Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R., N.J.) wrote on Wednesday that taxpayer funding for abortion would be included in the new Affordable Care Act exchanges, despite President Barack Obama’s assurances to the contrary.
Obama said during a joint session of Congress that no federal dollars would be used to fund abortions. He also issued an executive order that Obamacare would maintain the Hyde Amendment’s ban on funding abortion.
Smith claims that many of the plans now offered on the insurance exchanges subsidize abortion, including every plan offered in Connecticut and Rhode Island. Taxpayer money will be spent as credits to buy these insurance plans.
A surcharge for abortion is required to be assessed on premiums, but those charges may only be disclosed at the time of enrollment.
Rep. Smith writes in the Washington Times:
Billions of taxpayers’ dollars will now be handed out as credits to buy pro-abortion health insurance — a clear violation of the Hyde Amendment’s fundamental principle of restricting funds to abortion-subsidizing health insurance plans.
Obamacare further breaks with long-standing law by establishing new abortion surcharges and an unseemly marketing secrecy clause.
The new law requires premium payers to be assessed an abortion surcharge every month to pay for abortions. However, many pro-life Americans may unwittingly purchase pro-abortion plans because of a marketing secrecy clause embedded in Obamacare, which stipulates that the surcharge be minimally disclosed only at the time of enrollment. In other words, bury it in the fine print.
To overcome this highly deceptive practice, I’ve introduced the Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act, a bill that requires information regarding either inclusion or exclusion of abortion coverage as well as the existence of an abortion surcharge to be "prominently displayed." (To rid Obamacare of its massive expansion of abortion-on-demand facilitation and funding, 136 bipartisan co-sponsors and I have also introduced the No Taxpayers Funding for Abortion Act, H.R. 7).