Representative Chris Smith says that Americans “deserve to know if their health plan will be subsidizing a culture of death.” He is concerned that now that
the state exchanges are online, pro-life citizens may end up supporting abortion because they aren’t able to determine which plans exclude abortion.
The Affordable Care Act requires premium payers to be assessed an abortion surcharge every month to pay for abortions. Pro-life Americans “may
unwittingly purchase pro-abortion plans because of a marketing secrecy clause embedded in Obamacare.” They may only discover it at the time of enrollment,
and that is assuming that are able to read and understand the fine print.
Representative Smith believes that pro-life citizens should know what they are purchasing. They should not be misled by this highly deceptive practice.
They should know before they sign up whether their premiums are funding abortion on demand.
That is why he and other members of Congress have introduced the Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act (HR 3279). The bill requires information
“regarding either inclusion or exclusion of abortion coverage as well as the existence of an abortion surcharge to be prominently displayed in all marketing or
advertising materials.”
These last few weeks have illustrated why this is so important. Go on the government website. If you are able to get to the description of policies, you will
discover that there is no explanation of abortion coverage. The official word is that you would have to wait until you pick a plan before you could find out if it
covers abortion. That’s not how the government website should work.
Pro-life Americans should not have to spend so much time to discover whether their premiums might go to a procedure for which they have moral objections.
We live in a society where we believe that people have a right to know how their money is spent. We expect full disclosure in most areas of our lives. Pro-life
citizens need to have this information so their dollars don’t go to support abortion.