HOUSE Republican Leader John Boehner

House GOP Leaders Press White House to Allow Governors, State Legislators to Join Health Care “Summit”

Noting that legislation to “opt out” of Obamacare has been introduced in 36 states, House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) have sent a letter to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel asking that the invitation to the planned Feb. 25 health care “summit” at the White House be extended to the nation’s governors and state legislators.

“Will the President be inviting officials and lawmakers from the states to participate in this discussion?” Boehner and Cantor asked Emanuel.  “As you may know, legislation has been introduced in at least 36 state legislatures, similar to the proposal just passed by the Democratic-controlled Virginia State Senate, providing that no individual may be compelled to purchase health insurance.  Additionally, governors of both parties have raised concerns about the additional costs that will be passed along to states under both the House and Senate bills.”

In a statement released Monday night, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs criticized the Boehner-Cantor letter, but did not address the question of whether state officials would be given a role in the Feb. 25 event.

“One of the fundamental problems with the approach the Obama Administration has taken to health care is that it seems rooted in a Washington-knows-best mentality.  Excluding the voices of America’s governors and state legislators from the proposed ’summit’ would compound this error,” Boehner said.  “There’s a revolt going on in the states right now against the bills Washington Democrats are trying to impose on America.  The White House may want to pretend the revolt isn’t happening, but it’s real.”

Boehner and Reps. Devin Nunes (R-CA) and Mike Rogers (R-MI) last year launched the GOP State Solutions project, an initiative aimed at highlighting solutions put forth by reform-minded governors and state officials outside the Beltway.  Through the State Solutions project, House Republicans have been working with state officials, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and grass-roots activists to advance state-level legislation declaring individual citizens’ freedom against intrusive health care mandates from the federal government.

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State Revolt Grows Against ObamaCare’s “Individual Mandate”

Washington Democrats are still angling for ways to enact President Obama’s proposed government takeover of health care, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed in the states.  Reform-minded legislators in states from coast-to-coast are sending out-of-touch Washington Democrats a message on behalf of their constituents: Americans don’t want higher taxes, Medicare cuts, rationed care, and unfunded mandates - and they definitely don’t want the federal government forcing citizens to purchase health care, a key component of ObamaCare known as the “individual mandate.”   So far, “[l]awmakers in 35 states have filed or proposed amendments to their state constitutions or statutes rejecting health insurance mandates,” according to an Associated Press report out today. 

The AP report notes:

[C]onservative lawmakers in more than two-thirds of the states are forging ahead with constitutional amendments to ban government health insurance mandates.  The proposals would assert a state-based right for people to pay medical bills from their own pocketbooks and prohibit penalties against those who refuse to carry health insurance….

Supporters of the state measures portray them as a way of defending individual rights and state sovereignty, asserting that the federal government has no authority to tell states and their citizens to buy health insurance.

Just yesterday, the Democratic-controlled State Senate in Virginia passed three bills that would make it illegal to require individuals to purchase health insurance.  As the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported:

Breaking with their party and president, five Democrats yesterday helped push through the state Senate a Republican measure allowing Virginians to just say no to compulsory health insurance.  Voting 23-17, the Democratic-controlled Senate approved three identical proposals — Senate Bills 283, 311 and 417 — making it illegal to require residents to purchase health-care coverage.

The Washington Post noted that “[t]he bills were also expected to be approved by the GOP-controlled House of Delegates” and that “Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) said he will review the bills but supports their intent.” 

Last month, House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) endorsed the states’ rebellion against the Democrats’ government takeover of health care:

All the burdensome mandates, tax hikes, and new layers of red tape Democrats are devising behind closed doors would wreak havoc on the states, so it’s no surprise a majority of them are already fighting back.  When we see so many reform-minded state legislators standing with the American people against Democrats’ government takeover of health care, we’re even more convinced that fighting this bill with everything we’ve got is the right thing to do.  Congressional Republicans will continue to lend our full support to this effort and look forward to having additional states come on board.

