The revised Obama mandate will make religious groups contract with insurers to offer birth control and the potentially abortion-causing drugs to women at no cost. The revised mandate will have religious employers refer women to their insurance company for coverage that still violates their moral and religious beliefs. Under this plan, every insurance company will be obligated to provide coverage at no cost.Essentially, religious groups will still be mandated to offer plans that cover both birth control and the ella abortion drug
According to Obama administration officials on a conference call this morning, a woman’s insurance company “will be required to reach out directly and offer her contraceptive care free of charge. The religious institutions will not have to pay for it.”
The birth control and abortion-causing drugs will simply be “part of the bundle of services that all insurance companies are required to offer,” White House officials said.
So here’s how this works.
I’m an insurer. Here were your two options, before Obama’s brilliant solution:
I could cover your employees for x dollars.
If you want birth control/abortifacient coverage, we’ll add that rider for y dollars. So this option is x + y dollars.
Obama’s genius solution is:
Hey, we’ll cover your employees for x + y dollars as a baseline. But we’ll toss in abortifacient coverage for 0 dollars.
Uhhh… That x+y is what it cost to have base insurance + birth control/abortifacient coverage. All that’s being done here is that people are lying about the costs — now the insurer and the contracting party lie and pretend the base insurance cost is x + y (which it isn’t; it’s x) and also pretend the cost for the birth control coverage is 0 (which it isn’t; it’s y).
All Obama’s doing is mandating that employers enter into a contract with insurers in which both parties pretend that the base cost of the service is higher than it is, and that abortifacient coverage now costs zero dollars.
Obama’s mandate solution is now just to force the conscience-objectors to lie about it.
Hopefully the Bishop’s will not crater to this ruse and continue to fight. But, this is only a minor skirmish in the long war. As Mike Huckabee said, we are all Catholics now. The battle begins.
I wonder what the desiccated dingbats on “The View” have to spout about this? This has to be entertaining.
You know jhat? It’s time the Catholic at least join the 20th Century. The don’t want abortions. Fine. But to deny contraception which could prevent abortions and save lives is asinine. I find it lunacy to allow your bosses have control over what type of sex you have after you punch the clock. Don’t you?
@liberalmann: Maybe you should spend some time trying to understand what people with values believe. Get with a priest and ask him to explain why Catholic believe what they do. Their values are based upon Christ’s teachings and are 2000 years old. Som you suggest that Catholics should believe the words of Liberalmann instead of Christ?
He’s attempting or offering a ‘Hudna’, a way to lie for expedience for the time being; that is what muslims do to gain their objective. Should he win re-election, all bets are off!
As long as it keeps the Catholic Church happy, then I don’t care ; this was non-issue anyway, and just an attempt for them to exert their power. Probably the only people that will continue to argue about it are the right-wing Fundamentalist Protestants.
@liberalmann:
I find it lunacy that Liberals think they have a Right to have sex. Sex is not a Right…and anybody who thinks it is, must promote the removal of rape as a crime and release all rapists from prison immediately.
Here is where Liberal thinking crashes head-on into the brick wall. I seriously doubt Liberal women will be pounding the “drum of rights” when they discover they can be taken whenever someone wants to have sex.
Sex is a consensual act between two willing individuals…nobody has a Right to have sex.
Sister Carol Keenan spoke in glowing terms of how this President is addressing this important issue and how he is willing to compromise. Uh, will someone ask her Bishop to make her a former nun. This whole “compromise” is an ploy to get us to a single payer system that Mr. O wants. I choose to not provide this coverage, so now the government is going to make our health insurance provider …provide it at no charge to the individual. What about the company? We either have to absorb it or pass it on. If we pass it on it raises the cost for the individual and encourages them to drop out and join Mr. O’s unicorns and lollipops health insurance for a lower cost(initially) then they have us all. This isn’t just about Catholics or right wing protestants, it’s about our individual freedoms.
@Liberal1 (objectivity):
You show your lack of knowledge of the real issue there Lib1.
Here’s the basics. Congress, via the passage and enactment of Obamacare, and before ANY waivers or law changes by Obama(which is un-Constitutional, by the way), has enacted a law that limits the free exercise of a religion.
The 1st Amendment states;
Congress CANNOT do this. It doesn’t even matter if Obama issued a waiver exempting every religion’s differing organizations from that part of the bill. Just doing that alone violates the “equal protection” clause. The law that Congress enacted violates the 1st Amendment rights of religious institutions. If we Americans, of all stripes, accept this kind of action by our government, we are essentially saying to them that they CAN violate our freedoms, and that we will accept, from the Head Tyrant, whatever alms he wants to throw our way.
Even if one believed in the idea that higher use of contraceptions reduces abortions, you cannot support this action by Obama as simply a means to an end. To do so empowers the very people who truly want to take your liberties away.
Actually Obama’s “birth control compromise” is no compromise at all. The lines between the government giving money to a religion, or forcing someone else to do so, or forcing someone to pay their expenses for them, is a very thin one; and given the history of the “separation of church and state” issue, is almost certain to be found unconstitutional.
I wonder if Obama, the former constitutional scholar, overlooked this.