House Dems Attempt to Address Contraception Issue on Their Terms

Posted in Corporate Healthcare Policy & The Media Knowledge & Medicine Politics & The Law

In response to the widely criticized all male panel convened last week to address the Obama admin’s contraception rule, House Democrats have planned their own panel. Minority Leader Pelosi will hold a hearing today on the Hill which will feature a female law student not allowed on the original panel. Keeping the issue as a sanitzed one on “issues of womens health”, Pelosi has attempted to frame the hearing as an antidote to the tone of the original conceived panel as one presented by the Republicans as an issue of religious liberty.

Many critics of the GOP move have blasted the party for “turning the clock back fifty years” in reigniting the so-called culture wars as yet another strategy upon which to hit Obama just as the economy is beginning to show signs of life. As is known, Obama earlier this month had to step back and expand the scope of contraceptive coverage regulation in order to allow other kinds of religious employers to not provide the coverage. As a compromise, female employees will still get the free coverage, only directly through their health insurance carriers. | LINK