Elective abortion coverage is offered in 103 of 112 ObamaCare insurance plans for members of Congress and their staff.
As reported by the Daily Caller, the availability of elective abortion coverage to members of Congress and their staff may represent a moral and legal violation, since congressional insurance coverage will be subsidized by the federal government under the law. Essentially, this means American taxpayers are funding abortions.
Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), co-chair of the House Pro-Life Caucus, is responsible for the analysis. “In the run-up to passage of ObamaCare, Americans were repeatedly told and reassured by President Obama himself, including in a speech to a joint session of Congress in October 2009, that ‘under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortion,'” Smith said in a statement. “Obama even issued the infamous Executive Order that claimed, ‘the Act maintains current Hyde Amendment restrictions governing abortion policy and extends those restrictions to newly created health insurance exchanges.'”
“Once again we see those promises ring hollow – what the President said simply isn’t true today,” Smith added.
The D.C. Health Link website states:
Health plans that do not provide coverage for elective abortions include all Aetna health plans, as well as the multi-state plans (MSP) offered by CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield (only the plans that include “Multi-State Plan” in their name). All health plans offered by Kaiser Permanente, United Healthcare, and CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield plans that do not include “Multi-State Plan” in their name include coverage for elective abortions.
In addition, Smith’s office emphasized that an amendment the congressman himself authored 30 years ago, known as the Smith Amendment, prohibits abortion funding in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Programs (FEHB), and remains law.
“The Obama administration is clearly breaking longstanding federal law by offering Members of Congress and congressional staff health care plans that include abortion on demand,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List. In a press release, she explained:
This is just another example of how Obamacare expands taxpayer funding of abortion, and is sadly another instance of how the President and his Administration misled the American people when Obamacare was being debated by Congress. Obamacare was forced through only after pro-life Democrats naively accepted a promise and an executive order from the White House that taxpayer dollars would not be used to fund elective abortion. Promises as well as laws have now been broken.
The Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI), the education and research arm of the Susan B. Anthony List, recently released results of a study that found as many as 111,500 additional abortions per year could be heavily subsidized by taxpayers through federal tax credits and Medicaid expansion under ObamaCare.
In addition, a separate analysis by CLI revealed a complete lack of transparency regarding elective abortion coverage in the state and federal partnership exchanges launched on October 1st. Lozier researchers contacted numerous health insurers offering plans as part of the newly created exchanges to determine which plans cover elective abortion. They discovered it was nearly impossible for individuals to know which plans force enrollees to pay an abortion surcharge.
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