long list of exemptions from the ObamaCare insurance mandate. Flaws and contradictions in the law will cause millions of people to be uninsured. The administration also estimated that the cheapest family plan will cost $20,000 by 2016. This new information indicates that the Affordable Care Act is failing in both goals: making insurance affordable and covering the uninsured.

Children are the biggest victims. The hastily drafted law, passed before it was read, overlooked them.

The law says that beginning in 2014, employers with 50 or more full-time employees must offer coverage or pay a penalty. The law's sloppy drafting left it unclear whether that meant worker's coverage or family coverage.

Read it all from IBD.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • The U.S. Government • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • Senate

Thus far, courts have avoided the issue of a corporation's religious rights, Friedman says. In some cases, judges have ruled that plaintiffs have not demonstrated "substantial burden," simply because it's easier than weighing in on the First Amendment and RFRA rights of companies, he said.

If one or more of the cases against the employer contraceptive mandate is successfully appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, justices will face a tricky set of intertwined issues: whether or not a corporation can practice religion; whether or not a corporation has the same religious freedom as its owners; and whether or not being required to cover contraceptives violates a corporation's—or its owners'—religious freedom.

"It's one of the most difficult legal questions I've seen, in terms of all the issues that are intertwined," said Friedman, who runs the Religion Clause blog and wrote about the issue last month. "There really haven't been any [courts] that have said corporations themselves have religious rights. They've either avoided the issue [by finding no substantial burden] or said the corporation can assert the owners' rights."

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Particularly vulnerable to the high rates are small businesses and people who do not have employer-provided insurance and must buy it on their own.

In California, Aetna is proposing rate increases of as much as 22 percent, Anthem Blue Cross 26 percent and Blue Shield of California 20 percent for some of those policy holders, according to the insurers’ filings with the state for 2013. These rate requests are all the more striking after a 39 percent rise sought by Anthem Blue Cross in 2010 helped give impetus to the law, known as the Affordable Care Act, which was passed the same year and will not be fully in effect until 2014.

In other states, like Florida and Ohio, insurers have been able to raise rates by at least 20 percent for some policy holders. The rate increases can amount to several hundred dollars a month.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Personal Finance • The U.S. Government

It is time, instead, to address one aspect of American exceptionalism of which I am not proud. We are the only advanced nation where medical bankruptcies are routine - as are deaths due to lack of access to proper health care.

And the worst part of the latter is the fact that mental health care is particularly unavailable to anyone who is not wealthy, or lucky enough to have mental health coverage through her or his insurance.

Persons with mental health problems need to be identified and helped....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Personal Finance • The U.S. Government • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Your medical plan is facing an unexpected expense, so you probably are, too. It’s a new, $63-per-head fee to cushion the cost of covering people with pre-existing conditions under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.

The charge, buried in a recent regulation, works out to tens of millions of dollars for the largest companies, employers say. Most of that is likely to be passed on to workers.

Employee benefits lawyer Chantel Sheaks calls it a “sleeper issue” with significant financial consequences, particularly for large employers.

Read it all from the front page of yesterday's local paper.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • The U.S. Government

For more than a year, politicians have been fighting over whether to raise taxes on high-income people. They rarely mention that affluent Americans will soon be hit with new taxes adopted as part of the 2010 health care law.

The new levies, which take effect in January, include an increase in the payroll tax on wages and a tax on investment income, including interest, dividends and capital gains. The Obama administration proposed rules to enforce both last week.

Affluent people are much more likely than low-income people to have health insurance, and now they will, in effect, help pay for coverage for many lower-income families. Among the most affluent fifth of households, those affected will see tax increases averaging $6,000 next year, economists estimate.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Taxes • The U.S. Government

For decades, doctors in picturesque Boise, Idaho, were part of a tight-knit community, freely referring patients to the specialists or hospitals of their choice and exchanging information about the latest medical treatments.

But that began to change a few years ago, when the city’s largest hospital, St. Luke’s Health System, began rapidly buying physician practices all over town, from general practitioners to cardiologists to orthopedic surgeons.

Today, Boise is a medical battleground....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Personal Finance

For the first time in its nearly 100-year history, Orlando Health is reducing its workforce by up to 400 positions starting immediately, hospital officials announced this morning.

The elimination of 300 to 400 jobs will occur in two phases, and represents a 2- to 3-percent decrease in the system's 16,000 employees, said Orlando Health spokeswoman Kena Lewis. The reductions affect all departments and all eight of its hospitals, including Orlando Regional Medical Center and Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children.

The first wave of employees affected by the "labor expense reduction" portion of the initiative received their notices Friday, said Lewis. The next wave of downsizing will happen after the first of the year.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market

In an experiment apparently aimed at keeping down the cost of health-care reform, Orlando-based Darden Restaurants has stopped offering full-time schedules to many hourly workers in at least a few Olive Gardens, Red Lobsters and LongHorn Steakhouses...In an emailed statement, Darden said staffing changes are "just one of the many things we are evaluating to help us address the cost implications health care reform will have on our business. There are still many unanswered questions regarding the health care regulations and we simply do not have enough information to make any decisions at this time."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance

Estimates of the number of businesses eligible to take the tax credit have ranged from 1.4 million to 4 million companies, but in May, the Government Accountability Office reported that only 170,300 firms actually claimed the credit in 2010. Of these, only a small fraction, 17 percent, were able to claim the whole credit....

So why has the credit fallen short of expectations? The G.A.O. concluded that the credit was too small to sway business owners. Moreover, it said, claiming the credit is a task so complicated as to discourage many companies from trying.

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Saying there are “troubling signs” of abuse in the way hospitals use electronic records to bill for Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, the Obama administration warned in a letter to hospital associations Monday that it would not tolerate what it called “gaming the system” and vowed to vigorously prosecute doctors and hospitals implicated in fraud.

The strongly worded letter, signed by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said that “electronic health records have the potential to save money and save lives.” But the letter continued: “There are troubling indications that some providers are using this technology to game the system, possibly to obtain payments to which they are not entitled. False documentation of care is not just bad patient care; it’s illegal.”

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Would an expansion of Medicaid under the federal health-care law help or hinder South Carolina’s finances? Depends who you ask.