The American people have made it abundantly clear: they don’t want a government takeover of health care.  House Republicans agree, which is why they’ve proposed an alternative health care solution that’s one-ninth the size of the Democrats’ proposal and is the only proposal that will reduce health care premiums for millions of American families and small businesses.  And notably, it would do so without imposing an “individual mandate” that deprives Americans of their freedom.

Last year, Leader Boehner joined Reps. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Devin Nunes (R-CA) in establishing the GOP State Solutions project as part of an ongoing effort to partner with reform-minded governors, state officials, and legislators and promote better solutions to the challenges facing the American people.

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Much Touted “Independent” MIT Report on Health Care was an Inside Job

In a desperate attempt to bolster the President’s claims that the Democrats’ $1 trillion government takeover of health care won’t lead to increased costs for millions of small businesses and families, the Administration scoured for anything or anyone to justify its talking points. 

Turns out that with a $300,000 payoff, the Administration can even get an MIT professor, Jonathan Gruber, to support its discredited assertions that their government takeover of health care won’t lead to increased costs for millions of small businesses and families - even though both the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the actuaries at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have said otherwise.

As Fox News reported, Professor Gruber failed to “disclose consistently that he was under contract with the Department of Health and Human Services while he was touting the Democrats’ health proposals in the media.”  The Fox News report continued:

Gruber, according to federal government documents, is under a $297,600 contract until next month to provide ‘technical assistance’ in evaluating health care reform proposals. He was under a $95,000 HHS contract before that.   But while he was being paid to provide his services to HHS, he was also fending off health care reform critics in the media.  Gruber was one of the prominent analysts to rebut an insurance industry report from PricewaterhouseCoopers in October saying premiums would shoot up if a health care bill passes.

At every turn, the Administration’s claims have been rebutted by independent analyses.  The Administration’s last line of defense was the few economists left who endorsed its trillion dollar government takeover of the health care system - and at least one of those endorsements has now been exposed as an inside job.  What’s worse, the Administration and Democrats in Congress are pressing ahead behind closed doors, in an a spirit worthy of Admiral Farragut, who’s famous exclamation, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” has come to symbolize the Democrats’ approach to “reforming” our health care system. 

The American people deserve better.

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Editorial Boards Weigh in on Democrats’ Decision to Break the President’s “C-SPAN Pledge”

Reports that President Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders have cut a deal to skip a formal Conference on their health care legislation - a flat violation of the President’s promise that such negations would be broadcast on C-SPAN for the American people to see - has provoked outrage across America. 

Today, editorial boards from coast to coast weighed in, and - to say the least - they disagree with Speaker Pelosi’s assertion that “There has never been a more open process.”

A roundup of newspaper editorials from this morning’s papers follows:

Boston Herald: “Let Public in the Room”

This administration - and Democratic leaders - talk a good game about transparency in government. Now they have an opportunity to practice it.  If they’re going to throw the legislative rulebook out the window, at the very least they could give congressional Republicans a chance to watch the process on TV.

Investor’s Business Daily: “Let the Sun Shine”

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, has called the Democrats’ plan to bypass a conference committee a ’shady backroom deal.’ An overstatement? Hardly. One House Democratic aide told a blogger that ‘this process cuts out the Republicans.’ The Democrats fear that if they follow the traditional route, the GOP could use the Senate filibuster rule to shut down the process of organizing the committee.

Bypassing a conference committee also cuts out a public that will suffer losses from whatever monstrosity is produced by the cover of darkness. Americans stand to lose their power of choice over health care decisions and be stripped of a significant portion of their earnings to pay for a plan most don’t want. They deserve to see in an open forum what is being done to them. Instead, they’re likely to get whatever the Democrats want to force on them.

New York Daily News: “Ready for Prime Time”

Candidate Barack Obama made a straightforward health care reform promise on the campaign trail in 2008: ‘We’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so the people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents and who is making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.’  At the time, he hit all the right notes. Populism. Transparency. Good government. But today, President Obama is not quite with the program.

