Government agencies have a distressing habit of releasing information they don’t care to highlight on the eve of holidays, or late on a Friday – or, whenever possible, both.  That is why it comes as relatively little surprise that the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) used last Friday evening to issue an important rule on abortion under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  The rule, moreover, was parceled in a 350-page document that, like other issuances, invited only the most active readers.

The proposed rule establishes “standards for issuers and Marketplaces for 2016” under the ACA. Included in the rule is a section addressing separate payment of what critics call the “abortion surcharge.”  The surcharge applies to any plan offered on the Obamacare health care exchanges that provides coverage of elective abortions – a figure we now know to exceed more than 1,000 such plans nationwide.  While the ACA explicitly requires a separate payment to be made by the subscriber to the plan, pages 200-202 of the proposed rule outline ways in which insurance companies can avoid collecting actual separate payments.

Source: Chuck Donovan, lifenews.com