Home » Posts tagged 'Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act'

Tag Archives: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

Here’s a Look at the Week Ahead in Congress!

May 13, 2013 8:49 pm / Leave a Comment

— Rachna Choudhry, Co-founder, POPVOX.com, rachna@popvox.com

The House returns this week to vote on a bill repealing “Obamacare,” the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, while the Senate continues work on a water resources bill and comprehensive immigration reform. Weigh in on POPVOX — and we’ll deliver your message to Congress. (Learn how it works or link to this update online.)

In the House

Repealing the healthcare law (HR 45): The House will yet again vote on a bill to “repeal Obamacare.”  Many Republicans have been asking for this vote all year as a chance to get new Members on the record as opposing the controversial law. - https://www.popvox.com/bills/us/113/hr45

  • From our Hill Sources: House leaders promised in April that a vote would come, after a failed attempt to pass legislation to adjust the law. House passage will once again give the GOP a chance to remind voters that they are fighting to repeal the law. But just as in the last Congress, House passage will likely be as far as the bill goes, with no indication that the Senate will consider it.

The SEC Regulatory Accountability Act (HR 1062): This bill would require the SEC to conduct an enhanced cost-benefit analysis for all regulations it issues, and ensure that the benefits of a rule outweigh the costs. - https://www.popvox.com/bills/us/113/hr1062

The House will also consider several other bills this week, including:

  • HR 180: encouraging the development of plans for law enforcement to send out information when an officer is hurt or killed.
  • The Hill Creek Cultural Preservation and Energy Development Act (HR 356): To clarify authority granted under the Act entitled “An Act to define the exterior boundary of the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation in the State of Utah”.
  • The Homes for Heroes Act (HR 384): requiring the Department of Housing and Urban Development to pay closer attention to veterans’ housing needs.
  • HR 573: granting the Northern Mariana Islands the same coastal land rights as other US territories.
  • HR 701: setting a fall deadline by which the Securities and Exchange Commission can exempt securities from regulation.
  • HR 767: assigning regional Bureau of Land Management offices as Pilot Project offices under the Energy Policy Act.
  • HR 1580: affirming US policy on Internet governance.
  • SConRes 10: authorizing the celebration of King Kamehameha’s birthday in the Capitol Visitors Center.

In the Senate

The Water Resources Development Act (S 601): The bill authorizes several projects related to flood and storm risk reduction, and coastal and environmental restoration. - https://www.popvox.com/bills/us/113/s601

The bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill (S 744): The Senate Judiciary Committee will continue its consideration of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act. - https://www.popvox.com/bills/us/113/s744

 

It’s National Women’s Health Week, So Naturally, the GOP is Voting Yet Again to Repeal Obamacare!

May 13, 2013 7:22 pm / Leave a Comment

— by Kathleen Sibelius, Secretary–Dept. of Health & Human Services

This week, starting with Mother’s Day,  we celebrate National Women’s Health Week. As a nation, we honor the women in our lives – our mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, cousins, friends, and colleagues – by encouraging them to make their health a priority and to take steps to live healthier, happier lives.

Women are frequently the health care decision-makers in their families. We take time off from work to drive a parent to the doctor. We hold our children’s hands while they get their vaccinations. We make the appointments for our spouses’ checkups – and then make sure they actually go. We stretch and re-work our family budgets to pay the doctor’s bills. And too often, we put our own health last.

But the truth is unless we take care of ourselves first, we cannot really take care of our families. That means we have to eat right, exercise, and get the care we need to stay healthy. Unfortunately, preventive care has not always been easily accessible or affordable for everyone, including young women.

But the health care law is helping to usher in a new day for women’s health. The Affordable Care Act is making it easier for women to take control of their own health.  For many women, preventive services like mammograms, Pap smears, birth control, and yearly well-woman visits are now available without cost sharing. The health care law improves women’s access to appropriate preventive health screenings, which can help detect diseases early, when treatment is most effective and least costly.

Starting next year, insurance companies will no longer be allowed to refuse us coverage just because we’re battling breast cancer or have another pre-existing condition – and they won’t be allowed to charge us more just because we are women.

