Posted on 02/02/2013 9:44:20 AM PST by NYer
(CNSNews.com) – Catholic, pro-life, and religious liberty leaders denounced the latest revised rule by the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) concerning mandated coverage for contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs, stating that it is an “accounting gimmick,” an “accounting shell game,” which will “do practically nothing to lessen President Obama’s attack on religious freedom.”
The HHS mandate, as it stands under the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), requires nearly all health insurance plans to offer sterilizations, contraceptives, and abortion-inducing drugs, such as “ella,” without co-pays. Strictly religious entities, such as a church or seminary, could exempt themselves from the mandate.
In its slightly revised rule proposal, announced Friday, the HHS expanded that exemption to include non-profit religious organizations. But the proposal did not address individuals who may object to the rule, and it still would require the health insurance plans to offer the contraceptive and sterilization coverage in a separate policy.
In a statement, the Catholic Association said, "The HHS mandate announcement today changes nothing, it is just another accounting gimmick and the HHS mandate continues to be a violation of civil rights, religious freedom and First Amendment rights. Catholic institutions and other faith-based organizations, including hospitals and universities and private employers, still do not get their First Amendment rights back and are still being forced to either violate their faith or pay crippling government fines for practicing their faith."
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and President Barack Obama. (AP)
Dr. Charmaine Yoest, president and CEO of Americans United for Life, said, “Today’s phony compromise from Health and Human Services only serves to illustrate the problem with Obamacare. The Obama administration is trying to gerrymander the regulations but continues to leave most Americans without their Constitutional freedoms.”
“The regulation is clear that the Obama administration’s intent is to limit religious liberty to houses of worship,” said Yoest. “Meanwhile, Christian universities, for-profit businesses -- like the Bible publisher Tyndale and Hobby Lobby -- or individuals are still forced to subsidize Big Abortion. The Obama administration’s implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) violates the First Amendment Conscience rights of Americans, and that must be stopped.”
The activist group CatholicVote.org explained that the HHS proposed rule would still require the following:
“Conscience-minded business owners with more than 50 employees will continue to be forced to pay for coverage for contraceptives, abortion-inducing drugs, and sterilization procedures. … Pro-life organizations, schools or charities which are not explicitly religious will still be forced to pay for abortion inducing drugs if they have more than 50 employees. … The new rules provide NO options for private individuals who seek insurance coverage that respects their conscience.”
Intra-Uterine Device, or IUD, contraceptive. (AP)
As for what would change, some religious non-profits – schools, hospitals, and charities – can opt out but “in name only,” said CatholicVote.org in an e-mail. “The proposal will allow some of our Catholic colleges, hospitals, and charities to provide coverage that exempts these immoral medicines – BUT – the same insurance company will step in and provide the objectionable services to their employees for free.”
“By raising a religious objection, some faith-based institutions can now avoid directly paying the insurance company for objectionable medicines and procedures, yet the premiums they pay will go straight to an insurance company that will create a separate policy that will cover the very things these religious employers believe are wrong,” said the e-mail.
“Likewise, self-insured plans like those used by many dioceses and large faith-based groups will be forced to cover their eyes while their plan ‘Administrator’ does the same thing,” said CatholicVote.org.
Carrie Severino, an attorney with the Judicial Crisis Network, said in a statement, "Today's proposed regulation is no solution at all and is just a rehashing of the same accounting shell game roundly rejected when it was first proposed last year. Catholic charities along with religious hospitals and universities are not exempt and are faced with the horrible choice of either violating their deeply held religious beliefs of pay crippling fines that would hurt their ability to serve.”
“The proposed regulation also continues to leave individual business-owners out in the cold, consistent with the administration's litigation position that the very individuals working to grow our economy must leave their First Amendment religious freedoms at the door,” she said.
“The lack of genuine accommodation suggests that the only reason for today's announcement was to alleviate growing concerns from the courts that the government has been using its nebulous future rule as a delay tactic in litigation,” said Severino. “In fact, the proposed mechanism of forcing third-party insurers to provide the contested coverage will likely give rise to a new wave of lawsuits as it appears to be completely devoid of statutory or constitutional basis.”
