Obama, Contraception and Healthcare - Conservative Republican Members of Congress Benefit From Contraception Coverage

Obama, Contraception and Healthcare - Conservative Republican Members of Congress Benefit From Contraception Coverage

Republicans in Congress have gone to war over the administration’s new rule requiring employers and insurers to provide contraception coverage to women. Despite the fact that the regulation already excludes more than 335,000 entities, Republicans have introduced legislation seeking to expand the conscience clause protection to exclude even more religiously affiliated institutions from the requirement. The move, which is opposed by women’s groups, would significantly restrict access to affordable birth control by allowing Catholic colleges, universities, or hospitals to deny contraception coverage. As a result, these women would have to spend up to $600 a year buying birth control without the help of insurance.

But interestingly, members of Congress who seek to limit the availability of affordable birth control all enjoy contraception insurance as part of the government managed Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB). Members first approved the so-called “contraception equity” provision in 1998, through the FY 1999 Omnibus Supplemental Appropriations Act, H.R. 4328, PL 105-277, and have passed the measure ever since. The language “ensures that federal employees participating in FEHBP have insurance coverage of FDA-approved prescription contraceptives and related services.”

A ThinkProgress analysis reveals that 12 members of Congress who approved the conference report for the 1999 omnibus bill have signed on as co-sponsors of the current GOP-led measure to limit women’s access to contraception by changing the Obama administration’s rule. From the original FEHBP requirement:

    A new law requires FEHB plans to provide contraceptive coverage. For 1999, the Office of Personnel Management will require all plans to cover the full range of contraceptive drugs and devices approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

    A few plans will be exempt from this requirement, and they are noted below. Because the law was signed on October 21, 1998, after the FEHB brochures for 1999 were printed, the FEHB brochures you will receive during the Open Season do not reflect these additional benefits. You should use this notice when you read the brochures, so that you will have an accurate understanding of the benefits offered by plans that you are considering.

An official at the Office of Personnel Management, which administrates the program, has confirmed to ThinkProgress that all FEHB plans provide coverage for contraception, meaning that every single member of Congress opposing Obama’s rule now has the birth control coverage they’re seeking to deny to others.

Conservatism is just another name for pathological lair and hypocrite. It there any issue on which conservatives do not tie themselves into pretzels trying to have something relevant to say. Want to know what a 16th century authoritarian French Duke thinks about America and public policy? Just ask a conservative. Pretty much the same thing.

When did the requirement that most employers cover birth control and insurers to offer it at no extra cost start?

When did the requirement that most employers cover birth control and insurers to offer it at no extra cost start?

President Barack Obama's decision to require most employers to cover birth control and insurers to offer it at no cost has created a firestorm of controversy. But the central mandate—that most employers have to cover preventative care for women—has been law for over a decade. This point has been completely lost in the current controversy, as Republican presidential candidates and social conservatives claim that Obama has launched a war on religious liberty and the Catholic Church.

Despite the longstanding precedent, "no one screamed" until now, said Sara Rosenbaum, a health law expert at George Washington University.

In December 2000, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that companies that provided prescription drugs to their employees but didn't provide birth control were in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prevents discrimination on the basis of sex. That opinion, which the George W. Bush administration did nothing to alter or withdraw when it took office the next month, is still in effect today—and because it relies on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, it applies to all employers with 15 or more employees. Employers that don't offer prescription coverage or don't offer insurance at all are exempt, because they treat men and women equally—but under the EEOC's interpretation of the law, you can't offer other preventative care coverage without offering birth control coverage, too.

"It was, we thought at the time, a fairly straightforward application of Title VII principles," a top former EEOC official who was involved in the decision told Mother Jones. "All of these plans covered Viagra immediately, without thinking, and they were still declining to cover prescription contraceptives. It's a little bit jaw-dropping to see what is going on now…There was some press at the time but we issued guidances that were far, far more controversial."

After the EEOC opinion was approved in 2000, reproductive rights groups and employees who wanted birth control access sued employers that refused to comply. The next year, in Erickson v. Bartell Drug Co., a federal court agreed with the EEOC's reasoning. Reproductive rights groups and others used that decision as leverage to force other companies to settle lawsuits and agree to change their insurance plans to include birth control. Some subsequent court decisions echoed Erickson, and some went the other way, but the rule (absent a Supreme Court decision) remained, and over the following decade, the percentage of employer-based plans offering contraceptive coverage tripled to 90 percent.