If you’re one of the millions of women who are uninsured or who buy insurance on their own, more options are on the way because of the Affordable Care Act. Starting October 1, 2013, you will be able to visit a new Health Insurance Marketplace where you can compare and choose from a range of plans to find one that best fits your needs and budget. All of these plans must cover a package of essential health benefits, including maternity and newborn care.

To get more information about the Marketplace and to sign up for email and text updates to get ready for October, visit HealthCare.gov.

Being healthy starts with each of us taking control. So Monday on National Women’s Checkup Day, and during National Women’s Health Week, I encourage you to sit down with your doctor or health care provider and talk about what you can do to take control of your health.

There’s no better gift you can give yourself – or your loved ones.

ACA01

ACA02

“Profit-Motive” Is Negatively Impacting Your Healthcare: Medicare Provider Charge Data

May 8, 2013 9:19 am / Leave a Comment

As part of the Obama administration’s work to make our health care system more affordable and accountable, data are being released by HHS (Health & Human Services) that show significant variation across the country, even within communities as to what hospitals charge for common inpatient services.

“Currently, consumers don’t know what a hospital is charging them or their insurance company for a given procedure, like a knee replacement, or how much of a price difference there is at different hospitals, even within the same city,” Secretary Sebelius said. “This data and new data centers will help fill that gap.”  For example,

  • In Dallas, Las Colinas Medical Center billed Medicare an average of $160,832 for a lower joint replacement. The price was $42,632 five miles away, at Baylor Medical Center.
  • Average inpatient charges for services for a joint replacement range from a low of $5,300 at a hospital in Ada, Okla., to a high of $223,000 at a hospital in Monterey Park, Calif.
  • Average inpatient hospital charges to treat heart failure range from a low of $21,000 to a high of $46,000 in Denver, Colo., and from a low of $9,000 to a high of $51,000 in Jackson, Miss.
  • Ventilator: $115,00 George Washington University vs. $53,000 at Providence (just 5.4 miles apart)
  • Lower limb replacement: $117,000 at Richmond CJW Medical Center vs. 25,600 at Winchester Medical Center
  • Pneumonia: $124,051 in Philadelphia vs. $5,093 in Water Valley, Mississippi.

According to Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, hospital pricing is “the craziest of crazy quilts.” He went on to say, ”It is absurd — and, indeed, unconscionable — that the people least capable of paying for their hospital care bear the largest, and often unaffordable, cost burdens.”

Medicare has begun paying providers based on quality rather than just the quantity of services they furnish by implementing new programs, such as value-based purchasing and re-admissions reductions.  HHS awarded $170 million to states to enhance their rate review programs, and since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the proportion of insurance company requests for double-digit rate increases fell from 75 percent in 2010 to 14 percent so far in 2013.

The ACA also makes available many tools to help ensure consumers, Medicare, and other payers get the best value for their health care dollar.  To make data from these tools useful to consumers, HHS is also providing funding  to data centers to collect, analyze, and publish health pricing and medical claims reimbursement data.  The data centers’ work helps consumers better understand the comparative price of procedures in a given region or for a specific health insurer or service setting. Businesses and consumers alike can use these data to drive decision-making and reward cost-effective provision of care.

Data are available in Microsoft Excel (.xlsx) format and comma-separated values (.csv) format.

Inpatient Charge Data, FY2011, Microsoft Excel version
Inpatient Charge Data, FY2011, Comma Separated Values (CSV) version

Hospitals determine what they will charge for items and services provided to patients and these charges are the amount the hospital bills for an item or service. The Total Payment amount includes a Medicare Severity Diagnosis Related Group (MS-DRG) amount, bill total per diem, beneficiary primary payer claim payment amount, beneficiary Part A coinsurance amount, beneficiary deductible amount, beneficiary blood deducible amount and DRG outlier amount.

Data provided by CMS (Centers for Medicare/Medicaid Services) include hospital-specific charges for the more than 3,000 U.S. hospitals that receive Medicare Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) payments for the top 100 most frequently billed discharges, paid under Medicare based on a rate per discharge using the MS-DRG for FY2011.

