Today pro-lifers will take to Twitter to pressure Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to #BeTransparent about abortion coverage in Obamacare.
Sign up here, where you’ll also find sample tweets as well as twitter handles of people to ping in your tweets.
The Obama administration has gone to great lengths to hide the abortion surcharge, making it difficult if not impossible to find the deadly tariff in most insurance policies in exchanges.
For starters, insurance companies are banned from mentioning the surcharge in ads or plan descriptions. It is only after one chooses a plan that one may (or may not) be told. To rephrase Nancy Pelosi’s infamous quip, you have to buy it to find out if abortion is in it.
Today the rabidly pro-abortion HHS secretary is expected to testify at a hearing in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Republicans need to add the covert abortion surcharge to their list of questions about the spastic rollout of Obamacare on October 1.
Here’s a primer on the abortion secrecy in the exchanges, from a source on the Hill:
Click “like” if you are PRO-LIFE!
- The ACA contains the most radical departure from the principles of the Hyde amendment to become federal law since the 1970s. It deviates from decades of abortion policy by allowing taxpayer money to flow to plans that include coverage for abortion on demand. As a part of this deviation from the Hyde amendment, plans that include abortion will charge a mandatory abortion surcharge.
- As the exchanges have gone “live” this month, it has become evident that it is nearly impossible for consumers seeking exchange plans to identify which, if any, plans on their state exchange exclude abortion.
- Even if consumers are able to log into the exchanges and view the available plans, the information posted online does not indicate whether abortion is covered or the price of the mandatory abortion surcharge.
- The “Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act” (HR 3279) was introduced by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) to require prominent, transparent disclosure of abortion coverage for each plan offered on an exchange.
- This is vital information since the many plans that include elective abortion are required by law to impose a mandatory monthly abortion surcharge. These surcharges are not optional. Once you sign up for a plan with abortion coverage, you MUST pay the surcharge. Doubtlessly there are many Americans who would object to paying a surcharge into a fund to be used for the purpose of destroying innocent human lives.
- When you buy a house, the mortgage documents always clearly disclose the total cost of the mortgage with interest over the length of the loan. Yet, when search for insurance plans that could include an abortion surcharge, it is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to simply find out if the plan includes abortion.
- A telephone representative with the D.C. Health Link said that persons wishing to know about abortion coverage should call each individual health insurance carrier individually. The average person seeking coverage on a marketplace should not have to spend hours trying to obtain basic information about whether or not they will have to pay a surcharge for a procedure that dismembers and chemically poisons innocent unborn children.
- If consumers call the insurance companies they still may not get answers to their questions. Contacting CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield in Maryland, the Charlotte Lozier Institute was told that customer-service representatives “don’t get a full contract” to have on hand and the “part of the site [that would allow her to determine whether abortion was covered] is not working.”
- A representative with the “Health Insurance Marketplace Live Chat” told one consumer “You may have to wait until you pick a plan to see if they cover abortions.” Once an individual enrolls is clearly too late, since he or she will be required to pay the monthly abortion surcharge at that point.
- The ACA law says that enrollees can only be notified of abortion coverage “as part of the summary of benefits and coverage explanation, at the time of enrollment.” Only providing this information as a part of the summary of benefits and coverage explanation at the time of enrollment is unacceptable, but it appears that even that requirement is being ignored, since the summary of benefits documents posted on the federally facilitated exchange don’t even list whether the plan includes abortion or not.
- So far we know that at least two states, Connecticut and Rhode Island, do not have a single plan that excludes elective abortion.
Make plans now to participate in the #BeTransparent TweetFest. Also be sure to click on the Facebook events page that you are attending.
Reprinted with permission from Jill Stanek