Strains of disagreement are building against the backdrop of a campaign by Gov. Nikki Haley’s administration to build opposition to an expansion.

Generally opposed by Republicans and favored by Democrats, the debate over whether to expand the Medicaid program in the states is set to play out in many statehouses across the country. That’s because a June Supreme Court ruling made the extension of coverage optional.

In the Palmetto State, advocates for the expansion contend Haley’s administration is emphasizing the costs and underselling offsetting economic benefits of an expansion.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • Poverty • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • The U.S. Government • Budget • Politics in General • State Government • * South Carolina

The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act—or "Obamacare," as some have dubbed it—has advocates of faith-based nonprofits concerned about potential unintended "collateral damage" to their bottom lines.

The worry: Chief Justice John Roberts's nod to lawmakers' wide discretion to impose taxes—and to condition taxes to influence behavior—could pose threats both to charities' tax exemptions and to donors' tax deductions.

"It's an issue that's definitely on our radar," said Rhett Butler, government liaison for the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Charities/Non-Profit Organizations • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture

As health care costs continue to increase, employers are looking for ways to cut costs, such as reducing spouse and dependent coverage in 2013, says a study out today.

While the total cost of health care is predicted to rise 5.3%, to $11,507 per employee in 2013, the increase is slowing, says the new Towers Watson survey of 440 midsize and large companies. This year, in comparison, the cost is expected to increase 5.9%.

"Recently employers have been increasing employee premiums, although they can only push the envelope so far," says Paul Fronstin, director of the Health Research Program at the Employee Benefit Research Institute. If healthy workers drop out of the plan, self-insured employers might lose money, he says.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market

Are you having trouble finding a doctor who will see you? If not, give it another year and a half. A doctor shortage is on its way.

Most provisions of the Obama health law kick in on Jan. 1, 2014. Within the decade after that, an additional 30 million people are expected to acquire health plans—and if the economic studies are correct, they will try to double their use of the health-care system.

Meanwhile, the administration never seems to tire of reminding seniors that they are entitled to a free annual checkup. Its new campaign is focused on women. Thanks to health reform, they are being told, they will have access to free breast and pelvic exams and even free contraceptives. Once ObamaCare fully takes effect, all of us will be entitled to a long list of preventive services—with no deductible or copayment.

Here is the problem: The health-care system can't possibly deliver on the huge increase in demand for primary-care services.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

In the Inland Empire, an economically depressed region in Southern California, President Obama’s health care law is expected to extend insurance coverage to more than 300,000 people by 2014. But coverage will not necessarily translate into care: Local health experts doubt there will be enough doctors to meet the area’s needs. There are not enough now.

Other places around the country, including the Mississippi Delta, Detroit and suburban Phoenix, face similar problems. The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates that in 2015 the country will have 62,900 fewer doctors than needed. And that number will more than double by 2025, as the expansion of insurance coverage and the aging of baby boomers drive up demand for care. Even without the health care law, the shortfall of doctors in 2025 would still exceed 100,000.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Economy • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

They kept their decision confidential. Not one leak, Not one semi-sliver of a little detail released prematurely. Lips sealed.

It has a role, and, yes, it can be done--even today. Confidentiality, secrets, limits that should not be breached--these things matter.

Hooray for them--it is one of the reasons there is so much surprise.

Say what you want about the actual decision, but this aspect of its handling deserves real praise--KSH.

Filed under: * By Kendall • * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues

For the roughly 50 million uninsured Americans, the court's ruling has the biggest implications. For the majority of citizens who currently have insurance, the ruling could mean some important changes as well, such as to their health plans or their personal tax rates.

Many less affluent Americans who do not qualify for Medicaid may now gain health coverage as the program is expanded.

For others among the ranks of some 50 million uninsured Americans, the law creates a system of tax subsidies – designed to help more Americans afford health coverage – plus the mandate to buy insurance or pay a fine.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Personal Finance

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues

The debate over the federal contraceptive mandate and the fight for religious freedom is not about “a particular policy choice” but is “a debate over the role of religion in American society and the freedom and integrity of the Catholic Church’s mission,” the head of the Knights of Columbus said June 22.

“It’s not an ordinary national debate. There’s a great deal at stake here,” Supreme Knight Carl Anderson told Catholic News Service in an interview in Indianapolis. It is an attempt “to redefine the role of religion in America,” he added.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

If you thought Monday’s immigration decision was confusing, wait until the Supreme Court weighs in on health care Thursday. Court-watchers expect a flurry of opinions, dissents and concurring judgments — a confusing outcome for a complex law.

When that happens, all of Washington — and the law’s supporters and opponents throughout the country — will be scrambling for the quickest way to find out the law’s fate.

There are four questions before the court. They are....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • Office of the President

The Supreme Court is set this week to decide the politically charged constitutional clashes between President Obama and Republicans over his healthcare law and his immigration enforcement policy.

By most accounts, the justices must make a stark, clear choice either to endorse Obama's policies — including the mandate for all to have health insurance — or to strike them down as flatly unconstitutional.

But the justices could rule in unexpected ways that would allow both sides to claim a victory.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Immigration • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate

In a continuing study, an all-star group of researchers following Ms. [Wendy] Parris and tens of thousands of other Oregonians has found that gaining insurance makes people feel healthier, happier and more financially stable. The insured also spend more on health care, dashing some hopes of preventive-medicine advocates who have argued that coverage can save money — by keeping people out of emergency rooms, for instance. In Oregon, the newly insured spent an average of $778 a year, or 25 percent, more on health care than those who did not win insurance.

For the nation, the lesson appears to be mixed. Expanded coverage brings large benefits to many people, but it is also more likely to increase a stretched federal government’s long-term budget responsibilities.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Politics in General • State Government

In an unexpected blow to the Obama administration and a major boon for America's Catholic bishops, the influential Catholic Health Association on Friday (June 15) rejected White House proposals aimed at easing faith-based objections to the contraception mandate.

“The more we learn, the more it appears that the … approaches for both insured and self-insured plans would be unduly cumbersome and would be unlikely to adequately meet the religious liberty concerns of all of our members and other Church ministries,” Sister Carol Keehan and leaders of the CHA said in a five-page response to the Department of Health and Human Services.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Last September, the U.S. bishops struggled to raise awareness about an “interim final rule” for co-pay-free contraception, approved by the Obama administration in August 2011.

