Should religious employers be forced to provide their employees with free contraceptives as part of any health insurance plan? President Obama says they should. Many religious leaders are up in arms over this because they say it violates their freedom of religion. The Blunt Amendment takes that objection to its logical conclusion.

Earlier this week, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) introduced the Blunt Amendment to a transportation funding bill. His amendment would enable any employer to exempt him or herself from providing any coverage they find morally objectionable. Mitt Romney has endorsed the amendment.

This legislation would allow any employer or insurance company to deny any health care benefit for pretty much any reason. Benefits that could be denied, according to Think Progess, include:

contraception
cancer screenings
diabetes screenings
STD screenings
prenatal care
mental health coverage

The Senate is expected to vote today on the Blunt Amendment to the surface transportation re-authorization bill. The Amendment has 23 co-sponsors.

Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, had this to say about Romney’s support of the Blunt amendment:

“Mitt Romney opposed the Blunt amendment after lunch and supported it before dinner. It took less than two hours for Mitt Romney to again show how out of touch he is and why he can’t be trusted on women’s health.

“A wide range of health care groups, including the American Cancer Society, the March of Dimes, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the Spina Bifida Association oppose the Blunt amendment because they also recognize that it is dangerous.

“Simply put, the Blunt amendment would jeopardize women’s health and allow any employer or health plan to refuse to cover any health care service they object to, such as cancer screenings, maternity care, HIV/AIDS treatments and others.

“In other words, Mitt Romney supports allowing a CEO to deny birth control coverage or cancer screenings to all his employees, if he objects.

“Americans want a president who will increase access to basic health care, not one who would allow corporations to deny health care to their employees.”

Sebelius also announced that an estimated 381,575 Colorado residents with Medicare received at least one free preventive benefit in 2011, including the new Annual Wellness Visit, since the health reform law was enacted.

The new data were released in two new reports from HHS.

“Americans of all ages can now get the preventive services they need, like mammograms and the new Annual Wellness Visit, free of charge, as a result of the new health care law,” Secretary Sebelius said in a prepared statement. “With more people taking advantage of these benefits, more lives can be saved, and costly, and often burdensome, diseases can be prevented or caught earlier.”

The Affordable Care Act requires many insurance plans to provide coverage without cost sharing to enrollees for a variety of preventive health services, such as colonoscopy screening for colon cancer, Pap smears and mammograms for women, well-child visits, and flu shots for all children and adults. The law also makes proven preventive services free for most people on Medicare.

“It is great to see that the things people want from Obamacare are working,” said Dede de Percin, executive director of the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative.

She said there is a lot of misinformation being spread about the Affordable Care Act and that a lot of people don’t make the connection between the Act and benefits they get through their private insurance.

“A lot of people are beginning to notice that they now get free preventative care services but they don’t connect that to federal health care reform. A lot of people still are not going to their doctors for annual screenings because they are afraid of the cost. But now people can take advantage of the fact that a lot of preventive services are now free to the consumer,” de Percin said.

President Barack Obama (Pic by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kevin S. O'Brien, via Wikimedia Commons)

According to new polling, the majority of Americans do not have definite positions on a health care reform provision requiring everyone to have health insurance. The individual mandate, which is the main subject of Florida’s legal challenge to the law, is one of the measure’s more controversial sections.

However, as Kaiser Health News reports, a new survey finds that the public is just as swayed by arguments supporting the health care mandate as they are by arguments criticizing it.

Kaiser reports:

In general, only 33 percent of Americans support the individual mandate, while 65 percent oppose it. Opposition swells to 74 percent after people are told the mandate is being challenged as unconstitutional, according this month’s tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation. (KHN is an editorially independent program of the foundation.) Opposition spikes to 80 percent when people are told the mandate “could mean that some people would be required to buy health insurance that they find too expensive or did not want.”

But opinions change when poll respondents are told that without the mandate, people might wait until they are seriously ill to obtain coverage, driving up insurance costs for everyone. Forty-seven percent support the mandate after being told this, while 45 percent oppose it. A larger plurality (49 percent) backs the mandate when told that without it, insurers could refuse to cover sick people and when told people would be excused from having to buy insurance if the cost would “consume too large a share of their income.”

