Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich is bound and determined to drive his approval numbers down into the dirt, it seems. This week, he’s given Ohio women a lovely holiday gift: banning Ohio’s state insurance exchange from offering any plans that cover abortion.
House Bill 79, which would prohibit insurance plans participating in a yet-to-be created state health exchange or marketplace from providing abortion coverage, was among 13 bills Kasich signed this morning. They were passed last week during the legislature’s final session days of 2011.
“Ohio is witnessing historic gains in legislation that protects mothers and saves unborn babies,” said Mike Gonidakis, executive director for Ohio Right to Life.
The new federal health-care law requires states to have an exchange in place by 2014 to give consumers and small businesses a place to shop and compare policies. Gonidakis said the federal health-care law allows states to opt out of abortion coverage.
Ahh, but there’s a catch: the ACLU is eager to challenge the law, based on Issue 3 that passed in the state last month:
But the ACLU of Ohio has said the constitutional amendment that Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved last month was a message in opposition to the mandated insurance provisions of the federal health-care law and can now be used to block measures to restrict abortion access.
Issue 3 says that no state law shall “prohibit the purchase or sale of health care or health insurance” or “impose a penalty for the sale or purchase or health care or insurance.“
In other words, the same legal mumbo-jumbo that Kasich and the GOP used to “eliminate” the individual insurance mandate is now the same legislation that the ACLU will use to fight this anti-abortion measure.
And make no mistake, this is a bill that will eliminate insurance providers from covering abortions, making them all but unaffordable to women. That’s the point…and there’s probably going to be a number of court battles in states over this as well as a Supreme Court fight eventually.
Let’s keep in mind the GOP plan is to have as many blatantly unconstitutional bans on abortion as possible to make it de facto unavailable for any woman. After all, court battles can take far longer than pregnancies.
One of the other things that really bothers me is that Ohio Republicans seem to think there’s no reason to even try to create a state insurance exchange right now. Pretty much every red state out there is ignoring the exchange requirement, or passing legislation now that does everything possible to assure that the state exchanges, which are supposed to be online in 2014, simply don’t work because of all the silly bans on everything. Even if you think that “Hey, this exchange thing has nothing to do with me” right now, it’s soon going to. And GOP states are simply digging an early grave for it.
Even if the court battles are resolved in the favor of the Democrats here, the GOP is assuring that in dozens of states, insurance is going to be a nightmare to obtain. I guess that’s the eventual goal: a Republican party in change of government so that they can assure it can never work.