Now, in the wake of 43 Catholic groups filing 12 lawsuits across the nation on May 21, recent polling confirms that the controversial federal rule, approved Jan. 20, has emerged as an election issue. Public opposition has mounted against the controversial rule, while partisan forces and their media allies argue that Catholic leaders are “carrying water” for the GOP.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • Office of the President • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

Steven Wagner, the president of QEV Analytics, a polling firm that recently conducted a survey for The Catholic Association, said religion could emerge as a sleeper issue in the election: “Everyone says this election is about the economy. I can see the issue of religious liberty being what decides the race. If Obama continues to lose Catholics by the margin the Pew poll suggests, that means he could lose the key swing states of Florida, Ohio, Colorado and Iowa.”

Losses in those states could cost Obama the White House, and the states are likely aware of that fact. Wagner noted the administration will likely try to be careful and avoid provoking Catholic activists before the election.

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I will admit that the HHS contraception rule does ask these Catholic clerics to sacrifice something. But what is this sacrifice? Simply to allow the women who work for their organizations to be offered contraceptive coverage by their insurers. To refuse this sacrifice is not to uphold civil society. It is to refuse to participate in it.

Toward the end of their statement, the 15 bishops who signed this statement called on every U.S. Catholic to join in a “great national campaign” on behalf of religious liberty. More specifically, they called for a “Fortnight for Freedom” concluding with the Fourth of July when U.S. dioceses can celebrate both religious liberty and martyrs who have died for the Catholic cause.

As Independence Day approaches, I have a prediction. I predict that rank-and-file American Catholics will ignore this call.

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Despite differences over contraception, evangelical leaders have fallen in step with Catholic bishops over what they see as federal compulsion to provide services against their conscience.

In 2011, the Obama administration ruled that religious institutions would be required to provide employees with free contraceptive coverage. President Obama said in February that insurers would be responsible for paying for the contraception, but those who opposed the new rule suggested insurers could simply raise premiums to cover the cost.

Searching for strategies, some evangelicals filed lawsuits. Others followed Catholic bishops' lead, releasing letters to be read in churches.

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Pastors and members of several Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod congregations will gather Tuesday to show support for the Catholic Church's opposition to federal Health and Human Services department rules requiring many religious institutions to provide employees with health insurance that includes contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs.

“We see this HHS contraceptive mandate as an attack on freedom of religion,” said Christopher Barnekov, a member of St. Paul Lutheran Church on Barr Street who is helping to organize the event.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The U.S. Government • Politics in General • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

President Obama's signature health reform law will add as much as $527 billion to federal deficits over the next decade, not cut them as advertised, according to a report released Tuesday.

The Affordable Care Act will add as much as $1.2 trillion to federal spending between 2012 and 2021, the report also finds. Charles Blahous, who serves as one of Medicare's trustees, wrote the report, published by George Mason University's Mercatus Center.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The U.S. Government • Budget • Medicare • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • Senate

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Fundamentally, they noted, the HHS contraceptive mandate "still forces us to act against our conscience and teaching," particularly because the new proposal does not modify the inclusion of sterilization and contraceptives, including some abortifacients, in the "preventive services" mandate.

"Those falling outside the government definition of 'religious employer' will be forced by the government to violate their own teachings within their very own institutions," the bishops said. "Whatever funding and administrative mechanisms are ultimately chosen, it remains that many deeply religious institutions and individuals will be forbidden to provide even their own employees -- or, in the case of educational institutions, their own students -- with health coverage consistent with their values."

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If the mandate falls, the rest of the law stands.

The mandate takes down the Affordable Care Act’s insurance reforms.

If the individual mandate falls, so does the entire Affordable Care Act

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues

Check it out; it was in the mid 30's when I checked this morning.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues

Read and/or listen to it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues

Even before the Obama administration’s top lawyer could get three minutes into his defense of the mandate, the justices accused the government of pushing for excessive authority to require Americans to buy anything.

“Are there any limits,” asked Justice Anthony Kennedy, one of three conservative justices who are seen as critical to the fate of the unprecedented insurance mandate.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.suggested the government might require Americans to buy cell phones to be ready for emergencies. And Justice Antonin Scalia asked if the government might require Americans to buy broccoli or automobiles.

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The challengers contend that Congress, in order to pay for near-universal health care coverage, has for the first time required individual citizens to buy a commercial product they may not want.

"The reason we want people who are young and relatively healthy to buy health insurance is not because we are terribly concerned that those people are going to get unhealthy and end up in the emergency room," says Paul Clement, who is representing the states. "What we really want is those people to be part of the risk pool and contribute their premiums so that we can afford to pay for the health care for the other folks."

The government counters that health care is different because everybody will receive medical care at some point.

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Hitherto, most attention has been given to whether Congress, under its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce, can coerce individuals into engaging in commerce by buying health insurance. Now, the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, has focused on this fact: The individual mandate is incompatible with centuries of contract law. This is so because a compulsory contract is an oxymoron.

The brief, the primary authors of which are IJ’s Elizabeth Price Foley and Steve Simpson, said Obamacare is the first time Congress has used its power to regulate commerce to produce a law “from which there is no escape.” And “coercing commercial transactions” — compelling individuals to sign contracts with insurance companies — “is antithetical to the foundational principle of mutual assent that permeated the common law of contracts at the time of the founding and continues to do so today.”

Throughout the life of this nation, it has been understood that for a contract to be valid, the parties to it must mutually assent to its terms — without duress.

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The three days of Supreme Court arguments that start Monday on the constitutionality of President Obama’s health care law will be a legal marathon, and the lawyers involved have been training.

Last week, there were so many of the mock arguments that lawyers call moot courts that they threatened to exhaust something that had never been thought in short supply: Washington lawyers willing to pretend to be Supreme Court justices.

The problem, said Paul D. Clement, who represents the 26 states challenging the law, was not just the length of the arguments the court will hear, but the variety of topics to be addressed.