DRGs represent almost 7 million discharges or 60 percent of total Medicare IPPS discharges. Average charges and average Medicare payments are calculated at the individual hospital level. Users will be able to make comparisons between the amount charged by individual hospitals within local markets, and nationwide, for services that might be furnished in connection with a particular inpatient stay.

There is some debate about how much patients, insurance providers and the government actually end up paying. “It’s true that Medicare and a lot of private insurers never pay the full charge,” said assistant professor at the University of California at San Francisco Medical School, Renee Hsia, “You have a lot of private insurance companies where the consumer pays a portion of the charge. But, for uninsured patients, they face the full bill. In that sense, the price matters.”

To view the new hospital dataset, please go to: http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/Medicare-Provider-Charge-Data/index.html.

To access the funding opportunity announcement, visit: http://www.grants.gov, and search for CFDA # 93.511.

For more information on HHS efforts to build a health care system that will ensure quality care, please see the fact sheet “Lower Costs, Better Care: Reforming Our Health Care Delivery System,” athttp://www.cms.gov/apps/media/press/factsheet.asp?Counter=4550.

To read a fact sheet about the Medicare data showing variation in hospital charges, please see:http://www.cms.gov/apps/media/fact_sheets.asp.

Related Posts:

Holding Insurance Companies Accountable for High Premium Increases

March 27, 2013 11:18 am

— by Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) prohibits some of the worst insurance industry practices that have kept affordable health coverage out of reach for millions of Americans.  It provides families and individuals with new protections against discriminatory rates due to pre-existing conditions, holds insurance companies accountable for how they spend your premium dollars, and prevents insurance companies from raising your insurance premium rates without accountability or transparency.

For more than a decade before the ACA health insurance premiums had risen rapidly, straining the pocketbooks of American families and businesses.  Oftentimes, insurance companies were able to raise rates without explanation to consumers or public justification of their actions.

One of the provisions of the ACA is that insurance companies must now reveal the percentage of premium dollars they actually spend on health care and how much they spend on administration (e.g., salaries and marketing. Prior to ACA, this type of information was a closely held secret and insurance companies pocketed a good percentage of your premium dollars. With ACA in place, that’s no longer the case. If an insurance company spends less than 80% of premiums on medical care and quality (or less than 85% in the large employer, large group market), it must rebate the portion of premium dollars that exceeded this limit. This 80/20 rule is commonly known as the Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) rule

Chart showing the percent of rate filings that requested increases of 10 percent or more. 2009: 72%, 2010: 75%, 2011: 51%, 2012: 34%, 2013: 14% Rate Review in Action
The ACA brought an unprecedented level of scrutiny and transparency to health insurance rate increases by requiring insurance companies in every state to publicly justify their actions if they want to raise rates by 10% or more.  Insurance companies are required to provide easy to understand information to their customers about their reasons for significant rate increases, and any unreasonable rate increases are posted online.

And it’s working.  A new report released today shows that the health care law is helping to moderate premium hikes.  Since this rule was implemented, the number of requests for insurance premium increases of 10% or more has dropped dramatically, from 75% to 14%.  The average premium increase for all rates in 2012 was 30% below what it was in 2010. And available data suggest that this slowdown in rate increases has continued into 2013.

Moreover, when an insurer does decide to increase rates, consumers are seeing lower rate increases than what the insurers initially requested.  In the review of rate requests for 10% or more, over 50% resulted in customers receiving either a lower rate increase than requested or no increase at all.

States have received $250 million in Health Insurance Rate Review Grants to help strengthen and improve their rate review processes thanks to the Affordable Care Act.  Of the 44 states that received rate review grants, 40 have reported enhancements to their rate review websites.  These website enhancements include searchable rate filings, new public comment options, live streaming of rate hearings, and plain language explanations of rate review and rate filings.

The Effective Rate Review program is one of many in the health care law aimed at protecting consumers.  The rate review program works in conjunction with the 80/20 rule, which requires insurance companies to generally spend 80% of premiums on health care or provide rebates to their customers. Insurance companies that did not meet the 80/20 rule have provided nearly 13 million Americans with more than $1.1 billion in rebates. Americans receiving the rebate will benefit from an average rebate of $151 per household.

