Secretary Michael Leavitt | RH Reality Check

HHS "Conscience" Rule: What About End-of-Life Pain Care?

January 12, 2009 - 8:00am (Print)

Most reactions to the HHS conscience rule focus on impending damage to reproductive services. But the rule will surely obstruct and delay good care in many instances, increasing the suffering of dying patients and their loved ones.

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HHS "Provider Conscience" Rule Puts Public Health in Danger

by Jessica Arons, Center for American Progress and Center for American Progress Action Fund

December 24, 2008 - 8:00am (Print)

The right of conscience is a time-honored value in our society. But it is not only health providers who have rights; so do patients.

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HHS Rule Out of Touch with Medical Reality

by Dr. Anne Davis, Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health

December 23, 2008 - 8:00am (Print)

Health care providers already strain to serve women while respecting workers' rights under existing laws. Now Secretary Leavitt has put even more obstacles between patients and the health care they need.

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Bush's Parting Shot Undermines Health Care

by Cecile Richards and Timothy E. Wirth, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and United Nations Foundation

December 19, 2008 - 12:39pm (Print)

Under HHS's new rule, doctors and health care workers of all kinds can deny patients vital health care information and services, without the patient even knowing.

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HHS Provider Conscience Rule: You Better Shop Around

by Marilyn Keefe, National Partnership for Women & Families

December 18, 2008 - 2:23pm (Print)

Today's provider conscience regulations go so far as to put the onus on patients to divine what information and services might be withheld by any given provider, and then shop around to find alternatives.

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HHS Publishes Provider Conscience Expansion Rule

by Emily Douglas

December 18, 2008 - 10:15am (Print)

The Department of Health and Human Services today published a new regulation broadening protections for health care providers who refuse to provide health care services based on religious or moral grounds.

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Bush Administration's Latest Ploy, Ideology Before Women's Health

by Sen. Hillary Clinton

November 20, 2008 - 4:41pm (Print)

New HHS regulations to limit patients' access to basic reproductive health care services and information, The Protecting Patients and Health Care Act, would prevent HHS from implementing this midnight regulation.

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How a Hospital in Wasilla Connects to New HHS Regulations

by Emily Douglas

October 30, 2008 - 10:38am (Print)

A fight over provider conscience in Wasilla, Alaska, has repercussions in the current debate over new HHS regulations.

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HHS Regs Would Cover All Religious Convictions

by Lon Newman, Family Planning Health Services

September 24, 2008 - 7:00am (Print)

If new HHS regulations are adopted, family planning service providers could be forced to hire people who have moral objections to contraception and would be unable to discipline employees who refuse to provide birth control.

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New HHS Regs Would Hit Low-Income Women, Women of Color Hardest

by Bethany Sousa, Center for Reproductive Rights

September 22, 2008 - 7:00am (Print)

Under current law, recipients of federal money cannot force medical professionals to provide abortion or sterilization services if they object for moral or religious reasons. But proposed regulations would expand these laws at patients' expense.

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