Lila Rose, president of the pro-life group Live Action, also said in a statement, “Today's proposed rules by the administration do practically nothing to lessen President Obama's attack on religious freedom. Catholic institutions and other religious hospitals, universities and private employers are still being forced to either violate their beliefs or pay crippling government fines for practicing their faith."
"This extreme government intrusion is not only a violation of the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans, it is also a vehicle for continued record funding for the abortion industry by the Obama administration," said Rose.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has, along with his fellow bishops, denounced the HHS mandate as “unjust and illegal” and a “violation of personal civil rights.”
Concerning today’s proposal by HHS, Card. Dolan said, “Today, the Administration issued proposed regulations regarding the HHS mandate. We welcome the opportunity to study the proposed regulations closely. We look forward to issuing a more detailed statement later.”
Kyle Duncan, an attorney with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said on a conference call, “After over a year of litigation, our clients and many others like them were hoping for much, much more from the administration.” He added that the HHS proposal ”does nothing to protect the religious liberty of millions of Americans.”
The complete score card, current updates, resources, and details on all 44 cases found below
The resource page for all HHS Cases and news
44 cases, over 130 plaintiffs, one unconstitutional mandate, and the go-to page for it all
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty led the charge against the Administration’s unconstitutional HHS mandate–which forces many religious organizations to violate their deeply held religious beliefs, or pay crippling fines. The Becket Fund applauds the other courageous defenders who have stepped forward and filed additional suits in defense of America’s first freedom. The Becket Fund currently represents: Hobby Lobby, Wheaton College, East Texas Baptist University, Houston Baptist University, Colorado Christian University, the Eternal Word Television Network, Ave Maria University, and Belmont Abbey College.
Today there are 44 cases and over 130 individuals representing hospitals, universities, businesses, schools, and people all speaking with one voice to affirm the freedom of religion guaranteed in the Constitution.
All HHS cases are listed below in chronological order (Becket Fund and non-Becket Fund cases).
To date, of the 14 for-profit plaintiffs that have obtained rulings touching on the merits of their claims against the Mandate, 10 have secured injunctive relief against it.
Injunctions Granted:
- Grote Indus. LLC v. Sebelius, (7th Circuit — injunction granted pending appeal)
- Korte v. Sebelius – (7th Circuit — injunction granted pending appeal)
- O’Brien v. HHS, (8th Circuit — injunction granted pending appeal)
- Newland v. Sebelius (Hercules), (D. Colorado, preliminary injunction granted)
- Legatus v. Sebelius, (E.D. Mich., preliminary injunction granted for Weingartz plaintiffs)
- Tyndale Publishers v. Sebelius, (D.D.C., preliminary injunction granted)
- Am. Pulverizer Co. v. HHS (Griesedieck) (W.D. Missouri - preliminary injunction granted)
- Domino’s Farms Corp. v. Sebelius, (E.D. Mich., temporary restraining order granted)
- Sharp Holdings, Inc. v. HHS (E.D. Missouri ND., temporary restraining order granted)
- Triune Health Group v. HHS (N.D. Illinois, preliminary injunction granted)
Injunctions Denied:
- Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. v. Sebelius, (10th Circuit denying request for injunctive relief)
- Autocam Corp. v. Sebelius, (on appeal, 6th Circuit denying request for injunction)
- Annex Medical, Inc v. Sebelius (D. Minn., order denying injunctive relief)
- Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius, (E.D. Pa. order denying injunctive relief following temporary restraining order granted)
Ping!
Sebilius is going to teach Christians how to sin on the sly? This is a good example of how liberals live. They go around laws and rationalize their own actions. Sebilius has shown her hand in trying to get Christians to adopt her approach to living.
Predictably, the sellout media immediately proclaimed, with great fanfare, the Obama is offering a fair compromise.
May the Lord give our bishops the gift of fortitude and of wisdom. May the collapse of Christian private enterprise in America be avoided.
Democrats and RINOS
GOD DENIERS AND CONGENITAL LIARS
ARE REDISTRIBUTE WEALTH INCITERS/
FOR FIRST YOUR MONEY THEN YOUR GUNS
AND BE DEFENSELESS WHEN CROOKS COME
It’s time to get government out of Your face
Your religion and your pocketbook
(The above is designed to be printed up and passed around your precinct and your friends and neighbors as a (index sized) palmcard.