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The centerpiece of the case against Obamacare is the requirement that everyone buy some kind of health insurance or face stiff penalties--the so-called individual mandate. It is a way of moving toward universal coverage without a government-run or single-payer system. It might surprise Americans to learn that another advanced industrial country, one with a totally private health care system, made precisely the same choice nearly 20 years ago: Switzerland. The lessons from Switzerland and other countries can't resolve the constitutional issues, but they suggest the inevitability of some version of Obamacare....

Twenty years ago, Switzerland had a system very similar to America's--private insurers, private providers--with very similar problems. People didn't buy insurance but ended up in emergency rooms, insurers screened out people with pre-existing conditions, and costs were rising fast. The country came to the conclusion that to make health care work, everyone had to buy insurance.

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Due to the requirements that the HHS Mandate imposes on Catholic institutions, the Obama administration has been widely criticized over the question of religious freedom. "The real issue in political life," explained [Professor William] Luckey, "is not contraception: it's the First Amendment. That's the real issue because the Constitution says that there's not going to be a national religion. […] But it also says, 'Congress shall make no law restricting the freedom of religion.'"

The federal government's attempt to involve itself in the religious beliefs of people, explains Professor [Bernard] Way, associate professor of political science, goes against the Constitution in a very fundamental way. "On the surface," Way said, "the biggest issue has to do with First Amendment concerns, and freedom of religion. No religious institution should be forced by the government to do anything against their conscience or their beliefs. […] People, and other associations in society, should be left free, especially on matters of conscience, which the founders always understood was a matter of religion."

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As many as 20 million Americans could lose their employer-provided coverage because of President Obama's healthcare reform law, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a new report Thursday.

The figure represents the worst-case scenario, CBO says, and the law could just as well increase the number of people with employer-based coverage by 3 million in 2019.

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For a five-doctor practice, the Advisory Board Co., a health-care research firm, projects the total first-year cost at between $126,000 and $346,500, including two added nurses.

The upshot: Doctors fear a squeeze as they try to ramp up changes in tandem with evolving reimbursement schemes. "You're asking a practice that may be only marginally viable as a business to invest in significant infrastructure," says Glen Stream, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians. "Is the payment model going to be there to support that?"

Some doctors aren't waiting to find out. Instead, they're going to work for hospitals, which have greater financial resources and, because of their leverage with insurers, are also often paid more than small practices for the same services. The consulting firm Accenture projects that, by 2013, only around a third of doctors in all specialties will own their own practices, down from about 43% in 2009 and nearly half in 2005.

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The CBO forecasts it will now cost $1.76 trillion over a decade, whereas before they forecast it would cost 940 billion.

Read it carefully and follow all the links. Also, you can read more over there.

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Check it out.

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A crucial thing to remember, both about the mandate and the promised adjustments-to-come, is that it is deeply un-American in its hostility to diversity and pluralism in civil society. The mandate's religious-employer exemption is limited only to inward-looking entities that hire and engage only their own. It embodies the view that religious institutions may be distinctive only insofar as they stay in their place — in the pews, in the pulpit, at the altar. It reflects a troubling tendency to impose ideological sameness and conformity in the public sphere, to insist that all groups and associations act like the government, in the service of the government's goals.

The mandate prompted an impressively united reaction by those who cherish America's tradition of religious freedom and accommodation. On the left and on the right, among Republicans and Democrats, there was an appreciation for the fact that this was an overreach. It was, and still is.

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At what point is a middle-class American — who has insurance — allowed to complain about the increasing taxes we pay to finance the national health-care system?

After all, what is a tax but an assessment imposed by authority on citizens for public purposes? And that seems a fair description of how our health-care system works. The federal government tells companies which services they must provide. In turn, the companies raise rates so they can meet these requirements and still make a profit. Basically, each time a federal official tells us that “insurance companies” will pay for, say, free condoms or expanded coverage, premiums paid by the middle class go up. Call it an unofficial tax, one collected by private industry instead of Washington.

Don’t get me wrong: I’d prefer to pay a federal health-care tax and get European-style care. But the current plan is the worst of both worlds: socialist enough, if you will, to provide free care for the poor; capitalist enough to make sure companies are guaranteed profit.

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Attorneys general from a dozen states say they intend to sue over the Obama administration’s contraception mandate that requires many religious employers to violate the teachings of their faith.

In a Feb. 10 letter, the attorneys general voiced their “strong opposition” to the mandate, which they called “an impermissible violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment virtually unparalleled in American history.”

They said that if the mandate is implemented, they are prepared to “vigorously oppose it in court.”

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The HHS regulations announced on January 20 are one domestic expression of defining-religious-freedom-down. The administration does not propose to, say, restore the 1970 ICEL translations of the prayer-texts of the Mass; that, even HHS might concede, is a violation of religious freedom. But the administration did not think it a violation of religious freedom for its Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to try and overturn the longstanding legal understanding which held that religious institutions have a secure First Amendment right to choose their ministers by their own criteria—until it was told that it had gone way over the line in January’s Hosanna-Tabor Supreme Court decision (a judicial smackdown in which the administration’s own Court nominees joined).

Now, with the HHS “contraceptive mandate” (which, as noted above, is also a sterilization and abortifacent “mandate”), the administration claims that it is not violating the First Amendment by requiring Catholic institutions to provide “services” that the Catholic Church believes are objectively evil. That bizarre claim may well be another constitutional bridge too far. But the very fact that the administration issued these regulations, and that the White House press secretary blithely dismissed any First Amendment concerns when asked whether there were religious freedom issues involved here, tell us something very important, and very disturbing, about the cast of mind in the Executive Branch.

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"We bishops are pastors, we're not politicians, and you can't compromise on principle," said Cardinal-designate [Timothy] Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "And the goal posts haven't moved and I don't think there's a 50-yard line compromise here," he added.

"We're in the business of reconciliation, so it's not that we hold fast, that we're stubborn ideologues, no. But we don't see much sign of any compromise," he said.

"What (Obama) offered was next to nothing. There's no change, for instance, in these terribly restrictive mandates and this grossly restrictive definition of what constitutes a religious entity," he said. "The principle wasn't touched at all."

