Affordable Care Act

An effort by the Department of Justice to strike down the entire Affordable Care Act in the courts is “unconscionable and immoral,” said Sister Carol Keehan, a Daughter of Charity, who is president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association.

A federal judge temporarily blocked the government from putting into effect new rules that would expand the exemption to the federal contraceptive mandate to the Little Sisters of the Poor and other religious employers.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services must issue new regulations to enforce a requirement that consumers be notified if a subsidized health plan offered under the Affordable Care Act covers elective abortion and informed they must pay an extra amount for the plan’s abortion coverage.

On Oct. 20, there had still been no word on when the bill — which also aims to provide states flexibility to skirt some requirements of the health care law — might come to the Senate floor for a vote.

Catholic social teaching offers several points to guide us in crafting a just health care system.

The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has called on President Donald Trump to ease the “onerous” contraceptive mandate of the Department of Health and Human Services under the Affordable Care Act because it violates religious freedom.

The nation’s system under the Affordable Care Act “is not financially sustainable” and “lacks full Hyde protections and conscience rights.” It also “is inaccessible to many immigrants,” said Bishop Frank J. Dewane of Venice, Florida, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.

When the vice president has to cast a vote to break a tie in the Senate on whether to debate U.S. health care policy, let alone revise it — as Mike Pence did July 25 — it is obvious that passing legislation to repeal, and/or replace, and/or reform the Affordable Care Act is going to be a heavy lift in Congress.