Obama Administration Takes First Step to Repeal Bush-Era HHS Rule that Limits the Rights of Patients to Receive Complete and Accurate Health Information and Services
The Obama administration is taking the first step in rescinding a midnight regulation that undermines the country’s fragile health care system as well as patients’ access to health care information and services.
According to the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) website, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has sent a proposed rule titled “Rescission of the Regulation Issued by the Department of Health and Human Services on December 19, 2008, Implementing the Church Amendments (42 U.S.C. 300a-7), Section 245 of the Public Health Service” to OMB for review.
“Our priority is ensuring that the tens of thousands of patients we see every year receive complete and accurate health information and services,” said PPMNS President and CEO Sarah Stoesz. “In these difficult economic times and with more than 45 million Americans currently uninsured, it is critical that we work to increase, not limit, access to health care. When a patient walks into a hospital, pharmacy, or any health care center she should be confident she will receive complete and accurate health care information and services.”
When the Bush administration proposed the Rule, roughly 200,000 U.S. citizens, federal and state elected officials, medical organizations, and health care advocacy and religious organizations submitted comments opposing the misguided rule, including
• a bipartisan coalition of more than 100 members of Congress
• a bipartisan group of governors, including Governors John Baldacci (D-ME), Chet Culver (D-IA), Jim Doyle (D-WI), Christine Gregoire (D-WA), David Paterson (D-NY), M. Jodi Rell (R-CT), Edward Rendell (D-PA), and Ted Strickland (D-OH)
• a bipartisan group of attorneys general, including those from Arizona, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, and Vermont
• state legislators from a number of states, including Oregon, Texas, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin
• nongovernmental organizations ranging from American Nurses Association, the American Medical Student Association, the American Social Health Association, the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, and several prominent HIV/AIDS, international health, and gay rights organizations
In addition, the legal counsel and two commissioners from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) also submitted comments, explaining that the rule creates unnecessary confusion for the nearly 600,000 health care facilities it reaches.
By allowing health insurance companies, hospitals, doctors, physicians, and health care workers of all kinds to deny patients vital health care information and services, without the patient even knowing, the rule undermines health care access and creates chaos in an already stressed health care system, particularly for low-income women and families whose options are already limited.
In January, Planned Parenthood filed legal action challenging the regulation. In addition, the Connecticut attorney general, joined by the attorneys general of California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island filed a separate but parallel legal action challenging the regulation. These states have taken proactive steps in enacting legislation that protects patients’ access to vital health care services and information — for example, laws that guarantee rape survivors have access to emergency contraception in emergency rooms. The current HHS regulation poses a serious barrier to the states’ enforcement of their laws protecting patients.
Click HERE for more resources on opposition to HHS midnight rule.
Abortion Ban in North Dakota House Will Challenge Roe v Wade Decision, Deny Women Access to Contraception
St. Paul — In North Dakota, a bill to define a fertilized egg as a person has passed out of the house and will be debated by the Senate in the coming weeks.
HB 1572 was approved in the North Dakota house by a vote of 51-41. The bill was specifically crafted as a challenge to the Roe v Wade decision. HB 1572 could also outlaw contraception as well as medical procedures used to treat tubal pregnancies and infertility.
“HB 1572 is dangerous, far reaching and allows the government, not women and families, to make critical decisions about health care,” said Sarah Stoesz, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Minnesota (PPMNS).
“Women and families, not politicians, should decide what’s best for their unique circumstances. Whether the issue is abortion, birth control, or in vitro fertilization, women, in consultation with doctors should make these personal medical decisions,” said Stoesz.
“This bill is not representative of the majority of North Dakotans, it is merely another attempt by a narrow minority fixated on an agenda that most Americans simply don’t support,” Stoesz said.