Las Vegas Review-Journal: “Broken Promise”

What Americans don’t know — and what they won’t get to see — is how far Sen. Reid and Rep. Pelosi will go to get what they want. Taxpaying voters will be cut off from the decisive debate on a monstrous increase in consumer costs and federal authority. Can senators and representatives defend the economically impossible concepts they embrace — more health care, lower costs — in spontaneous, free-flowing discussions? Or will they simply push forward a slip of paper with the dollar amount needed to secure their support, as Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., already has?

New York Post: “Dems Against Democracy”

As DC Democrats slink behind closed doors to craft a final health-care bill — thousands of pages long and sure to sap the nation’s economic future — Americans need to ask: Just what are Dems so ashamed of?  ‘We will do what is necessary to pass the bill,’ House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted, as she and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid moved to forgo a panel to finalize legislation.  Instead, they’ll build their Frankenstein’s monster of a bill in secret, mocking democratic principles all the way.

The Wall Street Journal: “The Tom DeLay Democrats”

Evading conference has become standard operating procedure in this Congress, though you might think they’d allow for the more open and thoughtful process on what Mr. Obama has called ‘the most important piece of social legislation since the Social Security Act passed in the 1930s and the most important reform of our health-care system since Medicare passed in the 1960s’…Apparently this Congress knows no shame.

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Sen. Reid’s Government-Run Health Plan STILL Requires a Monthly Abortion Fee

Follow @GOPLeader on Twitter for updates.

Fixed it is not.  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) latest health care “manager’s amendment” would STILL levy a new “abortion premium” fee on Americans under the Democrats’ health care plan.  Just like the original 2,032-page, government-run health care plan from Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) and the last version of Senator Reid’s 2,074-page bill, this latest 383-page amendment levies an abortion premium and does not fix the problem of government funds being used to subsidize elective abortions.

Under Reid’s “manager’s amendment,” there is no prohibition on abortion coverage in federally subsidized plans participating in the Exchange.  Instead the amendment includes layers of accounting gimmicks that demand that plans participating in the Exchange or the new government-run plan that will be managed by the Office of Personnel Management must establish “allocation accounts” when elective abortion is a covered benefit (p. 41).  Everyone enrolled in these plans must pay a monthly abortion premium (p. 41, lines 5-8), and these funds will be used to pay for the elective abortion services.  The Reid amendment directs insurance companies to assess the cost of elective abortion coverage (p. 43), and charge a minimum of $1 per enrollee per month (p. 43, lines 20-22).

In short, the Reid bill continues to defy the will of the American people and contradict longstanding federal policy by providing federal subsidies to private health plans that cover elective abortions.  The new language does include a “state opt-out” provision if a state passes a law to prohibit insurance coverage of abortion, but it’s a sham because it does nothing to prevent one state’s tax dollars from paying for elective abortions in other states.

A majority of Americans believe that health care plans should not be mandated to provide elective abortion coverage, and a majority of Americans do not believe government health care plans should include abortion coverage. Currently, federal appropriations bills include language known as the Hyde Amendment that prohibits the use of federal funds to pay for elective abortions under the Medicare and Medicaid programs, while another provision, known as the Smith Amendment, prohibits federal funding of abortion under the federal employees’ health benefits plan.  Under the Reid “manager’s amendment” the new health care plan that will mirror the federal employees’ plan and be managed by the Office of Personnel Management will NOT be subject to the Smith Amendment.

Leader Reid’s latest health care proposal is an affront to the American people and drastically moves away from current policy.  In a statement released by National Right to Life Committee legislative director Douglas Johnson said, “The new abortion language solves none of the fundamental abortion-related problems with the Senate bill, and it actually creates some new abortion-related problems.”  The American people deserve more from their government than being forced to pay for abortion.  The pro-life Stupak/Pitts amendment passed the House by a vote of 240 to 194, enjoying the overwhelming support of 176 Republicans and 64 Democrats.  The Stupak/Pitts Amendment codifies current law by prohibiting federal funding of elective abortions under any government-run plan or plans available under the Exchange.  The Reid plan ignores the will of a bipartisan majority of the House, and indeed the American people, by rejecting this bipartisan amendment.