One pro-mandate argument tilts the public decisively in favor of the individual mandate. Sixty-one percent of those surveyed support it when told most Americans would still get their coverage through their employers and thus wouldn’t be affected by the mandate.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear Florida’s challenge to the law in March. Twenty-five other states have joined in the legal challenge. While a handful of lower courts found the individual mandate provision unconstitutional, many have not. No lower court has upheld Florida’s assertion that the unconstitutionality of the provision is grounds for striking the law in its entirety.

President Barack Obama aboard Air Force One (Pic by The White House, via Flickr)

With the final decision on whether the Obama administration will keep its original policy requiring health insurers to cover contraception without co-payments looming, women’s health advocates fear the president will capitulate to the demands of one of the biggest opponents to the policy: Catholic bishops.

The Catholic bishops’ demands have ranged from asking the policy be stricken “in its entirety” to asking that the decision allow a broad exemption for religious objectors. Catholic leaders have said the existing exemption is “too limited.”

While federal officials such as Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius have supported the decision, women’s health advocates fear the president might be open to compromising with the politically powerful bishops.

Sarah Lipton-Lubet, policy counsel for the ACLU ‘s Washington Legislative Office, wrote on RH Reality Check today that signs are pointing to a possible cave from the president.

Lipton-Lubet writes:

If you read the paper, and you’re among the 99 percent of sexually active women who have used contraception, you might start to worry. According to the Washington Post, “Obama [i]s ‘very sensitive’ to the bishops’ concerns” over the birth control guidelines. The New York Times reported that after his private meeting with the president, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the bishops’ conference, felt “a bit more at peace about this issue than when [he] entered.” Connecting the dots, RH Reality Check‘s Jodi Jacobson and Salon’s Irin Carmon asks whether the administration is going to “cave” to the bishops’ parochial demands.

We know that the bishops, as political actors, have outsized influence; politicians seem to listen to them on reproductive health even though most Catholics don’t. We know that the bishops are savvy with messaging, crying victim whenever someone disagrees with them over public policy (the rest of us call it democracy). And we know that the bishops are leaving no stone unturned.

But we also know that there’s simply no legitimate reason for the White House to create new loopholes that deny countless women birth control. Doing so would let institutions like hospitals, social service agencies, and universities use religion as a license to discriminate against nurses, social workers, teachers – the list goes on. As a nation, we protect religious beliefs, but we concluded some time ago that one person’s religion should not be used to trump another’s civil rights protections.

The bishops recently lost millions of federal dollars for their relief program for victims of human trafficking, because they refused to refer victims for contraceptive services or abortion services.

And a Catholic political action committee recently released an attack ad asking Obama to “meet with Catholic leaders to discuss compromise” on religious conscience laws. The ad accused the president of not seeking “common ground” with religious groups like he promised he would.

Colorado U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette is has joined with dozens of other pro-choice members of Congress to urge Obama to stick to his guns on this issue.

DeGette, co-Chair of the House Pro-Choice Caucus, is leading 65 Members of the House in urging Obama to secure free preventive care for women in the Affordable Care Act, including contraceptive methods and counseling. DeGette and the Members sent the President a letter opposing any efforts to exempt employers from following the law, given increased pressure by Catholic bishops and others to exempt faith-based universities, hospitals, and institutions. Doing so would deny critical coverage to 800,000 people working at Catholic hospitals; 300,000 employed at religious schools; and 1.7 million students attending 900 religiously affiliated colleges, her office said.

The text of the letter is below:

November 18, 2011

The Honorable Barack Obama
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear President Obama,

We write to express our continued support for free preventive care including contraceptive methods and counseling under the Affordable Care Act. A woman’s decision on how and when to build her family is a matter of her own conscience. The “conscience” of an employer or an insurance company should not impede a woman’s access to birth control without cost-sharing under any circumstances. We oppose any efforts to further exempt employers from following the law.