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Politicized culture wars are debilitating because they almost always require partisans to denigrate the moral legitimacy of their opponents, and sometimes to deny their very humanity. It's often not enough to defeat a foe. Satisfaction only comes from an adversary's humiliation.

One other thing about culture wars: One side typically has absolutely no understanding of what the other is trying to say.

That is why the battle over whether religious institutions should be required to cover contraception under the new health care law was so painful -- and why it was so hard to comprehend why President Obama, who has been a critic of culture wars for so long, did not try to defuse this explosive question from the beginning.

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Together, the leaders of these Christian, Jewish and Muslim national organizations affirmed:

“We stand with President Obama and Secretary Sebelius in their decision to reaffirm the importance of contraceptive services as essential preventive care for women under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and to assure access under the law to American women, regardless of religious affiliation. We respect individuals’ moral agency to make decisions about their sexuality and reproductive health without governmental interference or legal restrictions. We do not believe that specific religious doctrine belongs in health care reform – as we value our nation’s commitment to church-state separation. We believe that women and men have the right to decide whether or not to apply the principles of their faith to family planning decisions, and to do so they must have access to services. The Administration was correct in requiring institutions that do not have purely sectarian goals to offer comprehensive preventive health care. Our leaders have the responsibility to safeguard individual religious liberty and to help improve the health of women, their children, and families. Hospitals and universities across are respected and that their students and employees have access to this basic health care service. We invite other religious leaders to speak out with us for universal coverage of contraception.

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U.S. health insurers said on Friday they feared President Barack Obama had set a new precedent by making them responsible for providing free birth control to employees of religious groups as he sought to defuse an election-year landmine....

"We are concerned about the precedent this proposed rule would set," said Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry's trade group. "As we learn more about how this rule would be operationalized, we will provide comments through the regulatory process."

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From here:

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) sees initial opportunities in preserving the principle of religious freedom after President Obama’s announcement today. But the Conference continues to express concerns. “While there may be an openness to respond to some of our concerns, we reserve judgment on the details until we have them,” said Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, president of USCCB.

“The past three weeks have witnessed a remarkable unity of Americans from all religions or none at all worried about the erosion of religious freedom and governmental intrusion into issues of faith and morals,” he said.

“Today’s decision to revise how individuals obtain services that are morally objectionable to religious entities and people of faith is a first step in the right direction,” Cardinal-designate Dolan said. “We hope to work with the Administration to guarantee that Americans’ consciences and our religious freedom are not harmed by these regulations.”

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US President Barack Obama Friday announced a compromise to defuse a row over access to birth control which prompted election-year Republican critics to claim he was waging a war on religion.
In a concession, Obama said his government would no longer require religious organizations to offer free contraception on employee health plans and decried opponents he said had turned the issue into a "political football."
But he stuck by the principle that all women should have free access to such services, putting the onus on insurance firms to offer birth control to those working for religious employers like Catholic hospitals.

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Coverage of this story has almost invariably been framed as a conflict between the federal government and the Catholic bishops. Zeroing in on the word "contraception," many commentators have taken delight in pointing to surveys about the use of contraceptives among Catholics, the message being that any infringement of religious freedom involves an idiosyncratic position that doesn't affect that many people.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The Catholic Church's teaching on contraception (not to mention abortion and surgical sterilization) has been clear, consistent and public. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's decision would force Catholic institutions either to violate the moral teachings of the Catholic Church or abandon the health-care, education and social services they provide the needy. This is intolerable.

And while most evangelicals take a more permissive view of contraception, they share with Catholics the moral conviction that the taking of human life in utero, whether surgically or by abortifacient drugs, violates the basic human right to life.

Read it all (it has different authorship and is in a different publication than the one post earlier today).

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[Archbishop Timothy Broglio] wrote in a letter that "The federal government, which claims to be 'of, by and for the people,' has just dealt a heavy blow to almost a quarter of those people -- the Catholic population -- and to the millions more who are served by the Catholic faithful. It is a blow to a freedom that you have fought to defend and for which you have seen your buddies fall in battle."

However, it was another passage that seems to have triggered alarms at the Army office of the Chief of Chaplains.

"We cannot -- we will not -- comply with this unjust law," stressed Broglio. "People of faith cannot be made second-class citizens. ... In generations past, the Church has always been able to count on the faithful to stand up and protect her sacred rights and duties. I hope and trust she can count on this generation of Catholics to do the same."

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On Jan. 20 — after a protracted internal debate over the policy’s implications and lobbying from allies in the reproductive-rights community — Obama approved the mandate, to the horror of the conservative Dolan and even to more liberal Catholic allies such as Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne.

From the standpoint of the 2012 campaign, the debate over birth control, the stuff of the 1960s, has opened a dangerous electoral schism for Democrats, pitting Obama’s base of female supporters against the church and a GOP presidential field all too eager to seize on a perceived assault on religious liberty.

But it has also exposed surprisingly acute ideological, religious and gender divisions within a White House that prides itself on pulling together as a cohesive unit after a major decision, however sloppy the deliberation. And the fissures may have contributed to the slow, seemingly disorganized response to the escalating attacks, amplifying the damage from a fight that would have been politically perilous in any case.

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We evangelicals must stand unequivocally with our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters. Because when the government violates the religious liberty of one group, it threatens the religious liberty of all.
Many bishops have already declared that they will not obey this unjust law. The penalty for such a move would be severe. Catholic hospitals, universities, and other organizations would be forced to pay punitive fines ($2,000 per employee) for refusing to purchase insurance that violates the teaching of their church.
For some institutions, it would spell the end of their existence—and their far-reaching service to the public and the needy.

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The administration’s response Tuesday came on two tracks — with officials telling liberal groups and lawmakers that they were not backing down, while trying to assure religious groups that a phase-in period will allow the two sides to agree on an approach to putting the rule into practice.

“There are conversations right now to arrange a meeting to talk with folks about how this policy can be nuanced,” said Joel C. Hunter, a Florida megachurch pastor who has grown personally close to Obama and advised his White House on religious issues. “This is so fixable, and we just want to get into the conversation.”

White House press secretary Jay Carney said Obama is taking the objections of the Catholic leaders “seriously” and will seek to implement the policy in a way that “allays some of those concerns.”