"We have used [the EEOC ruling] many times in negotiating with various employers," says Judy Waxman, the vice president for health and reproductive rights at the National Women's Law Center. "It has been in active use all this time. [President Obama's] policy is only new in the sense that it covers employers with less than 15 employees and with no copay for the individual. The basic rule has been in place since 2000."

Not even religious employers were exempt from the impact of the EEOC decision. Although Title VII allows religious institutions to discriminate on religious grounds, it doesn't allow them to discriminate on the basis of sex—the kind of discrimination at issue in the EEOC ruling. DePaul University, the largest Roman Catholic university in America, added birth control coverage to its plans after receiving an EEOC complaint several years ago. (DePaul officials did not respond to a request for comment.)

As recently as last year, the EEOC was moderating a dispute between the administrators of Belmont Abbey, a Catholic institution in North Carolina, and several of its employees who had their birth control coverage withdrawn after administrators realized it was being offered. The Weekly Standard opined on the issue in 2009—more proof that religious employers were being asked to cover contraception far before the Obama administration issued its new rule on January 20 of this year.

"The current freakout," Judy Waxman says, is largely occurring because the EEOC policy "isn't as widely known…and it hasn't been uniformly enforced." But it's still unclear whether Obama's Health and Human Services department will enforce the new rule any more harshly than the old one. The administration has already given organizations a year-long grace period to comply. Asked to explain how the agency would make employers do what it wanted, an HHS official told Mother Jones that it would "enforce this the same way we enforce everything else in the law."

Like every other issue conservatives run on the current outrage is riddled with falsehoods, lies and exploitation. Sound bites to get the conservative base - who would like to take America back to the good old days of the Salem Witch trails - riled up.

Mitt Romney Is Financially Invested In The Birth Control Industry

Note the chart shows most PAC money are large right-wing radical conservative PACs.

 Mitt Romney Is Financially Invested In The Birth Control

Mitt Romney has attacked the Obama administration’s regulation requiring employers and insurers to provide reproductive health care services — including contraception — by arguing that the rule is undermining the religious liberties of Catholics and imposing “a secular vision on Americans who believe that they should not have their religious freedom taken away.” As ThinkProgress has reported, Romney’s newfound sensitivities contradict his record as governor of Massachusetts — where he accepted a very similar contraception equity law — and his previous public commitments to increasing public funding for birth control. In 2005, Romney even asked the Massachusetts Department of Health to issue regulations requiring all hospitals to issue emergency contraception to rape victims, without providing an exception for Catholic hospitals.

Now, an examination of Romney’s financial investments reveals that the very same GOP frontrunner who is now petitioning the White House to extend the regulation’s conscience clause and exclude more women from the benefits of birth control is himself invested in and profiting from pharmaceutical companies that produce the frequently prescribed and extremely common medication:

    Romney’s Goldman Sachs 2002 Exchange Place Fund, valued at over a million dollars in 2010, brought in nearly $600,000 in gains in 2010 and is invested in:

    - Watson Pharmaceuticals: manufacturer of nine forms of emergency contraception (which Romney incorrectly identifies as “abortifacients“).
    - Johnson & Johnson: launched the first U.S. prescription birth control product in 1931 and produces various forms of birth control.
    - Merck: produces various forms of birth control
    - Mylan: produces birth control medication and filed the first application for a generic birth control pill last year.
    - Pfizer: a contraception producer that recently had to recall about a million packs of birth-control pills that weren’t packaged correctly.

Romney often disclaims any responsibility for or knowledge of his own investments by claiming that they are held in a private trust. But since filing his legally-required public financial disclosure reports and certifying that the information is “true, complete, and correct” to the best of his knowledge, the trust ceased to be a “blind trust” as he knew what was in it. Romney signed such disclosure forms last August and during his unsuccessful 2008 presidential bid in August 2007.

Can a conservative run for office that does not have a closet full of skeletons, baggage full of hypocrisies, believe in weird conspiracy theories and have less than two wives. Conservatism is not a system of political beliefs it is just a tent for all the loons in America. Just because they hide their craziness behind patriotism doesn't mean they should be allowed to get away with being swindlers, hypocrites, immoral vultures and serial liars.

Libertarianism The "Party of Oxymoron": "Individualists unite!"

