At the heart of President Obama's announcement last week on the contraceptive coverage mandate are two goals: ensuring that religious organizations will not have to pay for or provide coverage for services that are objectionable to them and that employees of objecting religious organizations will have access to these benefits on the same basis as other employees.
These are the right goals. As the administration moves forward to implement them, it should carefully consider legitimate free exercise concerns and distinguish them from broader grievances about the contraceptive mandate and the Affordable Care Act as a whole.
In his Feb. 10 remarks, President Obama offered a specific proposal about how to reach the goals of honoring religious objections and access to contraceptive coverage. Drawing on the provisions of certain state laws, the president proposed requiring insurers to provide these benefits to employees of objecting religious organizations via insurance contracts that are separate from the contracts between the insurers and objecting religious employers, with no referrals by these employers. The aim is to take objecting religious organizations out of the equation, while ensuring employee access to important health benefits. Many Catholics and other people of faith have said this proposal works well for them, and it makes good sense to me.
Since the announcement, however, some other Catholics and religious people have said even this accommodation would substantially burden the free exercise of their institutions. Some religious employers would like, for example, to be able to purchase insurance from insurers that do not offer contraceptive coverage so that none of their money supports such coverage in even the most remote way. Likewise, some nonprofit religious insurers have said they would object to a requirement that forced them to provide contraceptive coverage. The administration should address legitimate concerns like these in the upcoming rulemaking process. It has already pledged that religious employers with self-insured group health plans will not be required to pay for or provide coverage for services to which they object, while employees of those organizations will be guaranteed such coverage by other means. The solution the administration formulates for self-insured health plans may suggest fixes for these other cases as well.
Why should the administration address concerns like these? As UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh recently noted, free exercise burdens turn on the subjective understanding of the religious practitioner or body. One person or body's understanding of their faith can differ from another's. It is not the government's job to try to determine what is the "right" understanding of a faith; instead, its job is to assess whether the faith practice is sincere and the burden on it is substantial. Having already demonstrated an interest in accommodating spiritual obligations, the administration can and should consider different understandings of those obligations.
Another key part of the administration's proposed rule will be minimizing differences between what its current rule calls "non-exempted" religious employers (such as religious hospitals, universities and social ministries) and "exempted" religious employers (basically, churches and other houses of worship). The ideal approach -- rather than unnecessarily carving out distinct regulatory regimes for two different sorts of employers -- is simply to include a single modified exemption, while still ensuring that employees of exempted organizations could access contraceptive coverage. The administration chose not to do this, but in his remarks last week President Obama treated these two sets of organizations the same way and announced a policy that has the practical effect of broadening the exemption. In other words, the current exemption is a faulty one that should not be extended to other areas of federal law; but, with care, the administration should be able to address the problem here in a workable way.
At the same time, the Obama administration should distinguish between legitimate religious liberty concerns about the exemption and broader grievances about the contraceptive mandate and the Affordable Care Act as a whole. For example, those who say the only way to remedy the free exercise problem is to scrap the contraceptive mandate -- or the entire Affordable Care Act -- are wrong. They are also badly mistaken when they suggest it somehow violates the free exercise rights of a religiously affiliated hospital, social service agency or university for an insurer or the government to offer their employees contraceptive coverage. Further, there is certainly no free exercise obligation to exempt all employers from an obligation to provide contraceptive coverage due to their CEOs' personal religious convictions.
There's a balance to be struck here because this debate involves more than simply the interests of religious objectors. In 2005 a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court said that when considering free exercise accommodations, "courts must take adequate account of the burdens a requested accommodation may impose on nonbeneficiaries." This constitutional principle deserves attention here, too. Also, some legal scholars have suggested employees of objecting religious employers may have Religious Freedom Restoration Act claims of their own if they are denied these federal benefits. In any case, a policy that would operate to allow employers' religious convictions to deny hundreds of thousands of Americans federal benefits would be disturbing. It's also worth noting that expanding contraceptive coverage will help greatly to reduce the number of abortions, a goal with strong support in both the pro-choice and pro-life ranks.
If all of this sounds complicated, that's because it is. Indeed, my hope is this episode will prompt us to re-consider our employer-based health insurance system. It is right to honor the religious objections of faith-based employers, but it is also right to ask why we retain a system where the health coverage employees receive may be limited by those objections.
