Friday, February 10, 2012
Democrats for Life on the Contraception Mandate
We'll see what emerges from the administration sources' statements that it will seek a compromise on the contraception mandate. The referral problem is there, and I don't know whether an employer's reference to other options can be made general enough.
In the meantime, as another resource and part of the record, here is a letter to the President on Tuesday from Kristen Day of Democrats for Life (see also statement here), which argues that
works of justice and mercy are among the things that progressives value most in religious organizations, and you have spoken about such works eloquently in your own speeches. It is therefore ironic and deeply disturbing for the HHS definition to exclude organizations that do such works from the definition of 'religious employer'. . . [The mandate with minimal exception] unnecessarily strengthens the position of those who claim that government involvement in healthcare threatens our freedoms.
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2012/02/democrats-for-life-on-the-contraception-mandate.html
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Tom, I am not understanding something that I am hoping you can help with. Under the new plan, and setting aside questions of (a) what the religious employer will say to the employee; and (b) who exactly gets exempted, won't this plan simply mean that insurers who are being forced to cover these products and services for free simply pass the costs onto the insureds, including the religious institutions, through increased premiums? If that is true, then what change has this compromise worked? It was never the case that the religious institutions were themselves going to provide these products and services. They were going to offer plans which offered these services and which they, in part, subsidized. But now it seems that they will be doing effectively exactly the same thing, no? Probably I am not understanding something.