WASHINGTON — One of President Trump’s first acts Friday was a broad executive order urging his administration to loosen the Affordable Care Act’s regulations — and one of its casualties could be the law’s so-called contraception mandate.
Much will depend on how the Department of Health and Human Services interprets Trump’s orders. The first order itself does not mandate any specific actions.
But the contraception mandate would be an obvious target. It is widely loathed by conservatives, who allege it encroaches on religious freedoms, and the Obama administration enacted it through the broad regulatory authority that the law granted to HHS. It is not etched into law by the ACA itself.
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