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Life Legal Defense Foundation and Alliance Defending Freedom filed a formal complaint Thursday with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Servicesover the California Department of Managed Health Care’s decision to force all employers, including churches, to pay for elective abortions in their health insurance plans. LLDF and ADF represent seven California churches that object to offering their employees insurance plans covering elective abortions and allege that DMHC’s coercion of abortion coverage violates federal law. pichealth54Last month, LLDF and ADF filed a separate complaint with HHS on behalf of employees at Loyola Marymount University that also do not want a...

Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell said that despite the best efforts of health officials, Americans have to prepare for the reality that there may be more cases of Ebola in the United States. Sign Up for the Politics Today newsletter! “We had one case and I think there may be other cases, and I think we have to recognize that as a nation,” Burwell said at a media breakfast hosted by the journal Health Affairs and held at the Washington, D.C. offices of the Kaiser Family Foundation. Burwell’s comments come as screening of travelers from Ebola-affected countries...

According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), 1,036 insurance plans under ObamaCare fund elective abortions through taxpayer funds. This, despite President Obama’s promises (and executive order) to the contrary, and despite the Hyde Amendment itself. Now, taxpayers can check the released list of the 1,036 plans to see if their insurance plan is forcing them to cover others’ elective abortions. The Susan B. Anthony List’s Lozier Institute provides information on finding the plans here. According to the GAO: “…28 states (including the District of Columbia) [have] no such laws [restricting abortion coverage in insurance plans], in 5 states all QHPs...

We all now know what happened with the federal healthcare marketplace, Healthcare.gov. The three-year development was complicated by changing specifications, and the government's convoluted procurement process meant entrenched companies were getting contracts over and over. But a wave of government accountability reports, concluded after months of investigations, is bringing new attention to the meltdown. The Government Office of Accountability released a report earlier this week detailing the security flaws in the site, but a report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released yesterday is even more damning.

News Nugget: Louisiana Voters Beware soundcloud only on link

Full title: Judicial Watch Uncovers HHS Documents Detailing “High Risk” Security Problems with Obamacare Internet Site Less than one month before Healthcare.gov rollout, top Obama administration official highlights risks of malicious code being uploaded into the system through Excel macros; other “high risk” findings (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released 94 pages of documents obtained from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) revealing that in the days leading up to the rollout of Obamacare, top Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) officials knew of massive security risks with Healthcare.gov and chose to roll out the...

The Obama administration announced today it will continue its legal battle against the Little Sisters of the Poor, a religious order of nuns dedicated to serving the neediest elderly in society. This comes despite the fact that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby and another company in their bid to stop the HHS mandate

<p>Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell told the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee that the federal government does not have the power to stop states from allowing people to use welfare benefits to buy marijuana.</p> <p>In a letter addressed to Budget Committee ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who asked Health and Human Services about the policy earlier this year, Burwell said the law simply excludes any mention of marijuana dispensaries in the list of places where people are prohibited from using welfare, formally known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF.</p>

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell insisted Monday that Obamacare is “clearly working,” trying to move past the rocky rollout of President Obama's signature health law by insisting that her agency was not concerned with fighting “last year's battles.” Burwell in a speech at George Washington University said that the verdict was in on Obama's signature domestic initiative. “The Affordable Care Act is clearly working,” the HHS chief said. “Healthcare is more affordable for families, businesses and for our economy as [a] whole. Coverage and services are more widely available to more people. Doctors and hospitals are delivering...

Use the correct term, friends. Don't be like Shaney B. and call it "The Forbidden Snip." That would be wrong. Who comes up with these terms? You and I think of it (well, if we think of it at all, which I'd rather not) as sex-change surgery. But no! We have to be politically correct with everything now, so it's "gender reassignment" surgery. My highly insensitive producer, Shaney B., wants to call it "The Forbidden Snip," but of course that is extremely insensitive and wrong and should not be said, so I will not say "The Forbidden Snip" and you...

Former acting director of cyber security for the Department of Health and Human Services Timothy DeFoggi was convicted for a myriad of gruesome child pornography charges Tuesday, the Department of Justice announced. DeFoggi, who had top security clearance in his capacity as cyber security director, first joined the child pornography website PedoBook in March 2012. The Omaha World-Herald reported that he was arrested in April of last year, when law enforcement officials serving a search warrant found him downloading child pornography in his home. In addition to viewing and soliciting child pornography, reportedly asking another member of the site whether...

Justice Department officials today announced that Timothy DeFoggi, former director of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Cyber Security division was convicted for his role in a child pornography ring. DeFoggi, 56, was convicted of engaging in a child exploitation enterprise, conspiracy to advertise and distribute child pornography, and accessing a computer with intent to view child pornography in connection with his membership in a child pornography website by a federal jury in Nebraska\, according to an official statement by officials with the FBI's Omaha Division. DeFoggi is the sixth individual associated with the child porn ring...

Washington, DC – Today, the Administration released its eighth revision to the Health and Human Service (HHS) Mandate. This is the latest step in the administration’s long retreat on the HHS Mandate. It is the eighth time in three years the government has retreated from its original, hard-line stance that only “houses of worship” that hire and serve fellow believers deserve religious freedom. We look forward to reviewing the new rule and its implications for the 102 cases, including religious charities like Little Sisters of the Poor (see video), Mother Angelica’s Eternal Word Television Network (see video), and religious colleges...

The Obama Administration’s war on religion continues unabated.From Catholic News Agency: Obama administration announces new HHS mandate rulesWashington D.C., Aug 22, 2014 / 10:33 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Department of Health and Human Services issued on Friday new rules regarding its contraception mandate, after the Supreme Court ruled against its application to certain companies this summer.The rules create a new way for non-profit groups to state their objections to the required coverage, prompting their insurance company to pay for their employees’ contraceptives. For closely held for-profit companies such as Hobby Lobby, the federal department said it is asking for ideas...

HHS' Office of Refugee and Resettlement (ORR) provides funding and grants to various organizations that help refugees collect welfare. One such organization is ICF International, which claims that it helps foreign refugees develop "partnerships" with federal, state, and community-based programs--"especially related to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program." TANF is a mammoth federal welfare program that gives cash assistance to needy U.S. families. But refugees can collect the benefits as well. "Refugees qualify for mainstream federal public benefit programs, including TANF," HHS states on its website. In 2014 alone, taxpayer shelled out about $17.35 billion on TANF payments....

A key official overseeing the ObamaCare launch last fall asked a subordinate to “delete” an email exchange on the matter, according to newly released records, fueling Republican concerns that the administration may be hiding internal discussions from Congress. “Time and again, the self-proclaimed 'most transparent administration' has been anything but,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., said in a statement. “And now we know that when HealthCare.gov was crashing, those in charge were hitting the delete button behind the scenes.” Upton and other GOP committee leaders on Friday released an email exchange from Oct. 5, 2013, shortly...

According to two new studies published Wednesday by the HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), U.S. physicians and hospitals are rapidly increasing the use of electronic health records (EHRs). The two studies found that in 2013: •Nearly 78 percent of office-based physicians acknowledged they had implemented some form of EHR system. •About half of all physicians had an EHR system with advanced functionalities, nearly double the rate of four years before. •About 59 percent of hospitals had an EHR system with advanced functionalities, nearly quadruple the rate of two years before. The HHS claims that...

The law created the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation to launch experiments in every state, changing the way doctors and hospitals are paid, building networks between caregivers and training them to intervene before chronic illness gets worse. The center’s ten-year, $10 billion budget is the largest ever devoted to transforming care. In several states the office is working to overhaul medicine for nearly all residents — not just those with government Medicare and Medicaid coverage. Hundreds of organizations have gotten money. More than $2 billion has been doled out or committed since 2011. One of the biggest experiments is...

It’s an epidemic! Or so it seems in the most transparent administration ever, anyway. Congress has been probing the disastrous rollout of ObamaCare, to find out exactly how the Department of Health and Human Services could have botched the job with three and a half years and nearly a billion dollars to spend. Once again, key records that are required to be retained have been deleted before investigators could see them: A top U.S. healthcare official involved in the botched rollout of the website HealthCare.gov may have deleted some emails that were later sought by Republican congressional investigators, administration...

A key ObamaCare official involved in the rocky rollout of Healthcare.gov likely deleted some of her emails that are now being sought as part of an investigation into the problems by a House committee, Fox News confirmed Thursday. The Department of Health and Human Services informed House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa in a letter Thursday that some of the emails belonging to Marilyn Tavenner, who leads the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, may not be “retrievable.” The missing emails belonging to Tavenner, whose agency runs the ObamaCare exchanges, were first reported by msnbc.com. Issa, whose...