Free preventive care is required under section 2713 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In July, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommended which women’s preventive services should be covered by new health plans without cost-sharing. Among the list of recommended women’s preventive services is the full range of FDA-approved contraceptive methods and counseling. On August 1, HHS issued guidelines to adopt these recommendations. We fully support increasing and protecting women’s access to birth control. We oppose any efforts to circumvent a woman’s conscience. American women won’t stand for it.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

DeGette, Diana

Slaughter, Louise McIntosh

Ackerman, Gary L.

Andrews, Robert E.

Baldwin, Tammy

Bass, Karen

Berkley, Shelley

Braley, Bruce L.

Brown, Corrine

Butterfield, G.K.

Capps, Lois

Castor, Kathy

Chu, Judy

Clarke, Yvette D.

Cohen, Steve

Davis, Danny K.

Davis, Susan A.

Doggett, Lloyd

Edwards, Donna F.

Ellison, Keith

Engel, Eliot L.

Farr, Sam

Filner, Bob

Fudge, Marcia L.

Gonzalez, Charles A.

Green, Gene

Grijalva, Raúl M.

Gutierrez, Luis V.

Hinchey, Maurice D.

Holt, Rush D.

Jackson Lee, Sheila

Inslee, Jay

Israel, Steve

Lee, Barbara

Lewis, John

Lofgren, Zoe

Lowey, Nita M.

Maloney, Carolyn B.

Matsui, Doris O.

McDermott, Jim

McGovern, James P.

Miller, George

McNerney, Jerry

Moore, Gwen

Murphy, Christopher S.

Nadler, Jerrold

Pastor, Ed

Pingree, Chellie

Polis, Jared

Quigley, Mike

Richardson, Laura

Rothman, Steven R.

Sánchez, Linda T.

Sanchez, Loretta

Schakowsky, Janice D.

Schwartz, Allyson Y.

Serrano, José E.

Speier, Jackie

Towns, Edolphus

Tsongas, Niki

Wasserman Schultz, Debbie

Waters, Maxine

Welch, Peter

Woolsey, Lynn C.

Yarmuth, John A.

Scot Kersgaard contributed to this article.

The brief was filed by the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative Christian legal outfit founded by televangelist Pat Robertson.

The amicus brief asks the high court to take on a case previously ruled on in Florida that said the new federal health plan’s individual mandate was unconstitutional. the ACLJ called the issue one of “national importance.”

The ACLJ said that the conservative Florida judge that ruled the individual mandate unconstitutional got that part correct, but the judge shouldn’t have singled the individual mandate out. It erred when it didn’t rule the entire new health plan unconstitutional.

“Even though the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit correctly held that the individual mandate is unconstitutional, it wrongly severed only the individual mandate from the ACA,” the ACLJ wrote.”The individual mandate, by the Federal Government’s own admission, is the essential component of the ACA. Should this Court also rule the individual mandate unconstitutional, it should decide to what extent (if any) the individual mandate can be severed from the rest of the ACA.”

The ACLJ was created by Robertson as a response to the American Civil Liberties Union which Robertson said is “hostile to traditional American values.”

The group has been at the heart of many controversial cases including a successful effort in Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin School District to drive a transgender teacher out of her job. Though the group maintains that it defends religious liberties, the organization has also assisted local communities in attempting to stop the construction of Muslim mosques.

Jay Sekulow, leader of the ACLJ has made a lot of money in his activism. The Associated Press reports that he and his family have taken in more than $33 million in the last decade.

