However, and this is important, if the Hyde Amendment is not included in some year’s appropriations bill, all abortions will be covered and this segregation stuff goes out the window.
Please note that this is distinctly different than how the Hyde Amendment has been applied in the past: in the past, it applied to Medicaid. Medicaid was 100% funded by the government, so if there was a prohibition to use the money for abortion, abortions wouldn’t get paid for. In this case, they’ll just use the private premiums to pay for the abortions and the federal money will make up the difference for other services covered.
(in my book, if you put $7 into the kitty and the government puts in $3, you have $10 to spend. If the government says you can’t spend their part on something, but it’s OK to spend your part, you’re still spending all $10)
Now, the
Executive Order is here.
An executive order cannot overrule federal law. An executive order can only direct offices within the executive branch to do something (or not do something) that is not explicitly called out in the law.
Therefore, most of the verbiage in this EO are meaningless.
Basically, the only thing that this bill does is in this paragraph:
Sec. 2. Strict Compliance with Prohibitions on Abortion Funding in Health Insurance Exchanges.
…
I hereby direct the Director of the OMB and the Secretary of HHS to develop, within 180 days of the date of this order, a model set of segregation guidelines for State health insurance commissioners to use when determining whether exchange plans are complying with the Act’s segregation requirements, established in section 1303 of the Act, for enrollees receiving Federal financial assistance. The guidelines shall also offer technical information that States should follow to conduct independent regular audits of insurance companies that participate in the health insurance exchanges. In developing these model guidelines, the Director of the OMB and the Secretary of HHS shall consult with executive agencies and offices that have relevant expertise in accounting principles, including, but not limited to, the Department of the Treasury, and with the Government Accountability Office. Upon completion of those model guidelines, the Secretary of HHS should promptly initiate a rulemaking to issue regulations, which will have the force of law, to interpret the Act’s segregation requirements, and shall provide guidance to State health insurance commissioners on how to comply with the model guidelines.
Sec. 3. Community Health Center Program.
…I hereby direct the Secretary of HHS to ensure that program administrators and recipients of Federal funds are aware of and comply with the limitations on abortion services imposed on CHCs by existing law. Such actions should include, but are not limited to, updating Grant Policy Statements that accompany CHC grants and issuing new interpretive rules.
So, in other words, he did an executive order to direct the executive branch to comply with and implement the law. There is NOTHING, repeat NOTHING in the EO that directs any stricter abortion restrictions than already exists in the law he just signed.
Don’t read
about it. Read it
for yourself. The links are above.
Call it what you like your tax dollars are being used to increase access to abortion.