An update on Caritas-Centene

From White Coat Notes, the Boston Globe's medical blog:

State regulators today voted to accept a controversial bid by a Massachusetts Catholic hospital chain and a secular health organization to provide health insurance to low income residents.

... The vote came after Caritas-Centene assured the panel that women will have "ready access" to timely family planning services, with no primary care physician referral required. They also promised creation of a toll-free 800 customer service number that will provide women information about where they can get family planning and reproductive services -- and, in an emergency, will provide transporation to the nearest approriate facility.

Board officials promised close monitoring to make sure the promises are kept.

Full backstory posted this morning. Cardinal Sean explains himself on his blog (I love saying that):

There has been a significant amount of public dialogue concerning my statement yesterday (as copied below) about the proposed arrangement involving Caritas Christi Health Care with the Commonwealth Care Program.

To be perfectly clear, Caritas Christi will never do anything to promote abortions, to direct any patients to providers of abortion or in any way to participate in actions that are contrary to Catholic moral teaching and anyone who suggests otherwise is doing a great disservice to the Catholic Church. We are committed to the Gospel of Life and no arrangement will be entered into unless it is completely in accord with Church teaching.

Recognizing the complexity of the proposed arrangement, I will ask the National Catholic Bioethics Center to review the arrangement and to provide me their opinion.

There's, well, plenty of comments.

LifeNews adds an action item:

Contact Caritas Christi and urge it not to begin doing abortions or referring for them:

Caritas Christi Health Care,
736 Cambridge Street, Boston, MA 02135, (phone) 617-789-2500, CCR.Webmaster@CaritasChristi.org

update: Catholic Culture adds:

However, the cardinal's claim was contradicted by representatives of Commonwealth Care, who assured state officials that their program would provide "ready access" to all of the services mandated by the government program, including abortion.

Under the Commonwealth Care system, abortions will not be performed at the Caritas Christi hospitals. But women who wish to procure abortions will be given a telephone number to call for information on where abortions are performed, and, if necessary, transportation to those sites.