{"id":66077,"date":"2020-02-28T17:09:30","date_gmt":"2020-02-29T00:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-sues-trump-administration-over-abortion-mandate\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T05:34:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T11:34:31","slug":"colorado-sues-trump-administration-over-abortion-mandate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-sues-trump-administration-over-abortion-mandate\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado sues Trump administration over abortion mandate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Colorado
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat, speaks at a news conference in March 2019.<\/span>Jesse Paul\/The Colorado Sun<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Colorado has joined six other states and the District of Columbia in<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services policy, which went into effect Tuesday, applies to states that allow insurance companies on their individual markets \u2014 plans that people buy on their own and don\u2019t get through their employer \u2014 to cover abortion and reproductive health. Colorado is among those states.<\/p>\n

In 2019, there were roughly 60 health plans operating in Colorado\u2019s individual insurance market<\/a> \u2014 which provides coverage to about 7% of the state\u2019s population \u2014 that included abortion and reproductive health coverage. HHS says the rule is aimed at ensuring that the prohibition on federal funding for coverage of abortion services is upheld.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur healthcare programs, including the exchanges, are evolving rapidly, and our program integrity efforts must keep up,\u201d Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma said in a written statement when the rule was rolled out in December.<\/p>\n

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, however, fears that the rule will create an administrative nightmare for insurance companies and confusion among the insured, potentially even threatening their coverage if they don\u2019t make correct payments.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an effort to undo our state\u2019s protections and make life more difficult for patients,\u201d Weiser said.<\/p>\n

The attorney general sees the rule change as being part of broader national efforts to roll back women\u2019s access to abortions. \u201cThis rule change is one of several efforts that would undermine women\u2019s right to choose,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Weiser said he filed the lawsuit after hearing concerns from Colorado\u2019s insurance commission. He\u2019s also worried it could cause insurers to drop their abortion and reproductive health coverage.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declined to comment on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Wesier\u2019s office has been aggressive in challenging the Trump administration over its abortion policies. It has sued two other times over policies it says are restrictive, including one broadening the ability of health care workers to refuse to provide abortions out of personal or moral objection.<\/p>\n

In another case, Weiser is challenging the Trump administration\u2019s so-called gag rule, which bans health clinics that receive Title X family-planning dollars from referring clients for abortion.<\/p>\n

Karen Middleton, who runs Colorado\u2019s largest abortion rights group, Cobalt, said the new HHS rule is \u201cclearly designed not just to stigmatize abortion care, but to create confusion about insurance coverage and discourage pregnant people from seeking it.\u201d She said her organization supports Weiser\u2019s lawsuit.<\/p>\n

California is leading the lawsuit and it was filed in federal court there. The other states involved are New York, Maine, Maryland, Oregon and Vermont.<\/p>\n

Weiser has filed at least 14 lawsuits against the Trump administration since taking office in January 2019.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, journalist-owned news outlet exploring issues of statewide interest. Sign up for a newsletter and read more at coloradosun.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser says the policy is an administrative nightmare that intentionally confuses people<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":66078,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-66077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66077"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90293,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66077\/revisions\/90293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66077"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=66077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}