While the employer-based system endures, however, we must confront the dilemmas it presents. President Obama's commitment to the twin goals of honoring objections and access and to opening a new rulemaking process provides the framework necessary to address these issues in constructive ways. The administration should continue to fast-track this policy-making process, even though obligations on religious institutions will not kick in until August 2013. It's in everyone's interest to try to find an agreeable solution to this problem. No one can be certain how lawsuits and legislation will fare, and no one can safely predict the outcome of the next election.
These matters are complex, but our debate over them need not be caustic. May cool heads and fair-mindedness prevail as we move forward.
Diana Butler Bass: The End of Church
This is why we need universal coverage, that is not supplied by one's employer.
We are allowed to practice our personal religious beliefs that don't infringe upon the law and the reach of the US dollar, that is up to us. But if we want to use the government dollars (specially exclusive subsidies) and want to stay within the reach of the law, we must also adopt a universalist perspective.
Further, if I choose to not deliver care to women, to the elderly, to very sick children because it is against my idea of morality - while I have the power to deliver that care - it is my egocentric construct that makes me inhumane. To allow groups to exercise values against the freedom of individuals is to allow an exclusion from the social contract of our society. I don't want doctors saying, "you're over 70, you're going to die soon anyway, you don't deserve health care, I'm ethically opposed to delivering it to you, too bad for you there is no one else in the ER." In a secular society the church has power over its own voluntary followers, it should not have power over others.
hariaum
So providing ANY healthcare coverage would be morally objectionable....
I predict mass conversions.
The issue is whether religious-based businesses will have to pay for all of their employee healthcare - or if they can transfer those costs onto other, non-religious businesses.
This is about the religion-based businesses not wanting to PAY. For their employees.
There is no requirement for the employees to use the particular healthcare services.
Let's assume that government projections of overall healthcare savings are correct and that if all women are covered then healthcare costs will go down. Shouldn't all businesses that pay participate in those savings?
http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/2012/contraceptives/ib.shtml
Healthcare insurance oligopoly companies are, already, guaranteed a 20% margin by ACA.
Healthcare insurance companies do not "pay" for costs, they aggregate costs and pass them on in a parimutuel scheme and take their vig (20%). To discuss these insurance companies as paying is a flimflam, a con.
The math is simple. If one group does not pay, then another group will have to pay for their costs.
This scheme creates a religion-based preference on some businesses. It makes non-religionists pay for what religionist won't. It is an unconscionable, religion-based TAX to support particular religions.
Next, most employers pass some of the premium costs on to their employees. One might argue that an employee who is contributing some % to the cost of her health care benefits has a right to receive the coverage she prefers.
Thirdly, if the health insurance company actually charges more for contraceptive coverage, the employee should have the right to elect and pay for that out of pocket if the organization prefers not to spend money in this direction.
Lastly, this is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt for the organization to control the personal choice of the woman in matters that should remain highly personal.
You know, there are things of which I do not approve (certain war expenditures) that my tax $$$ go toward whether i like it or not. Let the insurance companies offer contraception and let women decide. Surely, good Catholic women know what choice to make.
Law Enforcement... not "regulation."
Enforcement.
"...the Commission receives, investigatÂes, and resolves charges of employment discriminaÂtion filed..."
Law Enforcement.... think employment discrimination police.
What law was violated?
Workplace gender discrimination -- non-parity -- in prescription drug coverage.
Discriminatory non-parity in employer-based prescription drug coverage violates the law... meaning that IT IS the governmentÂ's job to mandate what prescription drug coverage that employers -- must provide-- their employees.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have selected Family Planning as 8th on the
list of the top 10 public health achievements of the last century (most notably access to the pill)
Catholic Charities receives over 60% of its income from the federal government.
Inclusion of contraception in the baseline of women's healthcare is good policy period.
if you want to opt out don't use the coverage.
Why don't you look at really liberal countries like Norway, Sweden and Denmark or better yet get a grip on why contraception is so important.
And just to put things in perspective, you are not paying for their health coverage, they and their employers are paying. And if their employers hold back those benefits, they will loose workers to other hospitals or organizations that give such benefits. Benefits are pat of pay, and i'm sorry, you cannot tell someone how to use their salary, you may be paying, but you are paying for work done, ervices rendered, it is not your money anymore
Sometimes there is room only for one person on the top a hill and this case that person is the employee and not an employer. The Ministerial Exemption should apply only to the ministers and not the janitors, secretaries, nurses, etc. If the bishops don't like it sell their schools and hospitals. Others will be glad to run them.
Once that argument is laid to rest, there is no rational argument against having the option of free contraceptives. None whatsoever.
Like pregnancy?