Senator Murray Slams New Trump-Pence Rule Designed to Place More Obstacles Between Women and Reproductive Health Care

Trump-Pence rule creates new burdens for women seeking insurance that covers comprehensive reproductive health care

Murray: “The last thing people need are more obstacles between them and their health care—and yet President Trump continues to look for new, damaging ways to get in between patients and their care providers and to chip away at access to reproductive health care.”

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, released the following statement in response to a new rule announced by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) which would make it harder for health insurance to cover abortion care.

“The last thing people need are more obstacles between them and their health care—and yet President Trump and Vice President Pence continue to look for new, damaging ways to get in between patients and their care providers and to chip away at access to reproductive health care.”  said Senator Murray. “After their partisan parade of ideological judicial nominees and harmful gag rules, this is just the latest attack in President Trump and Vice President Pence’s damaging crusade to bring us back to the days when women couldn’t make their own decisions about their own bodies. But we are not going to let them take us back, Democrats are going to continue speaking out for families across the country and fighting back to protect every women’s right to a safe, legal abortion.”

Earlier this year, Senator Murray and fellow Democrats sent a letter to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar criticizing HHS’s proposals to require insurers to send two separate billing statements and instructing consumers to make two separate payments for plans covering abortion. The duplicative billing process increases administrative complexity and could lead to people losing needed coverage, including coverage for all health care services.

“Women have the right to make their own decisions about their reproductive health. Barriers to abortion care force women to delay care, resulting in unintended pregnancies and unplanned births, which often times force families deeper into poverty. For these aforementioned reasons, along with the fact that abortion care is health care, we oppose this rule and urge you to withdraw it immediately before it has the opportunity to cause harm to Americans across the country,” wrote Senator Murray.

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