Additionally, today we issued a final rule that implements five key consumer protections from the Affordable Care Act, including protection against denial of health coverage because of a pre-existing condition.  This rule makes the health insurance market work better for individuals, families and small businesses, and it also increases the transparency brought to rate increases by directing insurance companies in every state to file all of their rate increase requests.

For more information about the Affordable Care Act, visit http://www.healthcare.gov/index.html.

Related Posts

10 Terrible Amendments Offered by Republican Senators

March 24, 2013 3:23 pm

Mar 22, 2013 | By ThinkProgress War Room

The Senate has been debating the Democratic budget for the past few days. One of the quirks of Senate rules means that the amendment process on the budget is completely open, allowing senators to file and request a vote on an unlimited number of amendments. They don’t even have to say what their amendments are in advance, but many still choose to file them in advance. Since the process is so open, a rarity in the gridlocked Senate, senators often use this opportunity to file highly political message amendments. We sifted through the more than 400 amendments filed and found dozens that are terrible, ridiculous, nonsensical, damaging, or just plain crazy. Here’s a look at ten of those proposals.

  1. BOSS IN YOUR BEDROOM: Sens. Fischer (R-NE), Cruz (R-TX), Johanns (R-NE), and Enzi (R-WY) introduced an amendment to put your boss in your bedroom by allowing them to deny you birth control coverage based on their beliefs, not yours. This is just one of numerous anti-Obamacare amendments offered by Republicans. Incidentally, the law turns three tomorrow. 42 GOP senators and 2 Democrats voted for this amendment.
  2. NRA-FUELED CONSPIRACY THEORIES: Sen. Inhofe (R-OK) offered an amendment that would prevent the U.S. from signing on to the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty. The NRA and other right-wing groups falsely claim that this is some backdoor gun grab, which led the Senate to fail to ratify the treaty last year. The NRA is currently making a full court press to kill or at least gut the treaty. Sen. Vitter (R-LA) offered a similar amendment that would prohibit the U.N. from registering or taxing Americans’ guns, something the organization obviously has no plans to do.
  3. HOUSE GOP BUDGET: While Republicans found time to cook up hundreds of other amendments, it seems no Republican senator wanted to vote on the House GOP budget as a substitute for the Senate Democratic plan. When Democrats offered the draconian Ryan plan that ends Medicare and raises taxes on the middle class in order to slash them on the wealthy, a measly 40 GOP senators voted for the plan from their counterparts in the House. Three GOP senators, however, voted against it because it wasn’t extreme enough.
  4. GIVEAWAY TENS OF BILLIONS TO WALL STREET BANKS: In the same so-called “reconciliation” bill that was necessary to finish passing Obamacare was a provision that stopped routing federal student loans through the big banks. Previously, the banks acted as a middleman between the federal government and borrowers, reaping billions in fees each year even though they bore no risk because the government was the one guaranteeing the loans. The banks role was eliminated in 2010 and the money was shifted to Pell grants. Earlier today, Republicans put forward an amendment to repeal all of the Obamacare bill, including the student loan reforms. This would literally take money away from students and hand it over to the Wall Street banks. 45 Republicans backed this proposal, which also was the third time this week that GOP senators forced a vote on repealing Obamacare.
  5. OBAMAPHONE: One of the more racially-charged moments in last year’s presidential campaign came when Republican groups promoted a video of an African-American woman proclaiming her support for Obama because, she said, the government was giving out free cell phones, among other things. The Drudge Report and other right-wing media immediately dubbed this the “Obamaphone” controversy. As it turned out, the FCC’s Lifeline program offering free cell phones to low-income Americans began under President George W. Bush and is based on a Reagan-era program to provide low-income Americans with subsidized telephone service. Sen. Coburn (R-OK) offered an amendment to “reform” or, more likely, eliminate, this otherwise obscure program that is important to low-income Americans.
  6. MITT ROMNEY’S TAX PLAN: The Democratic plan raises close to $1 TRILLION in revenue just by closing loopholes that benefit the wealthy and corporate special interests like Big Oil. Republicans wanted to replace this with revenue-neutral tax reform that used the money to pay for huge new tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations instead of using it to reduce the deficit. This is almost identical to the Romney-Ryan tax plan that raised middle class taxes and which voters soundly rejected last year. All 45 GOP senators voted for this recycled Romney plan, which Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) also included in this year’s House GOP budget.
  7. KILL WIND JOBS, SEND CLEAN ENERGY INDUSTRY TO CHINA: Sen. Alexander (R-TN) wants to repeal the vital tax credits for wind power, just as Mitt Romney proposed last year. This would kill 37,000 jobs more or less immediately and effectively cede the clean energy industry to China and our other foreign competitors.
  8. LEAVE THE UN: Sen. Paul (R-KY) proposed one measure to save a very small amount of money: withdraw from the United Nations.
  9. RACE-BAITING WELFARE LIES: You may remember that Mitt Romney and other Republicans advanced the outright lie that President Obama “removed the work requirement from welfare.” This was categorically untrue, but that didn’t stop Republicans from airing millions of dollars in ads about it. In any case, the GOP campaign of distortion around the amendment has resulted in no states taking advantage of the flexibility requested by some Republican governors that the Obama administration offered to grant. Nevertheless, Sen. Inhofe (R-OK) is still so concerned that he offered an amendment to address the non-existent problem of the work requirement having been removed from welfare. For good measure, he offered a second mean-spirited amendment that mandates drug testing for welfare recipients.
  10. CREATE A PERMANENT IMMIGRANT UNDERCLASS: Sen. Sessions (R-AR), who has faced charges of racial prejudice in the past and was once denied a seat on the federal bench as a result, put forward a proposal to bar even those immigrants who receive legal status from receiving numerous tax breaks directed at the working poor. This would even prevent immigrants from receiving tax breaks that they are claiming on behalf of their American citizen children.