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White House advisors, including one of President Obama's top faith consultants, are signaling a potential compromise on a controversial new mandate that requires some religious institutions to cover contraception costs for employees.

David Axelrod, a senior campaign adviser for the Obama reelection campaign, said Tuesday that Obama may be open to a compromise that would expand a religious exemption in the new Health & Human Services mandate to satisfy religious groups.

"We certainly don’t want to abridge anyone’s religious freedoms," Axelrod said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe." "So we’re going to look for a way to move forward that both provides women with the preventive care that they need and respects the prerogatives of religious institutions."

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Not surprisingly, the American Catholic bishops have presented a nearly united front in opposition to the rule, scheduled to go into effect in 2013. The website CatholicVote.org lists 140 bishops, more than 70% of the 198 heads of U.S. Catholic dioceses, who have either issued or intend to issue statements opposing the mandate. Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York accused the Obama administration of treating pregnancy and women's fertility "as a disease."

What is surprising is that prominent liberal Catholics — people who don't even agree with the church's position on contraception — have joined their voices in protest. One of them was E.J. Dionne, a widely syndicated columnist for the Washington Post. Dionne, who has been an Obama enthusiast since well before the 2008 election, accused the president in a recent column of having "utterly botched" the issue of contraceptive services. Dionne admitted that he wished "the church would show more flexibility on this question," but he also pointed out that the sweeping mandate "encroached upon the church's legitimate prerogatives" to ensure that its employment policies reflected its moral values.

This represents a breakthrough in the long-simmering animosity between conservative and liberal Catholics over how much the church should have changed in the wake of Vatican II....

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The Catholic Church reacted strongly Friday to a White House defense of new rules that will force many religious employers to provide contraception to their workers in government-mandated health insurance plans.

"The White House information about this is a combination of misleading and wrong," said Anthony Picarello, general counsel of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He said the bishops would "pursue every legal mandate available to them to bring an end to this mandate. That means legislation, litigation and public advocacy. All options are on the table...."

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From Maine to Phoenix to southern Louisiana, Catholic churches across the USA this weekend echoed with scorn for a new federal rule requiring faith-based employers to include birth control and other reproductive services in their health care coverage.

Dozens of priests took the rare step of reading letters from the pulpit urging parishioners to reach out to Washington and oppose the rule, enacted this month....

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Scarcely two weeks ago, in its Hosanna-Tabor decision upholding the right of churches to make ministerial hiring decisions, the Supreme Court unanimously and enthusiastically reaffirmed these longstanding and foundational principles of religious freedom. The court made clear that they include the right of religious institutions to control their internal affairs.

Yet the Obama administration has veered in the opposite direction. It has refused to exempt religious institutions that serve the common good—including Catholic schools, charities and hospitals—from its sweeping new health-care mandate that requires employers to purchase contraception, including abortion-producing drugs, and sterilization coverage for their employees.

Last August, when the administration first proposed this nationwide mandate for contraception and sterilization coverage, it also proposed a "religious employer" exemption. But this was so narrow that it would apply only to religious organizations engaged primarily in serving people of the same religion. As Catholic Charities USA's president, the Rev. Larry Snyder, notes, even Jesus and His disciples would not qualify for the exemption in that case, because they were committed to serve those of other faiths.

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Against these downward [price] pressures stand three powerful counter-forces: a reviving economy that eases people’s anxieties about elective spending; an aging society that raises the need for health care; and the start of Obamacare’s insurance mandates in 2014 that expand coverage by 30 million people or more. Those with insurance routinely use more health care than do the uncovered.

Health care poses a dilemma. On the one hand, we all want — for our families and ourselves — the best care available without artificial limits imposed by government regulations or private insurers. On the other, we don’t want soaring health spending to crowd out other government programs or depress take-home pay. The latest spending figures delude if they suggest we’ve overcome that dilemma. The Neanderthal Cure is an ugly stop-gap, nothing more...

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The Obama administration will give states broad latitude to define the minimum benefits that many health insurance policies will be required to offer under the 2010 health-care law, officials announced Friday.

The plan sparked criticism from interest groups on all sides of the issue. Consumer advocates worried that millions of Americans could end up with insurance substantially less comprehensive than the law’s drafters intended. Representatives of employers and insurers warned of an opposite scenario: A state could make the benefits package so comprehensive that the resulting plans would be prohibitively expensive.

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Amid enormous pressure to cut costs, improve care and prepare for changes tied to the federal health-care overhaul, major players in the industry are staking out new ground, often blurring the lines between businesses that have traditionally been separate.

Hospitals are bulking up into huge systems, merging with one another and building extensive new doctor work forces. They are exploring insurance-like setups, including direct approaches to employers that cut out the health-plan middleman.

On the other side, insurers are buying health-care providers, or seeking to work with them on new cooperative deals and payment models that share the risks of health coverage. And employers are starting to take a far more active role in their workers' care....

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The impact on family finances has been direct and dismaying: In 2003, 14 percent of the average Missouri worker's median household income went to cover premium costs for health insurance through her employer. By 2010, that household was paying 19.6 percent of its income for health insurance.

The more of a family's income that's spent on health insurance costs, the less there is to pay for housing expenses, utilities, transportation, college education for children and savings for emergencies and retirement. Instead of looking toward for the future, families find themselves scrambling to cover the rising expenses of the present.

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As Barack Obama battled Hillary Rodham Clinton over health care during the Democratic presidential primaries of 2008, he was adamant about one thing: Americans, he insisted, should not be required to buy health insurance.

“If things were that easy,” Mr. Obama told the talk show host Ellen DeGeneres in February of that year, “I could mandate everybody to buy a house, and that would solve the problem of homelessness. It doesn’t.”

Now President Obama may wish he had stuck to those words. On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to take up a constitutional challenge to his landmark health care bill, and a decision could come in the midst of Mr. Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama

The percentage of American adults who get their health insurance from an employer continues to decline, falling to 44.5% in the third quarter of this year. This percentage has been steadily declining since Gallup and Healthways started tracking Americans' health insurance sources in 2008.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market

The report is expected to be made public ahead of an Oversight Health panel hearing on Thursday. The title of the hearing is “ObamaCare’s Hidden Marriage Penalty and its Impact on the Deficit.”

