What Would a Second Trump Presidency Look Like for Health Care?

By Julie Rovner
JANUARY 16, 2024

On the presidential campaign trail, former President Donald Trump is, once again, promising to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act — a nebulous goal that became one of his administration’s splashiest policy failures.

“We’re going to fight for much better health care than Obamacare. Obamacare is a catastrophe,” Trump said at a campaign stop in Iowa on Jan. 6.

Continued: https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/donald-trump-health-record-second-presidency-abortion-drugs-covid/


U.S. proposes new rule to strengthen birth control access through Obamacare

Rule could help expand coverage for 'tens of millions of women across the country'

Thomson Reuters
Jan 30, 2023

The U.S. government on Monday proposed a new rule allowing women enrolled in Obamacare plans to get access to birth control even if their employer, school or health plan objects on religious grounds.

The rule could help expand coverage for "tens of millions of women across the country" who have access to birth control coverage under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) said.

Continued: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-obamacare-birth-control-1.6730895


Republicans would miss legal abortion, just like they would have missed Obamacare

The Supreme Court just saved the Affordable Care Act, and the GOP, for the third time. But what about legal abortion? A post-Roe v. Wade world looms.

Tom Krattenmaker, Opinion columnist
June 17, 2021

When the Republican Party finally got its chance to throw out Obamacare, it acted like a dog that had caught up with the car it was chasing and had no idea what to do next.

The GOP might find itself in a similarly absurd situation if it gets the post-Roe v. Wade world it has been pursuing – which, because of Supreme Court lineup changes and a potentially decisive case heading its way, is on the verge of becoming much more than a politically useful abstract concept.

Continued: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/06/17/republicans-escape-obamacare-debacle-abortion-next/7583695002/


USA – New Obamacare Rule Will Require Separate Premium Payments for Abortion Coverage

New Obamacare Rule Will Require Separate Premium Payments for Abortion Coverage

Caitlin Cruz
Dec 21, 2019

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a new rule that will require insurers through the Affordable Care Act marketplace to bill separately for abortion coverage. This administrative change could affect more than 3 million people with abortion coverage.

If an insurance plan through the ACA marketplace includes abortion coverage, the insurer will be required to bill two premium payments: one for the health care policy and another for the policy’s abortion coverage. Here’s the full rule from the Federal Register.

Continued: https://theslot.jezebel.com/new-obamacare-rule-will-require-separate-premium-paymen-1840580808


USA: Does the Trump administration want more unintended pregnancies?

Does the Trump administration want more unintended pregnancies?

By Editorial Board
October 7, 2017

THE TRUMP administration on Friday tore a big hole in an important public-health law, eroding the federal requirement that health insurance plans cover contraception. The administration argued that not many women will ultimately be affected. We hope that is true.

The contraception mandate, which stemmed from the Affordable Care Act, originally offered an exemption to churches and their closely connected organizations — but not to religiously affiliated universities, charities, small businesses and other groups that wanted no involvement in providing birth control to anyone, and particularly not through the health plans they offered. Successive rounds of litigation finally pushed the objectors and the government close to a deal, in which religiously conscious groups could opt out of offering contraception coverage in their insurance plans and federal authorities would find ways to serve employees still seeking birth control. The Supreme Court last year suggested they could come to an arrangement.

Continued at source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/does-the-trump-administration-want-more-unintended-pregnancies/2017/10/07/f63a6914-aac7-11e7-850e-2bdd1236be5d_story.html?wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1


U.S.: Trump to Blow Up Obamacare’s Birth Control Benefit

Trump to Blow Up Obamacare’s Birth Control Benefit

May 31, 2017
Christine Grimaldi & Jessica Mason Pieklo

The draft interim final rule echoes Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price’s belief that “there’s not one” woman who can’t afford birth control.

Any business that provides employer-sponsored health insurance can soon claim a religious or moral objection to covering birth control, courtesy of the Trump administration.

That could leave more than 55 million cisgender women and an untold number of transgender and gender nonconforming people who rely on no-copay contraception under the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) popular birth control benefit on the hook for the cost of the medication or a device—far beyond the cost of a co-pay.

Continued at source: Rewire: https://rewire.news/article/2017/05/31/trump-blow-up-obamacare-s-birth-control-benefit/


US: Federally Qualified Health Centers Could Not Readily Replace Planned Parenthood

Federally Qualified Health Centers Could Not Readily Replace Planned Parenthood
May 17, 2017

New and Updated Guttmacher Resources Detail the Critical Roles Filled by Planned Parenthood and Title X in U.S. Family Planning Safety Net

New evidence from the Guttmacher Institute shows that it is unrealistic to expect federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) to serve the millions of women who currently rely on Planned Parenthood for high-quality contraceptive care. The argument that FQHC sites could easily absorb these clients has been key to social conservatives’ efforts to shutter Planned Parenthood health centers by excluding them from various public funding streams, including Medicaid.

Continued at source: Guttmacher Institute: http://mailchi.mp/guttmacher/federally-qualified-health-centers-could-not-readily-replace-planned-parenthood?e=bb6e0547c2


U.S: Trump’s Abortion Strategy

Trump’s Abortion Strategy

By EMILY BAZELON
MARCH 10, 2017

Divide and conquer. That’s the way to understand President Trump’s informal offer to Planned Parenthood: Stop doing abortions and you can keep the federal funding that the House Republican bill to replace Obamacare would otherwise eliminate. The president was reportedly trying to placate both conservatives and his daughter Ivanka, who, during the campaign, apparently pushed him to recognize that “millions of women are helped by Planned Parenthood.”

The Trump pitch came cloaked in a guise of supposed reasonableness: Since most of the care women receive at Planned Parenthood involves services like cancer screenings, contraception and testing for sexually transmitted diseases, why not simply leave the abortions to other clinics and providers? Planned Parenthood could spare itself a lot of political trouble and Ms. Trump would get to broker a deal.

Continued at source: New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/opinion/trumps-abortion-strategy.html?_r=0


US: Getting Freedom From Health

Getting Freedom From Health

Gail Collins
MARCH 9, 2017

What’s the rush on repealing Obamacare? It’s true President Trump did promise speediness during the campaign. (“You’re going to end up with great health care for a fraction of the price and that’s gonna take place immediately after we go in. O.K.? Immediately. Fast. Quick.”) But that was before he discovered that health care was … “complicated.”

This sort of thinking will send us back to discussions about how our president has no permanent convictions on any subject except the inferiority of Arnold Schwarzenegger as a reality show host. Let’s move on. We have a national disaster to watch unrolling.

Continued at source: New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/09/opinion/getting-freedom-from-health.html?mwrsm=Email&_r=0


U.S. Reproductive Health and Rights: Beyond the Global Gag Rule

U.S. Reproductive Health and Rights: Beyond the Global Gag Rule

Rachel Benson Gold, Guttmacher Institute
Ann M. Starrs, Guttmacher Institute
First published on The Lancet Public Health: March 7, 2017

As one of his first actions as president, Donald Trump imposed and expanded the global gag rule, a sweeping policy that will cripple highly successful US family planning programmes in developing countries and seriously damage broader US global health efforts. This callous policy—ostensibly meant to counter abortion—might shock observers abroad, but is only the opening salvo in what is expected to be a broad-based assault on sexual and reproductive health and rights. President Trump has vowed to “put America first”; however, his policies would put the health of women last, around the world and most certainly in the USA.

Continued at source: Guttmacher Institute: https://www.guttmacher.org/article/2017/03/us-reproductive-health-and-rights-beyond-global-gag-rule