These are just a few of the dozens of terrible proposals put forward today by Republican senators.

This material [the article above] was created by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. It was created for the Progress Report, the daily e-mail publication of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Click here to subscribe.

Path to Poverty v3.0

March 13, 2013 10:57 am

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) released his budget Tuesday, the Path to Prosperity. The document (which does not include the actual budget figures) is the third that the former vice-presidential candidate has unveiled. Actual budget numbers (gleaned from a call to the budget committee office) aren’t yet available and won’t be until the markup is finished.  They’ll be starting on that today and should have it finished by later this week or first of next week.  That’s when we’ll see the HR bill with actual numbers.

Read the full text (click on the graphic):

Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” version 2.0 budget from last year didn’t achieve balance until around 2040, but then, that patch didn’t include any tax hikes. That version proposed to cut the top tax rate to 25 percent, while eliminating a number of prominent tax credits and deductions.  Version 3.0 STILL proposes to cut the top tax rate to 25%, in a sense, restoring and bettering the Bush tax cuts for billionaires.  Plus, it’s yet one more attempt to kill the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and to voucherize Medicare, a program to which we’ve all contributed throughout our working lives in anticipation of receiving healthcare assistance during our retirement years.

Will post the actual numbers as they become available

267,000

March 11, 2013 8:46 pm

Mar 8, 2013 | By ThinkProgress War Room

LGBT-Undocumenteds

Evening Brief: Important Stories That You Might’ve Missed

This material [the article above] was created by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. It was created for the Progress Report, the daily e-mail publication of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Click here to subscribe.

What the American People Did NOT Choose

March 11, 2013 8:24 pm / 2 Comments

Mar 11, 2013 | By ThinkProgress War Room

6 Things Americans Did Not Vote for in 2012

Tomorrow, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) will release the latest version of his infamous Republican budget plan — you know, the one that ends Medicare as we know it. As we await this plan, it’s worth considering a few things that voters did not choose in the 2012 election.