Health care reform should not be used as an opportunity to use federal funds to pay for elective abortions. Health reform should be an opportunity to protect human life – not end it – and the American people agree.  House Republicans have offered a common-sense, responsible solution that would reduce health care costs and expand access while protecting the dignity of all human life. The Republican plan, available at HealthCare.GOP.gov, would codify the Hyde Amendment and prohibit all authorized and appropriated federal funds from being used to pay for abortion. And under the Republican plan, any health plan that includes abortion coverage may not receive federal funds.

UPDATE: Here is a detailed critique of the new Reid abortion language from the National Right to Life committee.

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Boehner Welcomes Activists Attending “High Noon for Health Care” Rally

Six weeks ago I had the honor of addressing thousands of Americans gathered for a “House Call” on the East Front of the Capitol to voice their deep concerns about a government takeover of America’s health care system.  But because Democratic leaders seem determined to completely ignore the clearly expressed will of the American people, thousands of activists will again descend on Capitol Hill today to say loudly, “enough is enough!”  Enough of mortgaging our children’s future, enough of spending money we don’t have, enough of the insanity in Washington, and enough of big-government politicians who don’t care about individual liberty.

Just like Pelosi Care, the Senate bill is a massive government takeover of health care.  This multi-trillion dollar scheme will drastically increase taxes while doing nothing about skyrocketing costs.  In fact it will increase them.  It will significantly cut Medicare and will force millions of Americans on to a government-run plan.  The Senate bill, just like the House bill, will take away the freedom to choose your doctor and will lead to government control of every aspect of a person’s life.

Support for the health care takeover has plummeted as Americans more fully understand the details.  But unfortunately the majority in Congress and President Obama seemed single-mindedly focused on a narrow agenda of more spending, more debt, more taxes, more regulation, and more Washington government.  And with unemployment at 10 percent, Americans are asking, “where are the jobs?”  The answer is obvious: a health care takeover, a national energy tax, ‘card check’ legislation, and more tax hikes are causing economic uncertainty.  Americans don’t want job-killing policies; they want better solutions aimed at helping small businesses create jobs and getting our nation’s fiscal house in order.

For those attending today’s “High Noon for Health Care” rally I say welcome to Washington.  Your voices defending our Constitutional rights are being heard all over the country and will again be heard on Capitol Hill.  Thanks for your efforts and for standing against a Washington takeover of health care.

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Confirmed: Both House, Senate Democratic Bills Increase Health Care Costs

Last Friday, the Obama Administration dropped a bombshell - admitting in a memo that the Senate’s government takeover of health care would increase the cost of health care. This is just the latest report which confirms that both the House and Senate health care bills don’t “bend the cost curve down” as the President and his Democratic allies in Congress have repeatedly claimed.

As the New York Times reported on Saturday:

Richard S. Foster, the chief actuary of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said Friday that under Mr. Reid’s bill national health spending from 2010 to 2019 would total $35.5 trillion. That is $234 billion, or 0.7 percent, more than the amount projected under current law, he added… Republicans said Mr. Foster’s report confirmed what they had been saying for months.

The Obama Administration has already admitted that the House health care bill will increase health care costs.  In an October memo from the Obama Administration’s Chief Actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Richard Foster, estimated that “Total national health expenditures under [H.R. 3200] would increase by an estimated 2.7 percent in calendar year 2019.” Over the next 10 years, CMS predicts overall national health expenditures will jump by 2.1 percent, or $750.3 billion.  And the independent, non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) agreed with the CMS analysis, as the Washington Post noted recently: the “House bill, the CBO said, would push federal spending higher.”

So what do the Democrats’ health care bills actually accomplish?  The following chart makes it plain: the Democrats are aiming for a government takeover of health care, and both the House and Senate bills would accomplish that goal.

(Chart courtesy of the House Budget Committee Republican staff)

The Wall Street Journal eviscerated Democrats’ claims that their government takeover of health care would actually contain costs in an editorial today: 

The White House hawked a permanent entitlement expansion on flimsy and speculative theories that its own partisans now admit-albeit when it is nearly too late-aren’t more substantive than the triumph of hope over experience, while simultaneously writing off the one policy that has been effective in the real world.  The cost control mantra of ObamaCare was always a political bill of goods, and its result will be the opposite of its claims: poorer quality care at higher costs.

