UW student health plan exposes widespread lack of transparency

An investigative journalist from The College Fix recently exposed a troubling practice at the University of Wyoming. Over 600 foreign students have been automatically enrolled in health insurance that covers elective abortions.

That article caught my attention. We live in a state where the last Planned Parenthood clinic shuttered its operation in 2017. Also, Wyoming’s department of health “has received fewer than five [abortion] reports over the last five years,” according to Mariah Storey, a vital services unit supervisor, quoted in Rewire News. From this, one might assume that abortion just isn’t an issue in the Cowboy State.

But when you dig just a little bit deeper, you find that there is more going on than meets the eye. The Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood’s research arm, reported 380 abortions in the years 2011, 2013 and 2014. That’s 75 times the reported number!

Why is there such a huge disparity between the official tally and Planned Parenthood’s own data? That’s a question that deserves an answer. The fact is that Wyoming’s current abortion reporting laws have no provisions to enable enforcement. Abortionists who thumb their noses at Wyoming’s reporting requirements face no penalties whatsoever.

And thumb their noses they do. Dr. Brent Blue, who performs surgical abortions out of Emerg-A-Care in Jackson, Wyoming, told Rewire, “I do not report to the state because it is none of their business.” While Blue refuses to report to the state of Wyoming, he does diligently report to the Guttmacher Institute.

Dr. Giovannina Anthony, who performs medical abortions about a block away from Blue, agrees. The same article from Rewire quotes her as saying, “If you are looking for numbers, that [the Guttmacher Institute] is where you should focus your efforts. Their stats appropriately assess the need for reproductive services. They do not ask intrusive, irrelevant questions.”

Blue and Anthony are the chief abortionists in Wyoming. Their open flaunting of Wyoming law sounds eerily similar to Dr. Gosnell, who is currently spending the rest of his life in a Pennsylvania prison. That monster considered any and every health regulation to be an unnecessary annoyance that he was free to ignore in “service” of his patients. At least that’s how he self-justified his disease-ridden practice and murderous methods.

If Blue and Anthony openly ignore Wyoming’s reporting laws, I wonder what other Wyoming laws they feel free to break? Wyoming law forbids abortion once the child is developed enough to survive outside the womb. Do they care about that one, or do they think it’s “none of our business”? They are required to offer an ultrasound picture to the mother. Do they also think this is an optional law?


Dr. Brent Blue

Writing in Vice News last spring, Blue said about the ultrasound law, “It’s a law that has no teeth, and there’s no way to enforce it. It won’t change one thing for us.” His open contempt for the law is chilling.

Not only does Wyoming have more abortions happening within her borders than are ever reported, there are also many abortions happening across state lines. The Centers for Disease Control reported that in 2014 (the most recent data available) 642 Wyoming residents procured abortions in Colorado, Montana and Utah.

This figure gives added relevance to the UW student insurance plan. Less than sixty miles from campus, there is a Planned Parenthood clinic in Fort Collins that averages three dozen surgical abortions each weekend of the school year. This is an “in-network” facility for United Health Care, the plan offered to UW students. It means that students who do not read the fine print are unwittingly subsidizing Planned Parenthood by their insurance premiums.

The College Fix contacted UW’s Office of Risk Management about the insurance coverage. Laura Betzold, the chief risk officer, confirmed that “elective abortion” is covered by the plan even though such coverage is not mandated by any state or federal law. So why is it included in the UW plan?

Apparently, insurance for elective abortions has become the latest hot-potato issue in the culture wars. As recently as the 1990s nobody included such coverage, according to Elizabeth Nash, Senior State Issues Manager at the Guttmacher Institute. Then, abortion special interest groups started quietly pressuring insurance companies to add the coverage.

This went largely unnoticed until it broke into the public eye during debates over the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as ObamaCare. When the government gets into the insurance business through its state exchanges, can it cover elective abortions without running afoul of the Hyde Amendment? That is the federal law, renewed each year since 1977, which prohibits federal money from being spent on elective abortions.

This debate was finally settled with an Obama executive order that prohibits the ACA state exchanges from covering abortions. If the UW health plan is subsidized by any federal money, it would be in violation of that executive order.

Governor Matt Mead’s chief of staff, Mary Jo Gray, wrote in an email to The College Fix: “The University of Wyoming student health plan is funded entirely by students participating in the health program. No state money is provided for the plan.” That’s a good thing.

But questions still remain. How many of the students who sign up for this plan know about the abortion coverage? When Betzold was asked this question, she replied: “Students are provided electronic access to a summary brochure and a detailed policy document with all policy terms, including coverages and exclusions.”

That is true. I was able to go onto the UW website and find the Insurance Certificate listing “elective abortion” coverage. Even knowing what I was looking for, it took me about half an hour of searching. For foreign students who are automatically signed up for the coverage, one has to wonder how many get that far.

As the newest front in the culture wars, abortion insurance is not a neutral issue. Oregon recently enacted a state law that requires every plan to include it. On the other side of the coin, Texas passed a law that bans such coverage except when the woman’s life is in danger. In all, 29 states have some kind of restriction on the abortions that insurance can cover. Wyoming has none.

So, why has the University of Wyoming chosen to weigh in on such a loaded issue? The governor’s office told The College Fix that it is merely because the United Health Plan submitted the most competitive bid to the University. There is no reason to dispute that fact. Abortions are probably cheaper than live births.

But money is not the only consideration when it comes to proper health care. We must consider the well-being of our students first and foremost. Before offering them a plan that pays for abortion, we should at least be assured that it is proper “health care.”

Roe v. Wade made abortion “the law of the land” over 45 years ago. But we still have no serious clinical study that proves it enhances the physical, emotional, or mental health of the mother. Even the Guttmacher Institute has not conducted such a study. It’s another thing that nobody really wants to know.

Knowledge is power. The first thing that Wyoming should do is strengthen reporting laws so that the likes of Dr. Blue will begin to follow them. Once our state’s health department has actual data, perhaps we could lead the country in commissioning a study of whether abortion is actually “health care” at all.