Obama Admin Won’t Promise to Stop Forcing Americans to Fund Abortions Under Obamacare

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Oct 10, 2014   |   1:34PM   |   Washington, DC

A recent GAO report found that multiple states are not offering protection for Americans under Obamacare who don’t want their taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions.

Although states are supposed to have one health care plan under the Obamacare exchange that does not fund abortions, in five states every single plan offered forces Obamacare participants to fund abortions.

Today, Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner reports that Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell couldn’t promise that the Obama administration would fix the problem anytime soon. Specifically, she gave no assurance that the problem would be fix when Americans select their Obamacare plans next year.

As Klein reports Burwell saying:

“First, I think it’s important to reflect that with regard to the federal law and the issue of federal funds, there are no federal funds being used for abortion except in the cases, as the law states, rape, incest, and questions of the life of the mother,” Burwell said at a media breakfast sponsored by the journal Health Affairs and hosted at the offices of the Kaiser Family Foundation. “And I think that’s an important part in this context. With regard to the issue that’s been raised, it’s one where we believe we need to make sure that the law is being enforced. And right now CMS is working on the ways that we’re going to communicate clearly for those states and insurers so that there’s clarity about what the law is in this space.”

When moderator Julie Rovner followed up to ask if the issue would be straightened out for the next open enrollment period, which is scheduled to begin on Nov. 15, Burwell said: “With regard to the question of this open enrollment, working through the plans that are in place, for the most part, we’re finalizing those plans. So in terms of how the communication is going to work, we’ll have to see how quickly we can get the communication out and where we are. Because I think the GAO report was actually based on previous year’s plans, not this year’s plans.”

pichealth56When he signed the Obamacare bill into law, President Barack Obama promised the American people that Obamacare would not pay for abortions — going as far as signing an executive order to that effect. A September GOA report shows he misled Americans.

Despite a promise President Obama made to lawmakers and the American public in a special joint session of Congress on healthcare reform that, “under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortion,a new report released by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) today documents massive new public funding of abortion in the President’s healthcare law.

The GAO report also found that nearly all of the insurance issuers sampled are not itemizing the required separate abortion surcharge on its bills – confirming that the Obama Administration is ignoring the law’s abortion accounting gimmick.

“In an 11th hour ploy to garner a remnant of pro-life congressional Democrats absolutely needed for passage of ObamaCare, the President issued an executive order on March 24, 2010 that said: ‘the Act maintains current Hyde Amendment restrictions governing abortion policy and extends those restrictions to newly created health insurance exchanges’,” said Congressman Chris Smith, co-chairman of the Bipartisan Congressional Pro-Life Caucus. “It turns out that those ironclad promises made by the President himself are absolutely untrue.”

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GAO has found that in 2014, taxpayers are funding over a thousand Obamacare health plans that subsidize abortion on demand—even late-term abortion—in defiance of the Hyde AmendmentObama publicly said he would honor.

Among GAO’s findings:

  • every ObamaCare taxpayer subsidized health insurance plan in New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island and Hawaii pays for abortion on demand
  • in New York a 405 out of 426 ObamaCare plans subsidize abortion on demand
  • in California—86 of 90
  • in Massachusetts—109 0f 111
  • in Oregon—92 of 102
  • in Washington, DC—23 of 34

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) April 2014 estimate, between 2014 and 2024, taxpayer subsidies to buy ObamaCare health plans will total $855 billion, making taxpayers unwittingly complicit in abortion.