A federal appeals court issued a ruling Thursday reinstating most of Texas’ controversial new abortions restrictions, just three days after a federal judge ruled they were unconstitutional.

A panel of judges at the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans said the law requiring doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital can take effect while a lawsuit challenging the restrictions moves forward. The panel issued the ruling after District Judge Lee Yeakel said the provision serves no medical purpose.

The panel’s decision means as least 12 clinics won’t be able to perform the procedure starting as soon as Friday. In its 20-page ruling, it acknowledged that the provision “may increase the cost of accessing an abortion provider and decrease the number of physicians available to perform abortions.”

However, the panel said that the U.S. Supreme Court has held that having “the incidental effect of making it more difficult or more expensive to procure an abortion cannot be enough to invalidate” a law that serves a valid purpose, “one not designed to strike at the right itself.”

The panel left in place a portion of Yeakel’s order that prevents the state from enforcing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration protocol for abortion-inducing drugs in cases where the woman is between 50 and 63 days into her pregnancy. Doctors testifying before the court had said such women would be harmed if the protocol were enforced.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott had made an emergency appeal to the conservative 5th Circuit, arguing that the law requiring doctors to have admitting privileges is a constitutional use of the Legislature’s authority.

Abbot said in a statement Thursday that “this unanimous decision is a vindication of the careful deliberation by the Texas Legislature to craft a law to protect the health and safety of Texas women.”

Texas’ Republican Gov. Rick Perry also spoke out praising the ruling Thursday night.

“Today’s decision affirms our right to protect both the unborn and the health of the women of Texas,” Perry said. “We will continue doing everything we can to protect a culture of life in our state.”

Lawyers for Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers had argued that the regulations did not protect women and would shut down a third of the abortion clinics in Texas.

In a statement Thursday, Planned Parenthood said the appeals court decision means “abortion will no longer be available in vast stretches of Texas.”

“This fight is far from over,” Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said in the statement. “This restriction clearly violates Texas women’s constitutional rights by drastically reducing access to safe and legal abortion statewide

The court’s order is temporary until it can hold a complete hearing, likely in January. The restrictions are among the toughest in the nation and gained notoriety when Democratic state Sen. Wendy Davis launched a nearly 13-hour filibuster against them in June.

The law also bans abortions at 20 weeks of pregnancy and beginning in October 2014 requires doctors to perform all abortions in surgical facilities.

During the trial, officials for one chain of abortion clinics testified that they’ve tried to obtain admitting privileges for their doctors at 32 hospitals, but so far only 15 accepted applications and none have announced a decision.

Many hospitals with religious affiliations will not allow abortion doctors to work there, while others fear protests if they provide privileges.

Many have requirements that doctors live within a certain radius of the facility, or perform a minimum number of surgeries a year that must be performed in a hospital.

CNN’s Drew Griffin appeared on Anderson Cooper and reported that he has confirmed that “the Obama administration is leaning on insurance companies companies to keep a lid on problems with the health care law roll out.”

According to CNN, if an insurance company says anything publicly about the many problems being created by the implementation of Obamacare, “you’re going to get a call from the White House, with pressure to be quiet.”

Griffin reports that insurance companies “feel defenseless against the White House PR team . . . and they are fearing White House retribution.”

“The White House is exerting massive pressure on the industry, including the trade associations to keep quiet.” – Robert Laszewski, President, Health Policy and Strategy Associates, LLC.

Industry insiders are saying that insurance companies are being forced by the administration to drop coverage and policies that do not meet the hidden requirements of Obamacare, resulting in the loss of coverage for millions of Americans–the same Americans Obama personally guaranteed would NOT lose their coverage.

Griffin said, “Despite all of the rhetoric from the President, you simply cannot keep you current health care plan if it does not meet these requirements.”  He reports that Laszewski’s group “warned the Administration about this very scenario, and ignored the advice.”

“I think the administrative mess you’re seeing right now is indicative of what happens when somebody tries to run somebody else’s business and think they’re smarter than you are.”  – Robert Laszewski

Anderson Cooper and the CNN team seemed quite surprised by the tactics of the Administration, and wondered aloud why the President and the White House would adopt these strong arm tactics.

PUBLIUS

MSNBC contributor and Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page joined conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday and confessed that when President Obama told Americans that they would be able to keep their plans if they like them, he was fully aware he was lying about it.

