Contraceptive Mandate for Insurers Vetoed

Despite intense daylong negotiations between a Los Angeles lawmaker and administration officials, Gov. Pete Wilson on Wednesday vetoed a bill that would have required health insurers to offer prescription contraceptives as a paid benefit in workplace health plans.

As he had declared earlier, Wilson said he would sign the bill by Assemblyman Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks) only if it included a “conscience clause” allowing employers to opt out of such coverage on moral or religious grounds.

Hertzberg said that he went as far as he could toward meeting the governor’s demands but that “it just wasn’t good enough.”

Wilson said he vetoed the measure because Hertzberg offered amendments that were “deemed unconstitutional by legal counsel.”

The governor called on the Legislature to send him a similar bill that meets legal requirements. The Hertzberg measure failed to do that, he said, because it was so narrowly drawn that many religious organizations would not have qualified for the exemptions that Hertzberg offered.

The effect, he said, would have been to deny needed health coverage to women who work for such organizations that could not, in good conscience, have agreed to offer contraceptive coverage.

About 97% of HMO health plans in California already cover contraceptives, including prescription birth-control pills. But other types of insurance plans, including physician groups and fee-for-service arrangements, offer paid contraceptives to only about one-third of their 7 million California enrollees, according to consumer groups.

Hertzberg and administration officials in the Capitol, who were in touch with Wilson by telephone while the governor was in Los Angeles, held discussions throughout the day, the assemblyman said. Hertzberg “gave them huge exemptions in terms of the conscience clause,” he said.

But he said he refused to go beyond his final offer to win the governor’s signature: agreeing to exemptions only for employees of church organizations and church-affiliated hospitals.

“I was willing to allow an employer an exemption if there is the connection between someone’s employment and their faith,” Hertzberg said. “But if someone worked for a [university] or a hotel chain that’s owned by a religious organization, then they wouldn’t have been exempt.”

Wilson had been threatening a veto ever since the Assembly gave final legislative passage to the measure (AB 160) Jan. 28. Hertzberg at that point had refused to amend the bill along lines that Wilson wanted.

Any such legislation, Wilson’s office said, should allow businesses an exemption on conscientious or religious grounds. The issue remained up in the air until the veto was announced in late afternoon.

“We are very disappointed . . . and surprised by the governor’s action because of his long-standing support for access to family planning,” said Nancy Sasaki, president of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles.

Wilson has consistently favored a woman’s right to choose whether to have a child.

Ned Dolejsi, executive director of the California Catholic Conference, however, said Wilson’s veto of the bill was “consistent with the governor’s belief in expanding contraceptive services . . . but in a way that is respectful of the religious freedom of people who do not share that view.”

Enactment of the bill, he said, would have made it difficult for Catholic organizations to purchase health insurance consistent with church beliefs.

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Births and Contraception

Gov. Pete Wilson on Wednesday vetoed a bill to require health insurance companies to cover prescription contraceptives. Here are some related statistics:

* 97% of HMOs in California cover costs of contraceptive medication and devices. About 14 million Californians are enrolled in HMOs.

* 33% of non-HMO insurance plans cover contraceptives; 86% cover sterilization; 66% cover abortions. About 7 million Californians are enrolled in such plans.

* Adoption of the measure would have cost affected businesses about $16 per employee per year.

* The abortion rate in California is 42 per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44; the rate nationally is 26 per 1,000.

* California’s family planning clinics served 804,000 women in 1994, and in clinics nationally, 6.5 million.

* Publicly funded clinics avert 187,000 pregnancies per year in California; nationally, 1.5 million.

Sources: Health Insurance Assn. of America; Alan Guttmacher Institute; Women’s Research and Education Institute