Washington, DC – A new report released yesterday by the Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI) outlines the logical, economic and moral problems with the advanced notice of proposed rule-making (ANPRM) for mandatory preventative service coverage under the Affordable Care Act published in March 2012 by the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS).
The ANPRM alleges that employers mandated to facilitate coverage for abortion-inducing drugs and other services they find objectionable will not actually pay for such coverage because the cost will be covered by the savings incurred from otherwise not covering such drugs and services.
The Lozier Institute has four arguments for HHS and the ANPRM: 1) that the actual short-term cost-savings are debatable and may not occur, 2) long-term cost-savings are life-cycle driven and illusory, 3) cost-savings is neither the sole nor primary objective of health care policies, and 4) such cost-savings measures may be unethical.
“With the ANPRM, Secretary Sebelius and the Department of HHS have opened an ethical Pandora’s Box,” said Chuck Donovan, president of the Charlotte Lozier Institute. “To put a price on the life of a human being and make cost-savings a primary objective of health care is beyond short-sighted. HHS is relying on an extremely narrow frame of reference and a deterministic, faintly eugenic theory of human development.”
The full report can be read online here.
The Charlotte Lozier Institute was launched in 2011 as the education and research arm of Susan B. Anthony List. The CLI is a hub for research and public policy analysis on some of the most pressing issues facing the United States and nations around the world. The CLI website features commentaries, reviews and blog posts by an array of policy experts and scholars whose work covers statistics, medicine, bioethics, health care and law.
