#BeTransparent about abortion subsidies

You’ve no doubt heard about the computer programmer’s worst nightmare that was the launch of HealthCare.gov. That was a newsworthy story, to be sure. But in all the media coverage, something important got lost: once you’ve gotten past the technical glitches and logged onto the website, how do you pick the right plan? At that point, there’s another setback. And unlike the programming snafus, this setback is deliberate.

Abortion was a huge issue back when the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was being debated in Congress. The ultimate outcome was a requirement that every exchange contain at least one pro-life health insurance plan, allowing people the choice to not subsidize abortions through their premiums.

But good luck figuring out which plan is the pro-life one. The information is absent from relevant websites, and the Charlotte Lozier Institute found that even calling a live representative often gets you nowhere. CLI isn’t shy about their suspicion that this is by design:

The asserted purpose of exchanges in the first place is to provide an unbiased forum so that consumers can quickly and easily compare plan costs, provisions, and providers. But what if governments and insurers think that some points of comparison are of little consequence? If they can’t eliminate them by law, they may just as effectively make those points all but invisible.

Pro-life members of Congress are trying to address this subterfuge with a bill called the Abortion Insurance Disclosure Act. To pass it, we must be too loud for the media can ignore.

The #Gosnell tweetfest succeeded in forcing the media to cover the gruesome trial of an abortionist and infanticidist instead of sweeping it under the rug. It’s time for pro-lifers to rally again! The hashtag today is #BeTransparent. You can get sample tweets here.