And Robert J. Samuelson noted in today’s Washington Post that:

Health cost increases might spontaneously recede, but history suggests skepticism….To attack costs first would be politically challenging. It would require admitting that all good things are not possible simultaneously and that the uninsured already receive much medical care.  It would require genuine bipartisanship, not just a scramble for a few Republican votes….That’s a demanding and realistic approach; Obama’s is wishful thinking.

There have been two consistent facts that have consistently confirmed by both the CBO and CMS actuaries: the Democrats’ government takeover of health care increases health care costs, and the Republican alternative decreases health care costs.  In fact, the CBO estimated that the GOP health care plan would lower premiums by up to 10 percent and reduce the deficit by $68 billion over 10 years without imposing tax increases on families and small businesses. 

As House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) has repeatedly said,  “it’s time for Democrats to scrap their costly government takeover of health , start over and work with Republicans on reforms that make health care more affordable and accessible.”

To read more about House Republicans’ better health care solutions, visit HealthCare.GOP.gov.

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Despite their Talking Points, Dems’ Government Takeover of Health Care Will Increase the Deficit

One of the myths most frequently peddled by supporters of the Democrats’ government takeover of health care is that the Democrats’ $1.3 trillion bill “protects our children’s future by not adding to our deficit,” as Speaker Pelosi put it earlier this month. 

But the Washington Post reported today that couldn’t be further from the truth.  The Post noted that, “[a]s a whole, the CBO projects that Reid’s bill would not change the trajectory of federal health spending.  And a competing House bill, the CBO said, would push federal spending higher.”  In fact, the House Democrats’ government takeover of health care will increase the budget deficit by at least $89 billion over the next 10 years, according to a recent report from the independent, non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). 

The Democrats’ bill in the Senate, meanwhile, isn’t any better at reducing health care costs or easing the federal deficit - which currently stands at $1.4 trillion this year alone.  Last week, the Republican staff on the Senate Budget Committee put together the following chart exposing the actual cost of the Senate Democrats’ government takeover of health care over 10 years.  The true cost?  $2.5 trillion.

As Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) pointed out during a rare Saturday session on November 21:

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle continue to claim this bill costs about $800 billion.  That’s the number they say has been reached as the expenditure on this bill.  Ladies and gentlemen, that is a totally dishonest number…The way that number was arrived at was that they don’t start spending money on this bill until the fourth or the fifth year.  They couldn’t get the score they wanted from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), so they changed the starting point.  They moved back another year in the ten-year cycle.  They went from four years to five years as to the starting point of most of the spending in this bill….

What they don’t tell the American people is they’re not spending anything in the first four or five years of the bill.  No.  They do raise your taxes throughout the ten-year period.  They do cut Medicare throughout the ten-year period.  But they don’t spend the money. They don’t start the spending programs until the year 2014, when this bill is fully phased in, when all these new programs, these massive expansion of entitlements are created, these brand-new entitlements. When all this new spending occurs, this bill will cost $2.5 trillion over that ten-year period.

The American people are against the Democrats’ government takeover of health care, as Jeffrey H. Anderson at National Review Online’s “Critical Condition” blog, pointed out this morning:

In the last two weeks, eight national polls have been released showing what the American people think of Obamacare.  The results of those eight polls - Pew, ABC/WaPo, PPP, CNN, CBS, Quinnipiac, Fox, and Rasmussen - show that by an average margin of 8.5 percent (49.0 percent to 40.5 percent), more people oppose Obamacare than support it.

The facts speak for themselves: the Democrats’ government takeover of health care will increase the federal deficit and will increase health care costs for American families.   President Obama, however, pledged in his address to a Joint Session of Congress that: “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits — either now or in the future.” 

The only way he can keep that promise to the American people is if out-of-touch Washington Democrats scrap their costly government takeover of health care and work with Republicans to implement step-by-step reforms that will reduce the cost of health insurance for American families and small businesses without increasing the deficit, raising taxes, or implementing draconian cuts to Medicare. 

House Republicans have proposed a better solution that will do just that.  You can read more about it at HealthCare.GOP.gov.

