The AP’s Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar reports “nearly 90 percent of employer-based private insurance plans routinely cover abortion.” That is not true. As the New York Times reported the other day, Kathleen Sebelius testified in April: “Most private plans do not cover abortion services except in limited instances.” And Congressional Quarterly reported on July 15:
The AP likely sourced its claim that 90% of employer-based insurance plans cover abortions to a very flawed Alan Guttmacher Institute study. The National Right to Life Committee’s Douglas Johnson explains in an email why the AGI study is dubious:
If the NRA sends out a questionnaire, most pro-gun-control candidates simply won’t respond. The same phenomenon surely occurred with health insurance companies that do not provide abortions not responding to the Guttmacher Institute, which was once formally connected to Planned Parenthood, and remains ideologically committed to legalized and taxpayer-subsidized abortion. The real issue here isn’t whether or not private plans cover abortions–it’s whether or not American taxpayers should have to pay for abortions, something that is wildly unpopular and has been prohibited since 1976 by the Hyde amendment. Pro-abortion advocates, however, have been spinning an argument that since most employer based plans cover abortions–which, in fact, they do not as noted above–then Obama’s public plan and subsidized insurance plans should require abortion coverage as well. Time‘s Karen Tumulty wrote in a recent piece that resembled a Planned Parenthood press release that “many women” who would be rolled into plans with federal subsidies would have to “giv[e] up a benefit [for abortion] they now have under their private insurance policies.” Wait a second. I thought Obama told us that “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.” Apparently “public option” proponents are willing to concede that many people will lose their employer-based health insurance when faced with the prospect of losing free abortions. Update: Ben Smith notes: 1) A different study claimed that 46% of employer-based plans covered abortions, 2) The Guttmacher Institute concedes that the number of plans providing coverage is somewhat less than 87%, and 3) Neither Sebelius nor America’s Health Insurance Providers have yet backed up their assertions that most plans do not provide routine abortion coverage with studies.