President Obama said to the American People: “Here’s a guarantee that I’ve made–if you have insurance that you like, then you will be able to keep that insurance.  If you’ve got a doctor that you like–you will be able to keep that doctor.”

Here’s another version of the promise:

“If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your healthcare plan, you’ll be able to keep your healthcare plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.” – President Obama in address to the American Medical Association, 2009.

Page said Obama knew “. . . there was no guarantee everybody was going to keep their insurance because people couldn’t keep their insurance under the old system.”

Hewitt asked, “He knew he was lying?”

Page replied, “Probably, probably.”

Page attempted to defended Obama saying many people will be able to keep their insurance policies and that Obama was simply being “too grandiose.” Hewitt was disturbed that this didn’t bother Page very much, but Page maintained that Obama is mostly guilty of ‘overselling’ his program.

PUBLIUS

House Republicans are pushing a new bill to let Americans keep their health insurance plans following revelations that the Obama administration knew millions could lose their current coverage due to changes from the Affordable Care Act.

Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., was introducing the “Keep Your Health Plan Act” in a bid to address widespread reports of people losing their current plans. CBS News reported Monday that more than 2 million Americans have already been told they can’t renew their policies.

“This legislation is about providing folks the peace of mind that they will be allowed to keep their current coverage if they so choose,” Upton said in a statement. The bill would allow plans sold on the market today to continue to be available.

Fox News confirmed on Monday that despite assurances from President Obama that anybody who likes their health insurance can keep it, a 2010 IRS document predicted a huge swath of customers could lose their coverage.

The document addressed a rule in the law that states individual policies purchased on or before March 23, 2010 would be “grandfathered” — or exempt from changes required under ObamaCare. However, the provision was changed so that plans that undergo “significant changes” could lose that special status.

The IRS document estimated that “40 percent to 67 percent” of policies would in fact lose the status, meaning customers could be kicked off those plans because they don’t meet minimum coverage requirements. The document was earlier reported by NBC News.

The Obama administration argues that for those being kicked off their plans, they mostly will be offered policies with stronger consumer protections.

“It’s true that there are existing health care plans on the individual market that don’t meet those minimum standards and, therefore, do not qualify for the Affordable Care Act,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said. “But what is also true is that …  Americans who have insurance on the existing individual market will now have numerous options available to them.”

But Republicans argue this flies in the face of Obama’s repeated claims that people would not lose their current coverage.

Conservative commentator Marc Thiessen, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, called the claim a “lie” by the administration, during Fox News’ “The Kelly File.”

“The smoking gun is there in your hand,” he said, referring to host Megyn Kelly’s copy of the IRS form. “Look, they knew.”

White House spokeswoman Jessica Santillo said in a statement that those getting notices are in plans “that do not provide all these protections.”

“But in the vast majority of cases, those same insurers will automatically shift their enrollees to a plan that provides new consumer protections and, for nearly half of individual market enrollees, discounts through premium tax credits,” she said.

She still claimed, though, that “Nothing in the Affordable Care Act forces people out of their health plans: the law allows plans that covered people at the time the law was enacted to continue to offer that same coverage to the same enrollees – nothing has changed and that coverage can continue into 2014.”

While virtually all the ObamaCare focus is trained on the program’s dysfunctional website, another problem could be emerging — in states where individuals are able to sign up, far more are enrolling in Medicaid than private plans.

For now, the statistics are spotty. The Obama administration still hasn’t provided figures on how many people have successfully enrolled through the federally run exchanges. Some, but not all, states have provided their own relatively up-to-date figures.

But for those that have, the lopsided numbers show Medicaid is getting the lion’s share of enrollees.

In Washington state, more than 35,000 people have signed up for coverage since Oct. 1. Of them, just 4,500 went into private plans. Roughly 31,000 signed up for Medicaid — with coverage kicking in sometime between now and Jan. 1.

The director of the state’s Health Care Authority said they were “pleased by the strong response of Medicaid-eligible residents.”

But the imbalance — if it does not even out in the months to come — could create problems for private insurance companies which are relying on a major influx of new and healthy customers to make the system hum.

“There are a lot of elements of this law that have to work, that must work — otherwise the whole thing collapses,” the Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon said. “They need — need — lots of healthy people to sign up for insurance through the exchanges.”

The fact that people are flocking to Medicaid isn’t necessarily a problem — but a lack of healthy enrollees on private plans would be.

