Posted on 11/20/2012 1:12:51 PM PST by NYer
Nice dodge, yourself. Since when do the demands of an employee, who has voluntarily taken a position with a company, mean that the company’s officers are required to violate their first amendment rights?
The key fact you are glossing over is that the employees have the right to self-terminate their employment and seek employment elsewhere, at a company that will provide such coverage.
Contraception and abortifacients are not found in the constitution.
that could be intended to mean a do-good-du-jour social gospel i suppose...
and, what is the role of old fashioned charity in this anyhow? when churches got beguiled into thinking newfangled government schemes like social security could supersede the duties of old fashioned charity, they got themselves onto the wrong footing.
I’ve offered this solution repeatedly, on this thread and on others, and so far no one seems to have acknowledged this option for Hobby Lobby and for other organizations in the same boat, like Catholic hospitals or Protestant conservative schools.
Fire the employees. You don’t have any employees anymore except for a core group of less than fifty managers. Tell the employees that you love them, you’d be delighted to hire them back, but they have to work as contractors. As contractors they will not be eligible for health insurance obtained through your firm, but you will now be able to afford to pay them more. Sorry. Blame Obama.
In this way the company continues to operate, the former employees continue to work, and the company’s owners are not fined $1.3 million per day. But as more companies and religious organizations take this option, the unemployment rolls are going to EXPLODE. That is not going to look nice for Obama.
Even financially, why are Democrats making that the hill to die upon? This stuff isn’t hugely costly (in dollars... the cost in souls may vary), and a saner plan would be to let it be purchased using the same tax shielded medical reimbursement schemes that can be used to tax shield the purchase of aspirin.
So, are you endorsing the idea that "adequate policies" must necessarily include abortions? That seems to be a clear inference in your statement, quoted in whole above.
inference from, or implication by
You are correct - I should have said “implication”.
As for the selection of the contraception/abortion - it is not the cost that democrats crave, but rather the violation of faith. I see abortion as the primary sacrament of liberalism, personally.
And things have come almost full circle with the organizational legacy of the late ungreat Margaret Sanger coming to a fruition that would have made her gasp. (She might not have been so copacetic with welfare handouts, but she’d be right on with all the abortion.)
The larger the cost sharing pool and the more real competition, the better the insurance deals would be. Up til now, we've relied almost entirely on employment for health coverage. That, coupled with a ban on interstate sale of insurance, has led to much smaller cost-sharing pools and very little actual competition, with one insurer often dominating entire regions. Fifty different sets of rules and regulations have historically governed insurance sales across the country, with consumers almost always bound to their employers choice for health coverage and worse, should they lose their job, finding themselves suddenly without any insurance at all.
It's hard to defend such an ad hoc "system" with its innate inefficiencies and skyrocketing costs.
The argument that no modern, industrialized nation should be without universal coverage is persuasive. But other Western nations have found ways to achieve it through far more decentralized means than Canadian-style single payer, or the expensive socialized medicine of the UK. The Dutch --- I've read --- have achieved universal coverage entirely through fierce competition between private insurers, and the Germans use a system of exchanges that allow German workers to move from job to job without losing insurance. The Swiss, who have made an art of subsidiarity, have achieved universal coverage through competing non-profit insurance plans.
I myself would like to see a competitive system with the following features:
Good point.
I think that you're on the wrong forum. DU might be more to your liking.
I’m told that I’m wrong and that the IRS doesn’t permit this.
OK, new idea: vouchers. The employees get vouchers from HL to go out and get whatever kind of insurance they want.
I suppose the Geheime Staatspolizei in the White House won’t permit this or any other innovative solution. You vill obey orders! Sieg Heil, y’all.
Twenty-seven year old children? Doesn’t anybody grow up and reach adulthood anymore? They are supposed to be adults WAY before the age of 27 and if they are not it is the fault of the parents. They need to get out of mommy and daddy’s basement, get a job and pay for their own insurance.
Erm, they don't need a case; it's explicitly in the Constitution -- Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
There are multiple flaws w/ Obamacare; but the one that you're trying to goad on is simple: nowhere in the Constitution is the Federal government allowed to mandate insurance coverage. In short, Obamacare is a bad apple, and yes your suggestion of mandated health insurance is a bad apple as well, completely apart from the first amendment.
But there's no "adversely affecting" going on here: in a world where health insurance is not mandatory/regulated the employee is free to sign up with an employer who offers the health insurance he wants, not take health insurance, or purchase his own. -- So, no, not in this case.
What!?
Do you even know where that "example" came from? It came from Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919); this case was about upholding sedition laws for WWI which restricted political speech -- exactly the sort of speech the 1St Amendment was meant to protect -- protesting the war. (The case was wrongly decided, basically saying: the congress can do in war what it cannot do in peace.)
The whole "fire in a crowded theater"-argument is one that justifies that which is not justifiable: it is the expansion of "legal reading" of the Constitution to mean that which is not said. -- For you to use it only perpetuates the evil.
Do you disagree with that?
The rest of the Schenck case is not relevant to this particular concept set forth by the Court in Schenck, and I'd like to see any evidence you have that the founders intended for the 1st Amendment to protect speech without any limitations. I think any reasonable understanding of the 1st Amendment doesn't suggest that it, for example, would protect conspirators from prosecution since they were free to say whatever they wanted, or a bank robber since his statement "give me the money or else" would somehow be protected speech.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.