How to Walk Back if You're HHS

Tom's notice of an apparent incipient 'walk back' on the part of HHS is provisionally very good news both for the cause of free exercise and association, and for the cause of socio-economic justice consistent therewith.  (As Tom notes, when Chris Matthews - and, we might add, E.J. Dionne and countless other similarly situated folk - gasp aloud at the clumsiness of a putatively graceful Democratic President, that President has assuredly mis-stepped.)  In reply to Tom's query, however, I would register my objection to at least one piece of the Hawaiian model of accommodation.  To my thinking, a state-imposed requirement that religiously affiliated institutions provide detailed instructions on how to procure that which the religious communities themselves see as wrongful is both profoundly demeaning of those religious communities and their adherents, and ominously close to first-amendment-violative forced speech or commandeering.  I accordingly find Tom's suggested reformulation much to be preferred.  Bravissimo as well to Tom's more generally articulated desideratum that the onus of furthering the state purpose in a manner that does not problematically impinge upon free exercise and association be placed upon the insurance companies rather than the religiously affiliated institutions.

Let me also note here in passing, if I may, that were the U.S. to adopt a single-payer mode of insuring health as do all of our peer nations, we would not only enjoy a much more just and efficient spread of health risk over our population, but also would not be faced with the many Ptolemaic contortions we can expect in the years ahead, of which the present conundrum is doubtless but one early instance.  (Even given that the 2010 reforms are preferable to what went before, as I maintain they are.)  It is only fitting, I suppose, that a putatively 'progressive' President who alienated scores of millions of his supporters by taking 'single payer' 'off of the table' in the 2009-2010 health insurance reform efforts now finds himself alienating many of those same supporters a second time, along with other 'moderates' and 'conservatives,' as his HHS collides with first amendment values in trying to make a social insurance program of what remains for the most part a privately provided such 'program.'