From: Washington Examiner
President Obama this week used his health care law to hand a lucrative special favor to two industries that have ardently supported his party: Planned Parenthood and the drug industry.
The largesse came in the form of a rule proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services that would require all new insurance plans to cover the entire cost of all forms of prescription contraception -- including those that also act as abortion drugs.
This free-pills-for-all proposal embodies two dark themes of the Obama era: cronyism and trampling on the freedom of conscience.
Once again, Obama, who pretends to be battling the special interests, is rewarding powerful lobbies that support him. Even worse, the federal rule, which would effectively force everyone to purchase insurance that covers abortifacient contraceptives, also reveals the true shape of the Culture War in America: The Left uses the brutal tool of the government to impose its morality on everyone, forcing religious conservatives to act against conscience, all the while howling about imminent "theocracy."
Pharmaceuticals are the quintessential "special interest." Drugmakers have spent $2.2 billion on lobbying since 1998, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, more than any other industry. In the Obama era, the drug industry's $635 million lobbying tab exceeds that of Wall Street and the oil and gas industry, combined.
For the 2010 election, as a reward for passing Obamacare, Big Pharma spent millions in ads boosting vulnerable Democratic senators including Harry Reid. Obamacare subsidized the drug companies in many ways, but it's hard to get better than this "free contraception" rule. Obamacare requires individuals to carry insurance and forces large employers to insure their workers. It also prohibits insurance companies from turning down applicants, and subsidizes more people's insurance.
Finally, Obamacare will force all insurers to fully cover all prescription contraceptives and not charge a co-pay. So everyone has to buy insurance, and everyone's insurance has to cover contraception. Government has become a magical money machine for drugmakers.
Planned Parenthood, intimately tied to the Democratic Party's money machine, is another prime beneficiary of Obama's proposed rule. Planned Parenthood has in the past set up special profitable arrangements with drugmakers such as Barr Pharmaceuticals, which sold the Plan B morning-after pill (an abortifacient).
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has a long and lucrative relationship with the drug industry. As governor of Kansas, she supported subsidies for embryo research and, in turn, received more than $400,000 in backing from a biotech industry group.
But more troubling than the special-interest collusion with government is the assault on economic freedom and freedom of conscience.
The rule would force folks who don't want contraception insurance to pay for contraception. Acting of their own free will, infertile couples, gay people, celibate people or postmenopausal women would not buy contraception insurance. Obama's mandate -- like similar mandates in 28 states -- unnecessarily drives up these people's health insurance.
But with prescription contraception, conscience enters the picture.
First, there is the (admittedly small) minority of observant Catholics who follow Rome's teaching that contraception subverts the procreative nature of marital sex. While most health care plans cover contraception, Obamacare's rules and proposed rules would basically make it illegal for someone to not pay for contraception.
But the proposed rule, promulgated under Obamacare's mandate for "free" preventive care, doesn't just cover the Pill, it also covers "morning-after" contraceptives that sometimes work by killing a fertilized egg that has already begun cell division. In other words, these are also abortion pills.
Plan B's manufacturers admitted the drug could "prevent pregnancy" by stopping a zygote from implanting on its mother's uterus (once implanted, the zygote is called an embryo).
The new "morning-after" pill being promoted by Planned Parenthood, called "Ella" is closer to the avowed abortion pill, RU-486, than to Plan B. While Ella can delay ovulation, and thus prevent fertilization, it also can prevent a zygote from implanting, or -- to use the FDA's word -- "affect" implantation. What does that mean? "Ella starves an implanted embryo to death," Anna Franzonello, attorney for Americans United for Life, tells me. The drug, like RU-486, blocks progesterone, the chemical the uterus needs in order to host an embryo.
The administration's proposed rule has a conscience exception for religious institutions, but "religious institution" is defined so narrowly that it wouldn't include a Catholic school -- though a seminary would probably be protected.
Still, Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America are lobbying to kill even this conscience protection -- gotta make sure those Catholic priests-in-training don't have to pay $25 for their Ella!
The intersection of pharma and government is full of Orwellian Newspeak. Drugmakers say they're preventing pregnancies by ending them. Obama claims he's depoiliticizing science by increasing subsidies and regulations. Then he crows about fighting special interests in the act of rewarding them.
Most bizarrely, the cultural Left assails "culture warriors" while making it illegal for many cultural conservatives to live according to their conscience.
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