Here’s the full list of those signing the brief:

Paul Broun, Robert Aderholt, Todd Akin, Rodney Alexander, Steve Austria, Michele Bachmann, Spencer Bachus, Joe Barton, Rob Bishop, Diane Black, Marsha Blackburn, Larry Bucshon, Michael Burgess, Dan Burton, Francisco “Quico” Canseco, Eric Cantor, Steve Chabot, Howard Coble, Mike Coffman, Tom Cole, Mike Conaway, Chip Cravaack, Geoff Davis, Scott DesJarlais, Jeff Duncan, Blake Farenthold, Stephen Fincher, Chuck Fleischmann, John Fleming, Bill Flores, Randy Forbes, Virginia Foxx, Trent Franks, Cory Gardner, Scott Garrett, Bob Gibbs, Phil Gingrey, Louie Gohmert, Bob Goodlatte, Tom Graves, Tim Griffin, Michael Grimm, Ralph Hall, Gregg Harper, Andy Harris, Vicky Hartzler, Jeb Hensarling, Wally Herger, Tim Huelskamp, Bill Huizenga, Randy Hultgren, Lynn Jenkins, Bill Johnson, Walter Jones, Jim Jordan, Mike Kelly, Steve King, Adam Kinzinger, John Kline, Doug Lamborn, Jeff Landry, James Lankford, Robert Latta, Billy Long, Cynthia Lummis, Connie Mack, Donald Manzullo, Kenny Marchant, Kevin McCarthy, Michael McCaul, Tom McClintock, Thaddeus McCotter, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Gary Miller, Jeff Miller, Randy Neugebauer, Alan Nunnelee, Pete Olson, Ron Paul, Steve Pearce, Mike Pence, Joe Pitts, Ted Poe, Mike Pompeo, Bill Posey, Tom Price, Ben Quayle, Reid Ribble, Scott Rigell, Phil Roe, Todd Rokita, Dennis Ross, Ed Royce, Steve Scalise, Jean Schmidt, Adrian Smith, Lamar Smith, Marlin Stutzman, Lee Terry, Tim Walberg, Joe Walsh, Daniel Webster, Lynn Westmoreland, Joe Wilson, and Don Young.

Conducted by ImpreMedia/Latino Decisions (IM-LD) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico, the poll reveals “that 50% of Latino voters support the Affordable Health Care Act and only 29% support its repeal,” adding that “59% of these voters are not well disposed toward one of the law’s regulations, which makes it mandatory for them to purchase insurance if they do not have coverage. They are against it.”

Poll results also indicate that:

• 85 percent of Latino voters “support having the government provide tax credits to small businesses offering their employees coverage.”
• 63 percent “support prohibiting insurance companies from denying potential insured patients coverage because of their medical history.”
• 75 percent “support the Medicare prescription drug ‘doughnut hole’ or coverage gap clause.”
• 80 percent “favor providing financial help to those who are not able to purchase coverage.”

The Latino Decisions poll adds that 17 percent of “Latino voters do not have insurance coverage,” while over 30 percent of “Latinos in general” do not have health insurance.

Latino workers and families in the U.S. are among the largest beneficiaries of federally funded health insurance.

A report released by the National Council of La Raza and Families USA released in August indicates that “Medicaid and its sister program, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), buffer millions of Latinos and other vulnerable Americans from uninsurance.” The report shows that between 2007 and 2009 almost 3.8 million Hispanics living in Florida received medical insurance under federally funded Medicaid and/or the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, said that Latinos are two times more likely to be uninsured than non-Hispanic whites, adding that Medicaid covers at least half of Hispanic children across the country, providing the preventative care they need. The report explains that without Medicaid the uninsured rate for Latinos would climb to 32 percent.

A report issued by the Kaiser Family Foundation (.pdf) in June 2010 states that “no major health program or issue can be considered today outside the context of the nation’s new health care reform law.”

The Kaiser report adds that under the Affordable Care Act, “access to affordable health coverage will be improved through a significant expansion of the Medicaid program, the creation of new health insurance exchanges, and reforms of the private health insurance market. The major expansion of Medicaid and health reform’s reliance on the program as the foundation for coverage of low- income people give Medicaid both a much larger and a distinctively national coverage role going forward.”

The Families USA/La Raza report adds that Latinos would be major beneficiaries of this Medicaid expansion.

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann appeared on Fox’s O’Reilly Factor as her presidential campaign continued to sink in the polls Monday.

Bachmann insisted that people are taking a “second look” at the candidates’ stances.

