The Government Accountability Office confirmed September 16 that Obamacare is funding abortions with taxpayer dollars. This shouldn’t surprise anyone. In fact, it’s so unsurprising that more than two years ago my Alliance Defending Freedom colleagues (the creative types—not the attorneys) put together this video foreshadowing the GAO report.
In at least three distinct ways Obamacare is forcing taxpayers—and in some cases unwitting policyholders (maybe you)—to pay for others’ abortions, steering untold millions of dollars toward Planned Parenthood and other abortion dealers, who have and are likewise spending millions to elect President Obama and his political allies.
One: Direct Purchase
First, the GAO concluded that more than 1,000 Obamacare health insurance plans nationwide are eligible for taxpayer subsidies despite including elective abortion coverage. In Washington’s exchange, for example, the entire premium—including the portion covering elective abortions—are paid for by (your and my) federal taxpayer dollars. This is no small thing. The so-called “Cornhusker Kickback” brought magic vote number to 60 for the narrow passage of Obamacare in the Senate. But another “promise” to Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson supposedly required that those who wanted an abortion-inclusive plan would pay for an add-on via a separate fee segregated from taxpayer dollars.
In truth, this was always an accounting gimmick and would not prevent taxpayer subsidies of abortions. Whether through incompetence or willful blow-off of the law, even this gimmick is being ignored. It was always admitted that taxpayers were subsidizing some “excepted” abortions. But now the GAO has confirmed that you are also paying for elective abortions.
Second: Buy to Find Out What’s In It
Second, the GAO confirmed what many already know—it is virtually impossible to find out whether the plans you are seeking even include elective abortion. Exchanges and even individual insurers have varying approaches to informing or not informing individuals which plans cover abortion. When you buy a plan, you just don’t know. Unfortunately, this confusion is difficult to correct because it is built into the law itself. As footnote 15 of the GAO report explains, while you might find out other plan details earlier, Obamacare specifically permits insurers not to provide information about abortion coverage until “the time of enrollment”—the point when you actually make your first payment. Shoppers have to buy their plan to find out if abortion is in it.
This is particularly troubling because an individual who belatedly discovers after payment that their plan includes elective abortion will be forced to pay a separate fee—undisclosed to them in their bill and to be collected in a separate account—that can only be used to pay for others’ abortions. Only the most careful policy holders, who review every detail of every document, even after enrollment, might discover that they are even enrolled in an abortion-covering plan. But your taxpayer dollars are subsidizing these plans and your own plan may be personally collecting an additional fee from you—undisclosed on your bill—used expressly to pay for others’ abortions.
Three: Through State Exchanges
Third, the GAO confirmed that in five states—Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Jersey, and Hawaii—every Obamacare exchange plan includes elective abortion and thus collects a separate fee from every enrollee to pay for others’ elective abortions. Obamacare threatens substantial fines if the citizens of those states do not purchase a compliant health insurance plan, but to secure those plans and avoid those fines the citizens of these states must pay an undisclosed surcharge used to pay for others’ abortions.
Alliance Defending Freedom represents the Bracy family in Connecticut challenging this abortion surcharge mandate and its violation of their conscience. And we are interested in speaking with anyone else in these five states who have purchased or need to purchase an exchange plan and object to being forced to pay this abortion surcharge.
Planned Parenthood Makes Bank
The gross violations of conscience and the administrations’ false promises about this law aren’t the whole story.
All told, the taxpayer subsidies and the intentional confusion of abortion coverage in Obamacare plans, funding these dedicated abortion pools through abortion surcharges, stands to net Planned Parenthood substantial revenue. Planned Parenthood has positioned itself as the abortion industry leader, increasing its share of the total abortion market every year for the last three decades. It commits more than 330,000 abortions per year at an average of $468 per abortion for approximately $150 million in abortion revenues annually, 38 percent of its health center revenue.
Taxpayer subsidies and abortion surcharge pools are to Planned Parenthood what ethanol subsidies are to corn farmers or the Export-Import Bank is to Boeing. Add its half billion in annual taxpayer funding and you can begin to see why this billion dollar abortion giant would be so keenly interested in a healthcare law that we were told would not pay for abortions, and in the politicians who keep those revenues coming. In that light, the tens of millions it has spent in recent elections is a prudent business investment. Its friends and allies secure in power, they return the favor.
Planned Parenthood has bragged that it worked to “help shape and pass the Affordable Care Act.” The GAO report provides strong evidence that Planned Parenthood’s work was productive.