The main reason the Affordable Care Act mandated that individuals buy insurance was so that private insurers would get enough young, healthy people in the system who could offset the costs of covering older and sicker patients. Otherwise, at the very least, costs will skyrocket for those in the system.

“You need to have a good balance of people purchasing coverage or these reforms won’t work,” Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, told FoxNews.com.

Still, Zirkelbach said it’s too early to gauge whether the current enrollment statistics are anything to worry about.

“This is a six-month open enrollment period, so I think it’s way too early to know now how many people are going to purchase coverage through these marketplaces,” he said, noting that the ongoing technical problems mean the current figures are very incomplete. “It doesn’t feel like it, but we’re only in week four now.”

Cannon said the mix of new enrollees could certainly change if and when the website is fixed. Then the question becomes, of those signing up, are they healthy?

The health care law was built to expand coverage in two major ways: by offering people subsidies to purchase insurance on the private market, and by expanding the number of people eligible for Medicaid.  The expansion of Medicaid was a source of political tension between the White House and Republican governors — so far, half the states have agreed to expand the program which provides health coverage to low-income Americans.

To some extent, states were gearing up for a surge in Medicaid enrollment as they’d already started reaching out to potential enrollees.

Before the ObamaCare exchanges even launched, for instance, Maryland had signed up more than 80,000 people for automatic enrollment in Medicaid starting Jan. 1, 2014.

The enrollment since Oct. 1, though, has also only brought in 2,300 additional participants – as of an Oct. 18 update.

In Washington state, Health Care Authority spokesman Jim Stevenson told FoxNews.com that officials expected the early participants to gravitate toward Medicaid, in part because it requires no money down and because those seeking private coverage may tend to wait until the latter part of the enrollment period to buy insurance.

“I think we’ll start to make progress in both categories,” he said.

In other states, Medicaid is also by far the more popular choice of those enrolling this month.

The Democrat and Chronicle newspaper reports that in New York, nearly 24,000 of the 37,000 newly enrolled residents are going into Medicaid, which millions of New Yorkers are already on. Just 13,313 chose private plans.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated this past May that, at the outset, more than half of those enrolling would be on Medicaid but that, over the next decade, the balance will shift and millions more will join private plans through the exchanges.

“Time will tell,” Zirkelbach said.

The troubled HealthCare.gov website may be having problems pulling in applicants for ObamaCare, but that’s not stopping President Obama’s political arm from pulling in cash off the dysfunctional site.

Through his political group Organizing for Action, Obama sent a videotaped message to supporters in an email Tuesday evening.

In the video, the president said “the website has not worked as smoothly as it was supposed to,” but “we’re gonna get it fixed.” As he’s said before, the president added: “The Affordable Care Act is much more than a website.”

The email, though, also appealed for donations, saying “the other side will spend millions to maintain the status quo.”

Supporters who click past Obama’s video message are then taken to a donation page that says: “The other side has already spent a whopping $400 million in anti-Obamacare TV ads. We don’t have to beat that, but we need to have the resources to fight back.”

The group has been organizing a multitude of events and social media campaigns around the health care law’s implementation. OFA said those efforts will continue, but the group isn’t adjusting its strategy in response to the website’s issues.

The campaign-style effort to defend the law comes as the administration, in Washington, tries to soothe both insurance companies and Democratic allies about the site’s operation.

Health insurance executives are scheduled for a meeting at the White House on Wednesday. It will include Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough.

On Wednesday, the administration is also sending Mike Hash, who runs the health reform office at Health and Human Services, to Capitol Hill to brief lawmakers on the law’s implementation.  An invitation to the breakfast meeting obtained by The Associated Press says it’s restricted to members of Congress.

But only Democrats were invited to that session, prompting protest from House Speaker John Boehner, whose spokesman called it a “snub” and said the administration should brief House Republicans, too, in the name of transparency and accountability. Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for HHS, said officials would be happy to honor additional briefing requests.

Obama has turned to longtime adviser Jeffrey Zients to provide management advice to help fix the system. Zients, a former acting director of the Office of Management and Budget and a veteran management consultant, will be on a short-term assignment at HHS before he’s due to take over as director of Obama’s National Economic Council next year.

Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden and top White House officials held a call with business leaders Tuesday about the health law and other issues. Business Forward, a trade group friendly to the White House, said the administration asked the group to invite leaders to hear directly from Biden.