Libertarianism The "Party of Oxymoron": "Individualists unite!"

Philosophy

    In the beginning, man dwelt in a state of Nature, until the serpent Government tempted man into Initial Coercion.
   
    Government is the Great Satan. All Evil comes from Government, and all Good from the Market, according to the Ayatollah Rand.
   
    We must worship the Horatio Alger fantasy that the meritorious few will just happen to have the lucky breaks that make them rich. Libertarians happen to be the meritorious few by ideological correctness. The rest can go hang.
   
    Government cannot own things because only individuals can own things. Except for corporations, partnerships, joint ownership, marriage, and anything else we except but government.
   
    Parrot these arguments, and you too will be a singular, creative, reasoning individualist.
    Parents cannot choose a government for their children any more than they can choose language, residence, school, or religion.
   
    Taxation is theft because we have a right to squat in the US and benefit from defense, infrastructure, police, courts, etc. without obligation.
   
    Magic incantations can overturn society and bring about libertopia. Sovereign citizenry! The 16th Amendment is invalid! States rights!
   
    Objectivist/Neo-Tech Advantage #69i : The true measure of fully integrated honesty is whether the sucker has opened his wallet. Thus sayeth the Profit Wallace. Zonpower Rules Nerdspace!
   
    The great Zen riddle of libertarianism: minimal government is necessary and unnecessary. The answer is only to be found by individuals.

Libertarians frequently cite this quote in isolation - While it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from Nature at all ... it is considered by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no one has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land ... Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. - Thomas Jefferson

Libertarians always ignore this passage - Every society has a right to fix the fundamental principles of its association, and to say to all individuals, that if they contemplate pursuits beyond the limits of these principles and involving dangers which the society chooses to avoid, they must go somewhere else for their exercise; that we want no citizens, and still less ephemeral and pseudo-citizens, on such terms. We may exclude them from our territory, as we do persons infected with disease. --Thomas Jefferson to William H. Crawford, 1816

What Liberal Media - The America Hating Conservative Republican Media Rely On Discredited Evidence To Dismiss Positive Jobs Report

What Liberal Media - The America Hating Conservative Republican Media Rely On Discredited Evidence To Dismiss Positive Jobs Report

Right-wing media are rushing to put a negative spin on newly released jobs numbers showing a drop in the unemployment rate and a net increase in jobs by parroting the discredited claim that government data show that "1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force" last month. In fact, as economic experts have explained, that number reflected an increase in population from 2010 Census figures and is not the result of how many people "dropped out" of the labor force last month.

After The Labor Department Reported January Employment Growth

Labor Department: Employment Rose By 243,000 Jobs In January And Unemployment Dropped To 8.3 Percent. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

    Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 243,000 in January, and the unemployment rate decreased to 8.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job growth was widespread in the private sector, with large employment gains in professional and business services, leisure and hospitality, and manufacturing. Government employment changed little over the month.

    [...]

    The unemployment rate declined by 0.2 percentage point in January to 8.3 percent; the rate has fallen by 0.8 point since August. [Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2/3/12]

NY Times: Two Million Jobs Added In Past Year. The New York Times' Economix blog reported that "[o]ver the last 12 months, the economy added nearly two million jobs, more than in any similar period since early 2007." [The New York Times, Economix, 2/3/12]
Financial Blog Zero Hedge Dismissed Employment Growth With Dubious Claim That "1.2 Million People Dropped Out Of The Labor Force"

Zero Hedge: "1.2 Million People Dropped Out Of The Labor Force In One Month!" A post on economics and finance blog Zero Hedge claimed that the Bureau of Labor Statistics report estimated that "1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force" in January. [Zero Hedge, 2/3/12]

But Experts Argue That The 1.2 Million Number Is Based On A Misreading Of The Jobs Report

Economic Journalist Barry Ritholtz: "The Fact Is 1 Million People Did Not Drop Out Of The Labor Force In January 2012." Economic journalist and Washington Post columnist Barry Ritholtz explained that those who are claiming that 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in January are misreading the Labor Department's jobs report:

    So today following an otherwise pretty darn good jobs report, we get the usual perma-pessimists at Zero Hedge and Rick Santelli over at CNBC proclaiming that the report showed a drop of over 1 million people from the labor force in one month. Of course, as ususal, both Santelli and Zero Hedge have a real reading comprehension problem and completely missed that this million+ people isn't some new January phenomenon, but a result of the BLS using the 2010 census data to have more accurate data. In other words, the changes in the Household Survey to the various measures had taken place over the years prior to 2010, but for simplicity's sake, the BLS incorporates these changes into one month (which they clearly point out).

