We’ve been reporting for months on the flurry of midnight rulemaking at executive agencies. Here’s the latest addition to the list: Health and Human Services today issued a final version of the “conscience rule.” It allows workers at health care facilities — doctors, nurses, pharmacists — to refuse to help provide services they find morally objectionable. Even a janitor could, conceivably, refuse to clean a room where abortions take place. “Many health care providers routinely face pressure to change their medical practice — often in direct opposition to their personal convictions,†said Joxel Garcia, the department’s assistant secretary of health.…
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Tom Daschle, the nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, wants to know how you’d change the nation’s health care system. That’s according to an e-mail sent by John Podesta, co-chair of the Obama-Biden Transition Project. He’s inviting people to create health care forum discussions about what needs to be changed and promises the transition team will take those opinions seriously. “Secretary-designate Daschle is committed to reforming health care from the ground up, which is why he won’t just be reading the results of these discussions — he’ll be attending a few himself,” Podesta wrote in the e-mail, sent…