“People are saying now that they don’t want to settle,” Bachmann said. “Because every four years, people are told that they need to go with the moderate in the race because that’s the only one who will win, now we’re seeing that’s not true that we can really have a true constitutional conservative for our nominee.”

Bachmann said her campaign is focusing on Iowa as the “number one” caucus. Recent polls have shown her support slipping.

Bachmann insisted that she was the Republican candidate who would go through with a “full-scale repeal” of the health plan passed by Pres. Barack Obama, which she called “Obamacare.”

“We have to go through this vetting process so the voters can take a good look at us and who they want to be their voice in the White House in 2012,” Bachmann said. “This is the key election, people need to know who will repeal Obamacare, who will repeal Dodd-Frank.”

A new study shows that a community that has a high rate of uninsured members affects the health care access and quality of those who actually have insurance.

Modern Healthcare reports that the study, which was published in the journal Medical Care, found that there are “indirect, or spillover, health care effects” on people with health care insurance, when the community they live in has a high rate of uninsured.

One of the key findings of the study was that “working-age adults with private insurance residing in areas with a high rate of uninsurance were less likely than their peer in areas with a low rate of uninsurance to have a usual source of care, an office-based visit, and any medical care expenditures.”

GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann concluded a weekend of Florida events with a Sarasota rally cosponsored by the local Republican Party and a handful of tea party and 912 groups, repeating her calls to eliminate both the EPA and the Department of Education and promising to lead the charge to repeal “ObamaCare.”

Hundreds of Sarasota residents packed the Sahib Shrine Temple Sunday afternoon, many wearing yellow “Tea Party Manatee” or red “Venice 912″ T-shirts. Local Republican Party chairman Joe Gruters MCed the event, developer Pat Neal offered a prayer and state Rep. Ray Pilon led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Bachmann opened her speech with a dig at President Obama, pledging to never use a teleprompter and to never appoint a “czar” in the “Bachmann White House.” “When it comes to foreign policy, you won’t see me step one toe out of this country and apologize for the United States of America,” she said.

Bachmann then began discussing America’s extended economic downturn. She said the nation is facing “sobering, sobering times” and raised the specter of Chinese economic ascendancy to warn the crowd about the need to cut government spending and change the tax code.

“By 2015, we in the United States will be paying so much interest to China, we will be paying the entire Chinese military,” she said. “When money drains out of the country, what goes with it? Power. Our power goes with it. Our influence goes with it.”

But according to Bachmann, China’s rise is not a sure thing. ”I would much prefer to see the United States be the premier economic power in the world,” she said. “And we can. It’s entirely possible to see that happen again.”

Bachmann’s formula for accomplishing that begins with eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency, or, as she called it, “the job-killing agency of America.”

“Let me see a show of hands,” she said. “Who here wants dirty water? Who here wants dirty air?” When no one raised a hand, she said that Americans believe in “true conservation,” not in regulating greenhouse gases. She also called for closing the Department of Education.

The crowd responded most loudly when Bachmann pledged to repeal “ObamaCare.” She said that federal health care reform is “the biggest bureaucracy that has ever been created in the United States” and that “this terrible foundation for socialized medicine” will lead to the rationing of procedures like hip replacements, a nod to the largely gray-haired audience. “I will not rest until we repeal ObamaCare!” she shouted, to loud applause and cheers.

She called the 2012 election conservatives’ “one chance” to stop the health care law, saying that even future Republican lawmakers would be unable to undo it.

“This is the critical election of our time, on every level,” she said near the close of her speech. “If we will remain that No. 1 military superpower or not — that question is not yet decided. … Will we remain the No. 1 economic superpower or not? … Will we abide by socialized medicine or not?”

Bachmann didn’t delve into social conservative issues (topics she addressed in a speech at the Florida Family Policy Council on Saturday night), but her stance on LGBT issues did inspire a few dozen protestors — mostly drawn from nearby New College of Florida — to hold signs and chant outside the event. According to New College student Taylor Rothenberg, a handful of students with T-shirts bearing Obama’s face or slogans like “Legalize Gay” waited in the long, snaking line to enter the event, but were shut out.