The next stage of the Plan B saga moves to the courts. Even before last week’s controversial decision keeping the morning-after pill behind the pharmacist’s counter, and requiring women under 17 to secure a prescription before purchase, a coalition led by the Center for Reproductive Rights planned to take the government to court over age restrictions for the drug. Today, that hearing takes place.

Though the FDA supported it, the Department of Health and Human Services decided against allowing young teens access to the morning after pill in over-the-counter drugstores without a prescription. Though birth control is now available for free from doctors for anyone with health insurance, women under 17 facing an unplanned pregnancy will still have to consult a doctor before getting the morning after pill.

Headlines were made last week concerning revelations that a key researcher who was part of the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis experiment had also headed a 1940s project in Guatemala that deliberately inoculated prisoners and insane asylum inmates with various venereal diseases. But there have been many more examples of U.S. government experimentation on unwitting subjects, including CIA experiments on detainees held in the “war on terror.”

You can pretty much figure out AHIP’s game here. With no restrictions on cost until 2014, the industry can raise their premium prices almost at will. Even the bad publicity suffered from that 39% rate hike of Anthem Blue Cross plan has not stopped that scheduled increase from taking effect in May. And when outrage is expressed by families facing double-digit rate hikes, AHIP will clear their throats and blame the pre-existing condition exclusion for children, forcing the poor insurance companies to take on a sicker risk pool and raise prices to survive.

The White House and AHIP have a deal on health reform. I can’t see item on which the parties disagree. And if you look at what AHIP is saying in its protest adds, the basic message is: the deal is still on, and we want this bill to pass. Just stop blaming us.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) today sent a letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius in reference to Jonathan Gruber’s failure to disclose his financial relationship with the Obama administration when he was testifying before the Senate Finance Committee. It appears that, at the time, Sen. Grassley was unaware Gruber had been given a lucrative, sole source contract by the HHS to do analysis of the “President’s health reform proposal.”

On a conference call with reporters, US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius reiterated the President’s support for a controversial measure in the Senate health care bill that would ban undocumented immigrants from purchasing insurance coverage on the exchanges with their own money.

Sebelius was asked if she thought undocumented workers should be allowed on the exchange, and she replied, “The President has made it clear that he feels undocumented immigrants should be able to purchase health insurance in the private market, not on the exchange.”

Considering the role of the HHS Secretary in setting which procedures will be covered under the minimum benefits package, and possibly what will be exempt from cost sharing, it’s notable that she is distancing herself so swiftly from the recommendations.