In Brief: Catholic Bishops File Complaint Against California On Abortion Mandate

Catholic Bishops File Complaint Against California On Abortion Mandate

The California Catholic Conference has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Civil Rights over a mandate that the state's insurers provide abortion coverage.

The complaint comes in response to an administrative ordered lodged by the Department of Managed Health Care in August that compelled eight of the state's major health insurers to remove any coverage exclusions for abortions. The DMHC had determined abortions constituted medically necessary coverage. The agency had acted after two Catholic universities in California changed their employer health coverage to exclude the procedure in most instances.

“This is a coercive and discriminatory action by the State of California,” said Bishop Robert McElroy, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of San Francisco and chair of the Institutional Concerns Committee of the California Catholic Conference. “This demand by the state was directly targeted at Catholic institutions like Santa Clara University, Loyola Marymount University, along with other California employers and citizens. It is a flagrant violation of their civil rights and deepest moral convictions, and is government coercion of the worst kind.”

Conference officials said they were filing the complaint with HHS under the provisions of the Weldon Amendment in the Affordable Care Act, which was intended to protect the conscience rights of individuals and institutions such as churches and universities.

Brown Vetoes Vision Marketplace, Medi-Cal Recoupment Bills

In what some observers said was a surprise move, Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed bills that would have created an insurance exchange for vision coverage and restricted recoupments from the estates of deceased Medi-Cal recipients.

Brown's veto of AB 1877 stymies the creation of a special council that would have created standalone vision benefits for individual consumers. Such policies would have been made available via the Covered California health insurance exchange.

In his veto message, Brown expressed concern that the bill would create an unnecessary bureaucracy and that it might be prohibited under federal law.

Brown also vetoed SB 1124, which would have limited the amount that could be recouped from the estates of former enrollees in the Medi-Cal program. In his veto message, Brown said that the estimated $30 million annual cost of halting most recoupments “needs to be considered alongside other worthwhile policy changes in the budget process next year.”

Brown did sign bills into law the outlaws the use of antibiotics in animals for non-medical use and creates a new pilot program that would allow 15 community colleges to offer bachelor's degree in nursing. 

The pilot program, which would begin in 2017 and run for seven years, is intended to address a statewide shortage of nurses and a dearth of nursing school slots at four-year universities.