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Obama administration 'confident' it can find birth-control compromise for self-insured plans
The Obama administration is "confident" it will be able to reach an acceptable compromise that allows religiously affiliated institutions that are self-insured to cover birth control without violating their religious beliefs, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testified Thursday.
The healthcare reform law requires employers to cover contraception without co-pays, a provision that has outraged Catholic bishops and other religious leaders. The Obama administration has proposed a "fix" that would require insurers to provide the contraceptive coverage without charging the employer, but that solution doesn't address institutions that self-insure.
"There are a variety of arrangements already in place in the 28 states that have this law already in place and we intend to be informed by that when we propose the rules," Sebelius testified during a House Energy and Commerce Health subcommittee hearing on her agency's 2013 budget proposal.
Critics doubt those solutions will work.
The conservative Heritage Foundation, for example, says self-insured plans often use third-party administrators to handle enrollment, claims and other tasks, but are "legally prevented from offering insurance plans without first obtaining regulatory approval as an insurance company." So, argues health expert Edmund Haislmaier, "if the administration tries to say that, in the case of self-insured plans, the responsibility to provide contraception will fall on the TPA instead, that won't work either."
