Ryan calls contraception coverage an ‘accounting gimmick’

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House Budget Committee Paul Ryan (R-WI) on Sunday said that the Obama’s administration move to accommodate the Catholic Church’s concerns about covering contraception for women was just an “accounting trick.”

The White House said last week that it would change proposed rules requiring religious hospitals and universities to cover birth control, instead mandating that insurance companies provide those services.

“This thing is a distinction without a difference,” Ryan told ABC’s George Stephanopolous. “It’s an accounting gimmick or a fig leaf. It’s not a compromise. The president’s doubled down.”

“They’re treating our constitutional First Amendment rights as revocable privileges from our government, not as inalienable rights from our creator,” he added.

“This is not going to force the Catholic institutions to pay for the coverage,” Stephanopoulos noted.

“It’s really an accounting trick,” Ryan insisted. “It forces the insurance company that they have to pay to do the coverage. So instead of making the institution itself, it forces the insurer — and a lot of these Catholic institutions are self-insured. And all insurers under this rule must provide these mandated benefits.”

Watch this video from ABC’s This Week, broadcast Feb. 12, 2012.