"Elective abortions will be prohibited and people with pre-existing conditions will be able to get comprehensive benefits without paying any more than healthy people, under new federal regulations for high-risk health insurance pools released ... by the Obama administration," according to Kaiser Health News. "The state-based pools provision is one of the high-profile features of the new health law taking effect this year. It allocates $5 billion to create plans to cover people who have been uninsured for at least six months and have a pre-existing health condition" (Galewitz, 7/29).
Politico: Abortion-rights groups were "caught completely off-guard" last month when Republicans and anti-abortion groups successfully mobilized to pressure on the Obama administration to keep states from allowing abortion coverage in the insurance pools they were setting up for people with pre-existing conditions. The administration responded within a day, assuring the groups that the high-risk insurance pools would be banned from covering elective abortions, "a position reaffirmed in a Health and Human Services regulation released on Thursday. ... Planned Parenthood and NARAL didn't publicly petition HHS until after the new ban was imposed. And it took sympathetic Democrats on the Hill a full 10 days to write a letter expressing disappointment with the HHS" (Kliff, 7/30).
Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, wrote about the abortion policy on the White House blog Thursday, saying that "federal dollars would not be used to pay for abortion services except in the rarest of instances under a newly created health insurance program aimed at covering the sick and uninsured ...," Modern Healthcare reports, adding that the "pre-existing condition program will operate until 2014, when a new marketplace for health plans, called an exchange, will kick into effect" (DoBias, 7/29).
Meanwhile, in other news coverage of developments related to the new health law: