Obama Tweaks Controversial Health Insurance Mandate

Feb. 11--PEORIA -- President Barack Obama, struggling with a political storm that threatened to keep building, has revamped a mandate that would have required new employer health insurance plans, including plans for employees of Catholic hospitals, universities and charities, to cover costs for contraceptives, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs.

Instead, employers with religious objections to contraception will no longer be required to cover birth control for employees. But employees will be able to obtain contraceptives directly from their insurers at no additional cost.

"Religious liberty will be protected, and a law that requires free preventive care will not discriminate against women," the president said Friday in an appearance in the White House briefing room.

Initial reactions suggested the White House administration had mollified both sides, or at least parts of both sides, in a sensitive debate that pitted women's health and reproductive rights against religious freedom.

"We're pleased the Obama administration really affirmed its commitment to insuring all women have access to birth control coverage," said Carol Brite, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Illinois. "What it really means is millions of hard-working women are going to be savings hundreds of dollars each year in co-pays."

The Catholic Health Association, a trade group of Catholic hospitals, also supported the policy change.

Bishop Daniel Jenky of the Catholic Diocese of Peoria said in a statement he and other bishops are examining the revised policy to determine if the Catholic Church's

The original rule would not have affected the area's largest Catholic employer, OSF St. Francis Healthcare, which gained an exemption through a grandfathered benefits plan.

Cardinals and bishops had assailed the original policy in Sunday Masses throughout the country. In a letter read to parishioners in the Peoria diocese on the weekend of Jan. 28, Jenky urged Catholics to take up a legal and political battle to change a ruling he called a "bigoted and blatant" attack on the First Amendment rights of Catholics.

Twenty-eight states, including Illinois, already had required health insurance plans to cover birth control before the regulations were passed as part of health care reform. However, requirements for employers and exemptions for religious employers vary from state to state.

Illinois' contraceptive equality law does not directly exempt religious employers from covering birth control. But other laws give faith-based employers in the state a range of exemptions to opt out of providing health care and insurance coverage that conflicts with their religious beliefs.

"People in Illinois will have to comply with both state law and federal law, unless there's a conflict," said Lorie Chaiten, director of the Reproductive Rights Project for American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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