LYCANPEDIA

tinfoilandtea:

Forcing women to get transvaginal ultrasounds: Virginia Gov. Bob McDonaldwanted to force every woman seeking an abortion to go through the extremely uncomfortable and medically unnecessary procedure of a transvaginal ultrasound — sticking a medical wand far into a woman’s vagina to get a clearer ultrasound image.

Ordering women to cremate and bury their miscarried fetus: A huge abortion omnibus bill in Michigan could force women who miscarry to cremate the miscarried fetuses. This comes at no small expense to the woman: cremation of a fetus costs hundreds of dollars, and interment can be additional thousands. The bill has been passed by the Michigan House, and is awaiting a vote by the Michigan Senate.

Requiring doctors to lie to female patients: In Kansas, Republicans tried to force doctors to tell women that they faced risk of cancer from having an abortion. That is patently untrue, and making doctors say that it was true would be, in effect, requiring them to lie to their patients.

Making a dying woman consult two doctors before she can get a life-saving abortion: The New Hampshire legislature just overrode a veto by the Governor, forcing through a law that bans “partial birth” abortions. The law only reinforces federal law, but has the additional requirement that any woman who is exempt from the abortion ban because her life is at risk must visit not one but two doctors before she can get the procedure to save her life. For many rural women, especially those facing life-threatening conditions, this is near impossible.

Mandating people pay extra to give medical device companies a tax break: Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-MN) worked so hard to protect medical device companies from having to pay, that he has instead passed their costs onto the consumer — regular Americans — by increasing the cost of health coverage.

ladyatheist:

Remember the saying “if voting changed anything they’d make it illegal?” Well guess what, they’re making it illegal but only for some of us.

As President Obama read former Aetna CEO Ron Williams’ op-ed in The Wall Street Journal renouncing his support for a key provision of the health care reform law, he must have felt like Julius Caesar when Caesar realized, as he drew his last breath, that his close friend Brutus was in cahoots with his assassins.

Williams’ betrayal appeared in last Monday’s edition of the Journal under the headline, “Why I No Longer Support the Health Insurance Mandate.” The fact that it was published just days before the Supreme Court was expected to rule on the constitutionality of the mandate made it clear that Williams was not the trusted advisor the President thought he was, that, like Brutus, Williams had thrown his lot with those plotting against the commander-in-chief. […]

I was still head of corporate communications and a member of the public policy team at Cigna when [CEO Ron] Williams began speaking out about the need for an individual mandate. Many in the industry, including my former CEO, Ed Hanway, were initially skeptical, so Williams set out to convince them he was right. He argued that if Democrats took control of both Congress and the White House, which was looking increasingly likely, they would set their sights on the insurance industry. They most certainly would attempt to ban many of the industry-wide practices that enabled insurers to be so profitable, such as refusing to sell coverage to people with preexisting conditions. If that were to happen, the best way to guarantee that insurers wouldn’t be saddled with just the sickest Americans would be to get the Democrats to agree to a requirement that everybody, including the youngest and healthiest among us, buy private coverage if they weren’t eligible for a public program like Medicare or Medicaid. The government would also have to agree to tax credits or subsidies to help low- and moderate income Americans pay their premiums.

Before long, the CEOs of the other big insurers were indeed on board. They came to realize that if Democrats would agree to an enforceable mandate and premium subsidies, their companies would be getting billions of dollars in new revenue every year — forever. AHIP as a group soon endorsed the mandate, and Williams, who articulated the rationale for it so persuasively, became the industry’s chief emissary to both Congress and the White House.

I’m sure the President was led to believe that industry leaders would do their best to get some of their Republican friends to support reform if he would agree to the mandate and drop the idea of a public option. No doubt the President was reminded that the mandate was, after all, a Republican idea, that, in fact, it had been the centerpiece of legislation introduced in both the House and Senate by Republicans as an alternative to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s reform bill back in the early 1990s.

Tapping Williams to be the industry’s front man paid off. Soon both the President and Democratic Congressional leaders were endorsing the mandate. And in a joint address to Congress in September 2009, Obama threw the public option under the bus, saying that although he still thought it was a good idea, it wasn’t essential. Williams, who retired from Aetna last year, had won on both counts.