By Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News).- More than 75 members of Congress have written the Obama administration emphasizing that abortion coverage must be billed separately under the health care law, as it was promised.
“The abortion surcharge must be a separate payment. However, the proposed rule brazenly ignores the separate payment requirement in the law and instead specifies that the abortion surcharge may be collected in a single payment and the surcharge does not even have to be listed on the consumer’s bill,” the members of Congress wrote in a December letter to HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell.
When the law was passed, the separate billing for abortion coverage was meant to assuage concerns of those objecting to paying for abortion coverage for reasons of conscience. At least one health plan not offering abortion coverage was to be featured on each state insurance exchange set up under the law.
Back in September, however, an independent government watchdog found that five state exchanges offered only plans including abortion coverage. In addition, the Government Accountability Office reported that many insurance issuers were not separately billing enrollees for abortion coverage as was promised.
