Nadya Suleman may have been part of a fertility study without knowing it, same sex couples now have full visiting privileges at hospitals that participate in Medicaid and Medicare, a couple places their potential abortion up to a vote and more…

• Same sex couples can now eat the same horrible hospital food while visiting each other in the hospital, that hetero couples can! The ACLU notes that the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare issued new rules yesterday that require all hospitals that participate in Medicaid and Medicare to have written rules and policies to allow patients to chose who can visit them, and to ensure those visitors have full and equal visitation rights. The rules are great news for same sex couples who have been “uniquely affected” says President Obama, “by being unable to be there to care for the person they love.” 

• Regence BlueShield was ordered to pay $148,000 to 1000 women in Washington State for illegally denying coverage for IUDs over an eight year period. Thanks to the persistence of one Seattle woman who reported the insurance companies denial of her claim, to the state insurance commissioner, the company was “caught.” Regence BlueShield said it was an issue of incorrectly coding the claims. Uh-huh. 

• Faking it? Amanda Marcotte writes today on XX Factor about a potential anti-choice hoax. A couple puts up a web site asking people to vote on whether they should have an abortion. But Marcotte doesn’t buy it. He’s a Glenn Beck fan? They think “pro-choice” means “hey, let’s make pregnancy termination participatory and fun!”? Whatever it is, it’s absurd. 

• An FDA advisory panel says the HPV vaccine Gardasil is safe and effective at preventing anal cancer in young men and women. 

• Apparently Nadya Suleman, the woman who gave birth to eight babies (also dubbed “Octomom,” a name I despise) didn’t know she was part of a paid fertility study when she was implanted with 12 embryos. The physician who implanted the embryos said…she did.