WASHINGTON, D.C., May 21, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) –The Obama administration says it is doing pro-life taxpayers a favor by requiring private citizens to pay for abortions in Obamacare's state exchanges.
However, a leading attorney says the claim doesn't match the health care law's practical realities.
In a brief filed on March 16 in the state of Vermont, the Obama administration said the reason for its controversial abortion insurance coverage surcharge in the state — which a government watchdog found was illegally funding abortions — is an “interest…in following long-standing statutory restrictions prohibiting use of federal funds for abortion except where the pregnancy results from rape or incest or the life of the pregnant woman is endangered.”
Put another way, President Obama's lawyers say they want to protect taxpayers from funding elective abortions — by respecting the Hyde Amendment.
Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Casey Mattox, however, told LifeSiteNews that the administration's brief does not match its actions.
“I think what they are trying to say is that you can't have the taxpayer subsidies paying for abortions that are on the exchange,” explained Mattox. “Instead, if people want to voluntarily make the choice to have a plan that includes abortion, then they can pay the separate payment.”
“That makes sense.”
“The problem,” says Mattox, “is in [five] states — formerly Rhode Island and Connecticut, but still in Vermont, New Jersey, and Hawaii — it's not a voluntary choice. People have no option, they are being forced into it, which defeats the purpose of how this was supposed to work — if you want an abortion plan, you go get an abortion plan, and you pay for it yourself, not with taxpayer dollars.”
The administration has long been criticized for claiming it wants Obamacare to follow the Hyde Amendment's pro-life protections while simultaneously using the health care law to fund elective abortions. In 2010, just months after Obamacare was passed with an ostensibly pro-life Executive Order, the administration was found to be using Obamacare funds to pay for elective abortions in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico.
In 2012, pro-life former Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak said that the Obamacare contraception, abortifacient, and sterilization mandate — which was found unconstitutional last year — “not only … violate[s] the Executive Order, it also violates statutory law.”
The administration has also been under fire for its lack of transparency on which plans on the Obamacare insurance exchanges include abortion coverage. By law, each state must have at least one plan that does not include abortion coverage; the coverage itself costs $1 per month per plan.
An investigation last year by the Government Accountability Office found that over 1,000 insurance plans in state exchanges were illegally funding abortions. That investigation came less than a year after then-HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was grilled by pro-life congressmen about whether Americans would be able to determine if their insurance plan funds abortion.
“I don’t know,” Sebelius answered. “I know exactly the issue you’re talking about. I will check and make sure that is clearly identifiable.”
Pro-life members of Congress say Sebelius never got them the information. This did not stop the administration from arguing in its Vermont brief that it was focused on following the legal requirements of the Hyde Amendment.
“This federal interest” in following Hyde “is reflected in both the ACA’s prohibition on any federal subsidies being used for [private] abortion services,” said the brief, “and [Obamacare's] requirement that issuers offering plans that include [private] abortion coverage collect separate payments for such coverage.”
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It also points out that the law requires insurance companies “maintain those payments in a separate, segregated account to be used exclusively for paying the costs of covered NFF abortion services provided to their Exchange enrollees.”
“These provisions plainly are designed to ensure that no federal funds subsidizing enrollee health coverage premiums are used to pay for [private] abortion services.”
Mattox said that the brief's defense of the abortion payment requirement ignored both the secrecy surrounding plans — in many states, the “separate, segregated account” the brief describes is not distinguishable from the other charges in insurance plans — and how the Obamacare individual insurance mandate is literally requiring people to violate their consciences.
“In these states,” says Mattox, “individuals are being told, 'The government is going to fine you under the individual mandate unless you go and get one of these plans and pay for an abortion.'”
“I agree,” said Mattox, that “the government has a compelling interest in making sure that taxpayers are not paying for other people's abortions. There is a compelling governmental interest in making sure that people are not required to pay for abortions in violation of their conscience. But that extends to individuals as well as taxpayers.”
Mattox also said a financial issue has been raised in the Vermont Obamacare case. “The state has argued that they only need four cents” to fund the projected number of abortions. “Yet they charge the full dollar, and put that full dollar into the abortion fund to pay for people's elected abortions.”
“It's a burden on conscience when you're not just charging people the amount supposedly needed to pay for abortions, but you're charging them, in Vermont, 25 times more than is needed and putting that into the abortion pool.”
“It just increases the burden on conscience. Even if you were signing up for a plan that includes abortion, you're being required to pay extra for abortions,” said the attorney.
“I suspect, in most states, people are being charged more than is necessary to pay for abortions,” but they “have no idea” they are being secretly charged for abortions, said Mattox.