The report concludes that fewer than 2 million couples — out of 60 million nationwide — are projected to benefit from the insurance subsidies, while “almost half of the beneficiaries of the tax credit will be unmarried individuals without dependent children.”

“These numbers,” the report says, “suggest that an impact of the [law’s] health insurance tax credit will be to introduce a significant new marriage penalty into the tax code.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Personal Finance • The U.S. Government

The U.S. bishops are objecting to a Health and Human Services mandate that will force private insurance plans to cover abortions and sterilizations, with an exemption for religions so narrow that not even Jesus would qualify.

In a statement to the HHS today, Anthony Picarello, USCCB general counsel, and Michael Moses, associate general counsel, called the mandate an "unprecedented attack on religious liberty."

The mandate would force private insurance plans to cover contraception -- including abortifacients -- and sterilization.

And the narrow "religious employer" exception provides "no protection at all for individuals or insurers with a moral or religious objection to contraceptives or sterilization," instead covering only "a very small subset of religious employers," the bishops' representatives declared.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

A new federal regulation that would require employer insurance plans to provide contraceptives that some consider abortifacient and voluntary sterilization among cost-free preventive care measures such as inoculations and Pap smears is being greeted with varying levels of dismay in Catholic dioceses across the country.

The regulation provides a narrow religious exemption for an employer that "(1) has the inculcation of religious values as its purpose; (2) primarily employs persons who share its religious tenets; (3) primarily serves persons who share its religious tenets; and (4) is a nonprofit organization" under specific sections of the Internal Revenue Code.

This definition is "a direct infringement on our ability to do ministry," said George Wesolek, communications director for the Archdiocese of San Francisco. "It's part of a larger issue," he said. "The room for religious liberty is getting narrower and narrower" in the United States.

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Nearly one in 10 midsize or large employers expects to stop offering health coverage to workers once federal insurance exchanges start in 2014, according to a survey from a large benefits consultant.

Towers Watson also found in a survey completed last month that an additional 20 percent of companies are unsure about what they will do.

Another big benefits consultant, Mercer, found in a June survey of large and smaller employers that 8 percent are either "likely" or "very likely" to end health benefits once the exchanges start.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance

Like many South Carolinians facing surging medical costs, [Ken] Riddle wants to know why premiums keep rising. Here, annual premiums for private health insurance have risen about 85 percent for individuals and 75 percent for families in the past decade, federal data show.

South Carolina regulators can take at least some of the blame. Many factors contribute to soaring health care costs, but lax state regulation -- an area increasingly scrutinized as national health care reform takes effect -- has contributed to the problem, critics said.

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The Obama administration announced new expanded women’s health regulations Monday, classifying contraceptives as preventive services and requiring that health insurers provide them without co-pays for customers....

A number of religious organizations, including the Catholic Church and the Family Research Council, have opposed the new regulations. Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, who runs the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, recently wrote in opposition to the proposal that “pregnancy is not a disease, and fertility is not a pathological condition to be suppressed by any means technically possible.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The U.S. Government • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama

Alarmed by a shortage of primary care doctors, Obama administration officials are recruiting a team of “mystery shoppers” to pose as patients, call doctors’ offices and request appointments to see how difficult it is for people to get care when they need it.

The administration says the survey will address a “critical public policy problem”: the increasing shortage of primary care doctors, including specialists in internal medicine and family practice. It will also try to discover whether doctors are accepting patients with private insurance while turning away those in government health programs that pay lower reimbursement rates.

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[What about]...the government's Medicare savings? CMS actuaries offered three estimates for a three-year period: $170 million, $510 million and $960 million (the higher the estimate, the less likely it was to occur). Even the highest figure is only five-one-hundredths of 1 percent of the $1.842 trillion of Medicare’s estimated spending from 2012 to 2014. If CMS modifies its rules to make ACOs more attractive to hospitals and doctors, they would probably keep more of the savings — and Medicare less.

It's a good bet that what’s true of ACOs also applies to other cost-cutting ideas from the Obama administration, such as “bundled payments” and “comparative effectiveness research.” The concepts seem smart, but they're likely to suffer from micromanagement. They create jobs for lawyers and health-care “experts.” They sound impressive in speeches and op-ed pieces. But they don’t much “bend the cost curve,” and they mislead the public by suggesting that health spending is being controlled. It isn't.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • The U.S. Government • Politics in General

Once provisions of the Affordable Care Act start to kick in during 2014, at least three of every 10 employers will probably stop offering health coverage, a survey released Monday shows.

While only 7% of employees will be forced to switch to subsidized-exchange programs, at least 30% of companies say they will “definitely or probably” stop offering employer-sponsored coverage, according to the study published in McKinsey Quarterly.

The survey of 1,300 employers says those who are keenly aware of the health-reform measure probably are more likely to consider an alternative to employer-sponsored plans, with 50% to 60% in this group expected to make a change. It also found that for some, it makes more sense to switch.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Politics in General

One of Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s legacies in the new health care law, intended to allow the chronically ill and people with disabilities to continue living in their homes, is too costly to survive without major changes, Obama administration officials now say.

Republican lawmakers, who have vowed to repeal the health care law, cite the administration’s acknowledgment as yet another reason to do so. But the health and human services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, says the law gives her plenty of authority to make the necessary changes to the program without Congressional action.

To make the program viable, Ms. Sebelius said, she is considering changes in the eligibility criteria, including employment and earnings requirements, to ensure that only active workers may enroll. She also said she favored adjusting premiums to rise with inflation.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The U.S. Government • Budget • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate

Another big California health insurer has stunned individual policyholders with huge rate increases — this time it's Blue Shield of California seeking cumulative hikes of as much as 59% for tens of thousands of customers March 1.

Blue Shield's action comes less than a year after Anthem Blue Cross tried and failed to raise rates as much as 39% for about 700,000 California customers.

San Francisco-based Blue Shield said the increases were the result of fast-rising healthcare costs and other expenses resulting from new healthcare laws.

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Members of the Screen Actors Guild recently read in their health plan's newsletter that, beginning in January, almost 12,000 of its participants will lose access to treatment for mental-health and substance-abuse issues.