    [...]

    [T]he fact is 1 million people did not drop out of the labor force in January 2012. [The Big Picture, 2/3/12]

Rush Limbaugh Cited The 1.2 Million Number To Argue That The Jobs Report Is "Corrupt." On his radio show, Rush Limbaugh cited Zero Hedge and claimed that "1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month" to argue that the jobs numbers report is as "corrupt as it can be." [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 2/3/12]

Sean Hannity Repeated The 1.2 Million Falsehood To Claim Lower Unemployment Rate Is "Phony."

 Between the drugs and alcohol Limbaugh can always claim he has a good excuse - he stays on the radio because the dumb rubes that listen to him make it possible for him to live in a Palm Beach mansion. Hannity doesn't need an excuse, he has the same IQ as his audience, its the same as his shoe size.

Neil Cavuto Gushes Over Trump’s Business Record – And Ignores The Four Bankruptcies. Trump was handed his business on a silver platter from dad, he is hardly a member of the worked hard to earn all he has crowd. Conservatives worship him, despite the lack of any real business expertise anyway.

President Obama Cites Jesus and Right-Wing Conservatives Lose Their Minds

President Obama Cites Jesus and Right-Wing Conservatives Lose Their Minds

It seems like all we ever hear from the Religious Right is how important it is for our political leaders to let their faith influence their public policy decisions.  But apparently that only applies when it leads politicians to support the conservative political agenda because when President Obama cites Jesus, it seems to make the Right lose their minds.

Yesterday, during the National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama cited a passage from the Book of Luke to support his view that the well-off should be expected to contribute more:

    And when I talk about shared responsibility, it’s because I genuinely believe that in a time when many folks are struggling, at a time when we have enormous deficits, it’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income, or young people with student loans, or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone. And I think to myself, if I’m willing to give something up as somebody who’s been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that’s going to make economic sense.

    But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that “for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.”

And now right-wing leaders and Republicans are outraged, with Sen. Orrin Hatch lashing out about it on the Senate floor and Rep. Phil Gingrey walking out in protest while Ralph Reed, of all people, is saying that Obama went "over the line":

    Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition said that for the president to tie his tax policy to Jesus’s teachings “is theologically threadbare and straining credulity.”

    “I felt like it was over the line and not the best use of the forum,” Reed said. “It showed insufficient level of respect for what the office of the president has historically brought to that moment.”

And of course Bryan Fischer, who thinks the Bible ought to be the foundation for all our public policy, including putting animals to death, was incensed that Obama would dare to claim that the teachings of Christ support his agenda when, in fact, his agenda "is in the spirit of Joseph Stalin" and Karl Marx:

As we have said before, it is amazing President Obama even bothers to talk about his Christian faith because nothing he says will ever be acceptable for the "real" Christians in the Religious Right.

Conservatives seem to have habit of skimming the Bible and taking out the parts they can best interpret to mean we should be ruled by a small group of greedy plutocrats. Start citing things like Proverbs 14:21 - He that despises his neighbor sins: but he that has mercy on the poor, happy is he. - and they get very upset.

Soaking the Poor, State by State - From Washington to Florida, why the financially challenged have little to cheer about on taxes.

2012 The Election Year in Which Plutocrats Officially Determine The Winner

2012 The Election Year in Which Plutocrats Officially Determine The Winner

Forget about the poor, the unemployed and the sinking middle class participating in the democratic process.

The race for the presidency is increasingly being bankrolled by "1 percenters" — those among the richest of Americans.

Year-end campaign finance reports show that many of the nation's wealthiest individuals and their companies have written huge checks to Republican and Democratic "super committees" that are exempt from the usual $5,000 campaign donation limits.

Texas businessman Harold Simmons and his Contran Corp. have donated $7.5 million to two GOP committees. Las Vegas hotel casino owner Sheldon Adelson and his family have poured more than $10 million into a so-called super political action committee backing Newt Gingrich. Filmmaker Steven Spielberg gave $100,000 to one of several committees aiding Obama.