Get this through your thick skulls, Obama Cult: We will not stop until your damnable law is gone.
Thanks NYer.
My great hope is that Catholics are all-in on overturing the ACA and moving toward market based liberties. 90% of medical costs are driven by local/state and federal laws/regulations.
The price would drop overnight by simply making three changes:
1. interstate competition for insurance.
2. let individuals have the same tax write off as corporations when it comes to health insurance.
3. publish doctor’s pricing lists for all medical procedures.
Very big of our government to decide it is going to follow the Constitution....
/sarc
I have no doubt that theses 3 simple things would significantly cut down on the cost of healthcare but short of a massive growth in the out of pocket consumers to price select among them Doctors. There really isn’t a mechanism to either control or reverse cost growth in the health care industry.
Price selection is the only market force that empowers individuals to dynamically control costs in a way reflects both resources and their personal values & priorities.
You are correct, but there is a causal disconnect in the minds of a financially and economically ignorant public. They look at the market with distrust, despite the fact that over the last half century or more things that were expensive and exclusively the province of the rich are now cheap and readily available to the masses.
Liberals in the media and education establishments have convinced them that health care is a special case. Like every liberal “special case” this has lead to the opposite consequence. I don’t see how you can implement a full health care free market in a single step.
Instead, I think that just price signaling and the ability to reject health care insurance will over time do the trick. Keep in mind that liberals have misframed the question.
You don’t need health insurance. You do need health care. Affordability is the issue. Let me give you an example. A routine procedure has a nominal stated cost on the doctor’s invoice of $120.00. After a $98 PPO Provider Discount (essentially a insurer negotiated price) the actual cost is $22.00 which the insurance company applies to the patient’s deductible.
Now if that dollar amount were public and by law it isn’t, further by contract law the doctor cannot offer it publicly, shouldn’t we simply change the law, indemnify the doctor and force those prices into the public? Both the patient and the doctor are better off. The patient is losing excess insurance money paid in the premium and the doctor the time value of the payment, plus the paperwork overhead of managing the insurance contract.
In a country that values individual liberty instead of forcing people we can force infomation. This type of force is especially positive because it is legislation aka government force that created the problem in the first place. The insurance company is simply acting as a buyer’s club, negotiating a better price, but the pricing mechanism itself is ruined by laws against the free market. So the insurance companies are rent seeking and capturing a gain simply through political power, not market power or savvy.
Once price information is public and you remove the legal proscription against doctor’s offering their “best price” to the public you end the “health insurance” monopoly on information/pricing and allow people to get health care, perhaps without health insurance.
I think politically it is a winning argument. That laws exist to keep the public in the dark offends the average voter. I think if a TEA Party candidate took on insurance companies you’d capture plenty of the mushy middle. It would be a great campaign issue and hard to counter by an allegedly pro-people Democrat.
Either way publisizing the issue is a winner. Even if the TEA Party candidate loses in the GOP primary, publicity is gained and the crony capitalism that is killing America gets exposed. The GOP can live without the health insurance company money. It’s pro-market and pro-people by default.
One of the nicest things about a market is that it inevitability emerges wherever & whenever possible.
Despite being the self-proclaimed Bain of Leftist, their practical ends have always been to do little more than to constrain and tie up that market in an effort to force it into a shape that serves their ideological goals. Theses efforts of course always end up producing market dysfunctions as complicated as their web of restriction upon that market.
The point I’m trying to make is although your plan is plausible the biggest problem is time. The more time it takes to carry it out, the more corruption leftist can introduce to foul it up.
I think in practice the only way to foul leftist up is to create a 2ndary and unregulated market (IE: Market that is free of them and their influence.)
Let people choose between the two, of course freedom to choose is essencal. Thus the practical abbolishment of Obamacare’s mandate is essential to any implementation of a free market.
The only surefire way to do this is compete secession so that Washington may not manipulate the Tax code to shift money & resources around favoring their socialist ends of control.
Historically thou, market freedom rarely returns without complete collapse of the socialized system, and it is out of the black market that that free market reemerges(normally with a bunch of disreputable actors, as it is very difficult to weed out the bad while hiding from “big brother”).
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