  1. Paul Ryan: In selecting Ryan as his running mate, Mitt Romney put Ryan and his ideas front-and-center in the election. Voters said thanks but no thanks to Ryan and his radical ideas. Ryan even lost his hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin.
  2. A Republican House of Representatives: President Obama was easily re-elected and Democrats expanded their majority in the Senate, so why are we stuck with a GOP-controlled House of Representatives? Gerrymandering. Democratic House candidates won more than a million more votes than Republican candidates, but districts drawn by Republicans for Republicans allowed the GOP to hold on to their majority. This isn’t even disputed by the Republicans. In fact, they brag about it.
  3. The Middle Class Footing the Bill: The centerpiece of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan’s economic proposal was a tax plan that raised taxes on the poor and middle class in order to slash taxes for the wealthy. By contrast, President Obama proposed raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans. The GOP budget’s tax proposals is nearly identical to the Romney-Ryan plan rejected by voters in November.
  4. Ending Medicare: Mitt Romney not only chose Paul Ryan, he wholeheartedly embraced Ryan’s controversial plan to end Medicare as we know it and replace it with a voucher system that stands to double seniors’ out-of-pocket health care costs. Romney and Ryan lost key states with senior-heavy populations, including Florida, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and New Hampshire.  Ryan’s preparing to reintroduce his Path to Poverty plan complete with “premium supports” (vouchers) as a means to  ”fix” Medicare.  Some fix!  He plans to take our money that we’ve paid into the system all  our working lives and use it to fund tax breaks for the uber-rich for things like deductions for their Yachts.
  5. Repealing Obamacare: Not only did voters not vote for the team that wanted to repeal Obamacare, Mitt Romney says that the president won because of Obamacare. Nevertheless, the GOP budget plan to be unveiled tomorrow will once again call for repealing Obamacare — except for its $716 BILLION in savings from Medicare. Despite demonizing the president for the cuts throughout the campaign, Ryan’s plan keeps those cuts in order to to pay for new tax breaks for the wealthy and special interests like Big Oil and Wall Street banks.
  6. European-Style Austerity: Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan proposed unrealistic draconian spending cuts, while the president proposed investments that will create jobs now and grow the middle class and our economy over the long run. The American people rejected the former and gave an Electoral College landslide to the latter. Nevertheless, the GOP budget plan will feature the kind of unrealistic draconian spending cuts that will make it impossible to make investments in the middle class.The GOP plan will slow down the economy and kill hundreds of thousands of jobs. It’s the same kind of austerity that has led to shrinking economies and record-high unemployment in Europe. Austerity isn’t working there and it won’t work here.

BOTTOM LINE: Paul Ryan and his policies were soundly rejected by voters last November. Instead of doubling down on extreme and unpopular ideas like ending Medicare as we know it and raising taxes on the middle class in order to slash taxes on the wealthy, Republicans should come back to the table and agree to deal with our fiscal challenges in a responsible, balanced manner.

Evening Brief: Important Stories That You Might’ve Missed

This material [the article above] was created by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. It was created for the Progress Report, the daily e-mail publication of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Click here to subscribe.

Related articles

Reducing gun violence and protecting our kids

February 14, 2013 5:53 am

Most gun owners use their guns legally and responsibly, and the President strongly believes in an individual right to bear arms, but we need to take action to better protect our children and communities from tragic mass shootings like the one in Newtown, Connecticut.

Measures Congress Should Take—

President Obama is asking Congress to urgently introduce legislation to:

  • Eliminate loopholes and require background checks for all gun sales
  • Reinstate the prohibition on high-capacity magazines
  • Renew and strengthen the ban on assault weapons
  • Create serious penalties for gun traffickers
  • Get armor-piercing bullets off the streets by prohibiting the possession and transfer of this dangerous ammunition
  • Keep 15,000 cops on the street
  • Further research on gun violence
  • Help schools develop and implement comprehensive emergency management plans
  • Remove restrictions that require ATF to authorize importation of dangerous weapons simply because of their age

Measures the President has Taken — Closing Background Check Loopholes

President Obama is committed to keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and he has signed six executive actions that will:

  • Require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system
  • Address unnecessary legal barriers that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system
  • Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system
  • Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks
  • Propose rule-making to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun
  • Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers

Measures the President has Taken — Common sense steps to reduce gun violence

President Obama is not willing to wait for Congress to take action to reduce gun violence. On January 16th, 2013 he signed executive actions to introduce 11 common sense measures:

  • Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign
  • Review safety standards for gun locks and gun safes (Consumer Product Safety Commission)
  • Require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations
  • Release a DOJ (Department of Justice) report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement
  • Nominate an ATF director
  • Provide law enforcement, first responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations
  • Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime
  • Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence
  • Direct the Attorney General to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies and challenge the private sector to develop innovative technologies
  • Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes
  • Release a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities

Measures the President has Taken — Making schools safer

At the heart of the President’s proposals to reduce gun violence is a focus on making sure our kids are safe. Through executive actions, President Obama will:

  • Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers
  • Develop model emergency response plans for schools, houses of worship, and institutions of higher education

Measures the President has Taken — Increasing mental health services

“We will make sure mental health professionals know their options for reporting threats of violence—even as we acknowledge that someone with a mental illness is far more likely to be a victim of violent crime than the perpetrator.” — President Obama

President Obama has moved swiftly to sign executive actions to:

  • Release a letter to state health officials clarifying the scope of mental health services that Medicaid plans must cover
  • Finalize regulations clarifying essential health benefits and parity requirements within ACA exchanges
  • Commit to finalizing mental health parity regulations
  • Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health

How can YOU help — 3 Ways YOU Can Take Action Right Now

  1. Add your name. Show your support for President Obama’s plan to protect our kids and help reduce gun violence in America.
  2. Call the Senate and the House. Make sure your senators and representative knows you support President Obama’s plan and ask if he or she does too. You can use this simple script:

    Hi, My name is [your name] and I’m a voter in your [state or district]. I’m calling to let you know that I support President Obama’s plan to reduce gun violence and want to know whether [name of your senator or representative] does too?

  3. Spread the word. Make sure your friends and family know about the work President Obama is doing to keep our kids and communities safe: Share the President’s plan to reduce gun violence.

 

Everything You Need To Know About The Administration’s New Birth Control Rules

February 1, 2013 3:03 pm

— By Igor Volsky on Feb 1, 2013 at 12:05 pm

The Obama administration has released new regulations that help clarify which religious groups and organizations can opt out of providing birth control, as required under the Affordable Care Act, exempting most religiously affiliated groups from the requirement while ensuring that women will continue to receive birth control at no cost.

The law specifies that employers and insurers must provide a wide array of women’s health benefits, including contraception without additional co-pays. Houses of worship are exempt from the requirement. Nonprofit religiously affiliated organizations can also refuse to offer birth control coverage, though their employees may obtain contraception coverage that is part of their insurance plans directly from the insurer without additional cost to them or the companies.

The new rules make small changes to this agreement.

First, the federal government will apply the Internal Revenue Services’ definition for religious organization, which is slightly broader than how the term had been defined. Here is a comparison:

NEW DEFINITION OLD DEFINITION
holds itself out as a religious organization the inculcation of religious values is the purpose of the organization.
is organized and operates as a nonprofit entity the organization is a nonprofit organization
opposes providing coverage for some or all of any contraceptive services required on account of religious objections the organization employs and serves primarily persons who share its religious tenets
self-certifies that it meets these criteria and specifies the contraceptive services for which it objects to providing coverage not included in definition

This change also clarifies that “a house of worship would not be excluded from the exemption because, for example, it provides charitable social services to persons of different religious faiths or employs persons of different religious faiths.” Significantly, the rule draws a line at non-profit organizations and would not permit for-profit entities (companies like Hobby Lobby, for instance) to take advantage of the religious exemption.

Women who work for the exempt organizations will still have access to birth control through their insurance companies at no additional cost. But whereas before these insurers added birth control to their existing policies, the new regulations state the insurers (or third-party entities, if the employer is self-insured) will provide separate, individual birth control coverage. The objecting employer will not “have to contract, arrange, pay or refer for any contraceptive coverage to which they object on religious grounds.” Under these terms, women may have separate policies — one for general health care and another for birth control.

Ultimately, the rule is not expected to significantly change existing policy or “expand the universe of employer plans that would qualify for the exemption beyond that which was intended in the 2012 final rules. However, it could help dispel the more than 40 lawsuits that have been filed by employers arguing that the religious exclusion was too narrow and simply an accounting gimmick.

This material [the article above] was created by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. It was created for the Progress Report, the daily e-mail publication of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Click here to subscribe.

Post navigation

← Older posts