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Government Panel’s Mammogram Ruling a Preview of Life Under Pelosi Care

Last week, the American people got a preview of life under Pelosi Care when a government panel recommended that women under the age of 50 or over the age of 74 should not receive mammograms. 

Appearing on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos this Sunday, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) blasted the decision and explained that if the Democrats’ government takeover of health care becomes law, the decisions made by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force - the group responsible for the mammogram recommendation - would become the law of the land.

The ruling by the government panel is emblematic of the future of medical decisions if Congress passes Speaker Pelosi’s government takeover of health care, since the Pelosi bill would allow the government to determine which benefits health plans can offer to their participants, leading to rationing of care.  The Wall Street Journal editorial today, “Liberals and Mammography,” noted as much:

What’s really going on here is that the left knows its designs will require political rationing of care, but it doesn’t want the public to figure this out until ObamaCare passes.  Then it will begin the campaign to instruct the rest of us that we must follow the guidance of Princeton professors about what medical care we can receive.  Americans will simply have to accept that the price of government-run health care in the name of redistributive justice is that patients and their doctors must bow to the superior wisdom of HHS task forces.

Unfortunately, if the Democrats’ government takeover of health care becomes law, this is only the beginning of bureaucrats coming between doctors and patients. 

Republicans have a better solution that empowers the doctor-patient relationship, lowers health care premiums, guarantees affordable coverage for patients with preexisting conditions, protects seniors’ Medicare benefits, and enacts real medical liability reform.  Read more about the Republican plan at HealthCare.GOP.gov.

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Fact Check: Criticism of “Abortion Fee” Comes Up Short; Pro-Life Experts Back Boehner’s Concerns About Taxpayer-Funded Abortion

When it comes to the issue of taxpayer funding for abortion, Democrats know their far-left special interest allies are pushing them to do something that 61 percent of the American public opposes - use taxpayer dollars to pay for ending innocent unborn human life.  So instead of arguing the facts, Democrats are simply throwing up a smokescreen of misinformation and hoping the press keeps the American people in the dark.  One story in this morning’s Congress Daily is a good example. 

Myth: The Congress Daily headline reads, “Boehner Attacks Fee Provision, But Claim Comes Up Short.”

FACT: Nothing in the story supports such a declarative (and opinionated) headline.  And Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee (the gold-standard when it comes to protecting the unborn) has said, “The Boehner piece is accurate.  It is literally impossible for the public option to pay for abortions without using public funds, because all of the funds spent by the public option will be federal funds.  A federal agency cannot spend anything except federal funds.  Even the CBO document released with the Reid bill treats the ‘premiums’ as federal funds, because of course that is really what they are.”  

Myth: “Abortion-rights supporters say the section is actually a safeguard that makes sure that an insurance company always has enough strictly private money to cover any abortion services its enrollees claim”

FACT: This is an obvious gimmick.  Johnson explains, “This claims that a federal agency can pay for abortions without spending federal funds.  The ‘premiums’ become what are in fact federal funds when the government takes them, and they are federal funds when the government spends them on abortions, whatever contrived label may be slapped over them in the bill.  Even the CBO document released with the Reid bill treats the ‘premiums’ as federal funds, as we read it.” Pro-life Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak agreed that Reid’s language falls short, saying, among other things, “it would mandate abortion coverage for the first time in history.”

Myth: Congress Daily reported, “The provision requires that companies calculate the actuarial value of a plan’s abortion coverage and put at least that much private money - collected from individual premiums instead of government subsidies or tax credits -  into a separate account.  Abortion claims must be paid from this separate account, and companies ‘may not estimate such a cost at less than $1 per enrollee, per month.’  Boehner pointed to that section as proof of the fee. But the provision doesn’t dictate coverage requirements, which would affect premiums.”

FACT: This argument betrays a basic ignorance of health care financing.  The focus on “coverage requirements” is bizarre, considering that a number of factors, including federal mandates like the abortion fee, increase premiums.  Coverage is always paid for by some kind of premium (or direct federal funding), not by pots of gold found at the end of rainbows.

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