Partly as a result of the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling that even corporations enjoy the right to free political speech, a 2002 congressional overhaul that was supposed to rid big money from national politics is fast becoming a distant memory. Not only are wealthy Americans serving as financial angels to presidential candidates, but companies also have begun to write multimillion-dollar checks, and some may be doing so secretly.

American Crossroads, a conservative super PAC founded by former Bush White House political guru Karl Rove, has raised $51 million to date, including $33 million garnered by a nonprofit arm that isn't required to disclose its donors. The groups have set a goal of collecting another $200 million to raise Republican prospects in next year's presidential and congressional elections.

Anthony Corrado, a campaign finance expert at Colby College in Maine, says high-dollar donors have gotten active earlier than ever this year and are playing a bigger role — and that may not be an accident.

"If you think about the way the president is beginning to frame the campaign, presenting this as a campaign of the 99 percent against the 1 percent, that in some ways is adding fuel to the fire to keep these donors involved," he said.

Corrado also noted that outside groups have had a disproportionate impact this year because so many candidates, including Gingrich, have lacked "presidential-level money."

Gingrich's campaign raised $9.8 million and closed the year with $2.1 million in cash and $1.2 million in debt. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas raised $13.3 million in the fourth quarter and ended the year with $1.9 million in cash, while former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum's campaign raised $920,000 in the quarter and closed with $279,000 in cash.

"This has actually been a race where a large gift from an individual donor can fund an advertising campaign greater than a candidate's own campaign can muster," Corrado said of the super PACs' clout.

Restore Our Future, the super PAC raising unlimited donations to support Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney, brought in nearly $18 million last year — none from donors of under $200.

Donors to the pro-Romney group included a cross-section of conservative businessmen, top executives of the private equity firm Bain Capital that Romney founded and used to make his fortune, and other investment houses, including Goldman Sachs.

Four companies founded by Frank VanderSloot, Romney's national finance co-chairman who has held fundraisers at his Idaho Falls ranch during both of Romney's presidential runs, each gave $250,000 to the PAC. Melaleuca Inc. and its affiliates sell vitamins and household products nationwide.

Others who underwrote the shadow campaign committee included Dallas businessman Harlan Crow and his Crow Holdings, who donated $150,000; billionaire Bill Koch of West Palm Beach, Fla., who along with his Oxbow Carbon Corp. dropped $1 million; major Republican fundraiser Paul Singer, a principal in Elliott Management Corp., who also donated $1 million, and Sam Zell, former owner of the bankrupt Tribune Co., who gave $50,000.

In the first four GOP contests, the super PACs have spent much of their money serving as attack dogs, independently blitzing the airwaves with negative ads that seem in perfect sync with the candidates' campaigns. In addition, wealthy backers are acting as "bundlers," using their connections to raise tens of millions of dollars for President Barack Obama and Romney.

Tuesday night's unveiling of the identities of donors to super PACs came hours after polls closed in the key Florida primary, meaning that voters had no idea who bankrolled more than $10 million in broadcast ads by Restore Our Future.

"This level of disclosure isn't just inadequate. It's laughable," Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York told reporters. "The voters deserve to know the ugly truth of who is behind these super PACs."

Schumer said Tuesday's disclosures are "focusing the public's attention on the rotten state of campaign finance," noting that 70 percent of the $18 million raised by Rove's American Crossroads came from donors of $1 million or more.
Joined by Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Al Franken of Minnesota, Schumer called on Congress to at least pass legislation requiring better disclosure. He said that the Senate Rules Committee will take testimony later this month from people affiliated with super PACs, as well as donors.

In 2010, Senate Democrats twice came within one vote of passing a bill to require all groups engaging in political spending to reveal donors of $1,000 or more and to require top officers of outside groups, as well as their leading donors, to appear on camera in any television ads vouching their approval.

In winning the White House in 2008, Obama rode a tide of small donations as his campaign raised $662 million.

Corrado said that, in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, "what we're seeing in 2012 is a test of whether the development of broader financial participation in elections — the rise of small donors in elections — is going to continue to be encouraged, or if big money will once again become a central feature of the election."

If Romney wins the nomination, he predicted that his shadow super PAC would play a leading role in the general election.

Conservatives, with the help of a radically conservative Supreme Court decided that government by and for the people was an outdated concept. So conservatives who identify as the grassroots of their party can thank themselves if the candidates they like don't have a chance.