The guild's health plan represents one of a small number of unions, employers and insurers that are scrapping such benefits for their enrollees because of a 2008 law that requires that mental-health and substance-abuse benefits, if offered, be as robust as medical or surgical benefits. By dropping such coverage, providers can circumvent the requirements.

Others that have made the same move include the Plumbers Welfare Fund, representing about 3,500 members in the Chicago area, and Woodman's Food Market, a chain in Wisconsin with 13 stores and about 2,200 employees. United Security Life and Health Insurance Co., of Bedford Park, Ill., dropped mental-health coverage in individual policies it sells in Indiana and Nebraska this year because it saw costs rising and some competitors dropping coverage, said chief compliance officer Robert Dial.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life

The outgoing head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops vigorously defended the bishops’ opposition to the health care reform bill, asserting that only bishops can speak for the church on matters of faith and morals.

“All the rest is opinion,” Cardinal Francis George of Chicago said on Monday (Nov. 15), “often well-considered and important opinion that deserves a careful and respectful hearing, but still opinion.”

George’s three-year presidential term ends Tuesday, when the bishops will elect his successor.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

Bad news isn't always a surprise. But knowing it's coming doesn't always help, either. And now that, as expected, South Carolina now faces a huge new bill due to Obama-Care, our state faces a terrible dilemma.

The president and his allies in Congress promised that their massive health care overhaul would extend coverage to roughly 30 million previously uninsured Americans. The bill's critics, including S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford, warned that the states would have to cover large new tabs due to the bill's vastly increased number of people eligible for Medicaid.

The critics were right. Tuesday's Post and Courier reported that the ObamaCare Medicaid mandate is projected to cost our state "nearly $1 billion over the next decade, even with the federal government covering at least 90 percent of the cost."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate • State Government

As Obama administration officials put into place the first major wave of changes under the health care legislation, they have tried to defuse stiffening resistance — from companies like McDonald’s and some insurers — by granting dozens of waivers to maintain even minimal coverage far below the new law’s standards.

The waivers have been issued in the last several weeks as part of a broader strategic effort to stave off threats by some health insurers to abandon markets, drop out of the business altogether or refuse to sell certain policies.

Among those that administration officials hoped to mollify with waivers were some big insurers, some smaller employers and McDonald’s, which went so far as to warn that the regulations could force it to strip workers of existing coverage.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate

....the law requires all plans to meet the 80% to 85% threshold (also known as the "medical loss ratio"). And that's a problem for "mini-med" plans such as the ones offered by McDonald's, which typically have high administrative costs -- a consequence of insuring businesses with high employee turnover.

The threshold is also problematic for insurers that have a comparatively small number of customers, like Principal, which has sold fewer than 1 million health policies. The more customers an insurer has, the easier it will be to meet the threshold -- its fixed administrative costs can be spread across more people.

McDonald's is likely to obtain a waiver from the feds that will allow it to continue its current insurance plan, and another insurer (United Healthcare) has agreed to take over Principal's customers after it exits the business. Still, the reports raise the question of why the feds should be setting minimum medical loss ratios in the first place.

After all, in a free-market system, profits should be limited by competition, not by regulation.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • The U.S. Government • Politics in General

The U.S. healthcare reform law will worsen a shortage of physicians as millions of newly insured patients seek care, the Association of American Medical Colleges said on Thursday.

The group's Center for Workforce Studies released new estimates that showed shortages would be 50 percent worse in 2015 than forecast.

"While previous projections showed a baseline shortage of 39,600 doctors in 2015, current estimates bring that number closer to 63,000, with a worsening of shortages through 2025," the group said in a statement.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate

The first major conference on health policy I ever attended, organized by The National Journal in Washington sometime in the late 1970s, focused on the rising cost of health care, which then absorbed close to 8 percent of gross domestic product and was threatening the unimaginable: to claim 10 percent or more of G.D.P.

Governors, senators, members of Congress, business executives, the heads of trade associations and leaders of unions representing health care workers made presentations, and all of them agreed that the growth of health care spending had to be curbed -– by what now is called “bending the cost curve....”

Over the decades, the mission has been a failure, naturally....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Personal Finance • Taxes • The U.S. Government

"Well I'd love to take you back," ...[my Mom] said. "I'm really trying to figure out what this whole overhaul is going to mean. There have been so many rules, at least with my insurance."

I told my mom I'd take care of sorting out the rules. I called the benefits office of the University of Southern Maine where my mom works and found out that I can re-enroll in her plan in November and be covered by January. Yeah, it's not Sept. 23 — the date the provision "officially" takes effect. I'm just glad my parents have a plan that qualifies.

Right now, I am completely financially independent of them, something I've been working for since graduating from college. It is a strange and kind of demeaning concept to revisit a dependent type of relationship with them. I asked my mom recently if she thought this was awkward, too.

"It is what it is," she told me. "It's a stopgap measure. And you will be only covered for a couple of years until you turn 26. My hope would be that you would get a job that pays benefits. As far as it costing extra money for us, it didn't make a huge difference. It wasn't a whole lot more because I think in general people your age are healthy. And so it would be peace of mind to me to know that you have health care coverage."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Marriage & Family • Young Adults

Health insurers say they plan to raise premiums for some Americans as a direct result of the health overhaul in coming weeks, complicating Democrats' efforts to trumpet their signature achievement before the midterm elections.

Aetna Inc., some BlueCross BlueShield plans and other smaller carriers have asked for premium increases of between 1% and 9% to pay for extra benefits required under the law, according to filings with state regulators.

These and other insurers say Congress's landmark refashioning of U.S. health coverage, which passed in March after a brutal fight, is causing them to pass on more costs to consumers than Democrats predicted.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate

Every day, an average of 112 people -- most of them the newly poor -- sign up for free government health care in South Carolina.

Since the recession officially hit in December 2007, some 3,300 people a month, on average, have signed up for Medicaid in a state that outpaces the nation for poverty, obesity and diseases such as diabetes. Yet, South Carolina's political leaders have been among the most vocal in the country in opposition of the new health care law....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • Poverty • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Politics in General • State Government • * South Carolina