Posted on 06/30/2014 7:36:22 AM PDT by xzins
I hope you are right.
I was just reading Alito, and Alito says that the non-profits have been provided an accommodation and the government didn’t even think to offer that same accommodation to the for-profits, thereby making it a MANDATE only directed at for-profits.
The accommodation, as I understand it, involves the insurance company having to pay for the coverage that is denied by those with a religious objection without any remuneration from the company being covered. In other words, the insurance companies eat the cost...BUT...if I recall correctly, they are guaranteed a certain level of profitability by the government because they are the providers of health care coverage under ObamaCare.
As you suggest about schools, I do think a business will have to make it known somehow that they have a religious objection to providing the full health plan dictated by ObamaCare. I imagine it will end up being some kind of application.
The school’s (and others) objection involves having to be a participant at any level by affirming some government document that they are not providing the coverage, and then that triggering a secondary method for employees to receive the coverage. They don’t want to be involved at any level no matter how many degrees of separation the government provides.
Hobby Lobby is not likely to make that same argument because they already have said they will pay for contraception, just not those 4 varieties. I assume they have no “level of separation” argument so long as they don’t have to pay.
Who is right? The schools are right about there still being a fingerprint on anything that gets approved because they’ve filed objection paperwork. They are saying they should be permitted to buy a policy designed from the start in the way they want it without their having to approve a reduction of that policy.
Hobby Lobby must think that complicity isn’t the issue for them so long as they don’t have to directly engage in what they object to.
The case wasn’t even about contraceptives. It was about abortifacients.
Thanks for that clarification.
I’ve never understood how that was supposed to work. It seems the insurance companies would just charge higher fees to offset the cost of any contraception coverage the religious non-profits employees would use.
Yes I know. Without reading the entire decision it appears as though Alito used the opinion to also discuss the non profit accommodation, that does include all contraception non just the 4 that HL objected to.
He outright says the opinion assumes that the issue in the case, providing abortificants, does serve a compelling government interest. That appears at point (c) in the Syllabus (but NEVER trust the syllabus). Attributed to Alito and the majority:
Under RFRA, a Government action that imposes a substantial burden on religious exercise must serve a compelling government interest, and we assume that the HHS regulations satisfy this requirement.I don't take that as agreement with the premise, beyond "assume for the sake of argument." The majority's focus is on the "least restrictive means" requirement, and it is failure on that prong that results in the abortificant mandate being against RFRA.
That was my understanding as well. I think that Alito meant to clarify that in his opinion saying that employees will have to pay out of pocket for the cost of this contraceptive coverage in their plans and that insurance companies can’t just turn around and in the justice’s words “costshare”. I hope this is the case, but perhaps I am just in an optimistic mood today.
I agree that in a free market they would be forced to raise prices, but with the government guarantee of profitability, then who knows what they’d do?
Besides, their costs are already so high: premiums, copays, and deductibles, you gotta believe they have every option already covered and paid for.
I’m wondering how deductibles can be so high and copays so high and people think they’re getting this for free?
In short, I’m confused about everything about ObamaCare, EXCEPT that it doesn’t make sense.
Hobby Lobby wins, but what about the many larger corporations that are not closely held?
HHS responds that many legal requirements haveexceptions and the existence of exceptions does not initself indicate that the principal interest served by a law isnot compelling. Even a compelling interest may be outweighed in some circumstances by another even weightierconsideration. In these cases, however, the interest served by one of the biggest exceptions, the exception for grandfathered plans, is simply the interest of employers in avoiding the inconvenience of amending an existing plan. Grandfathered plans are required “to comply with a subset of the Affordable Care Act’s health reform provisions” thatprovide what HHS has described as “particularly significant protections.” 75 Fed. Reg. 34540 (2010). But the contraceptive mandate is expressly excluded from this subset. Ibid.
However, just to get on with the discussion, he goes to least restrictive means, because he's certain the government has erred in that category, so the argument over compelling interest is of no real import.
We might be saying the same thing.
(3) Finally, HHS contends that Congress could not have wanted RFRA to apply to for-profit corporations because of the difficulty ofascertaining the “beliefs” of large, publicly traded corporations, butHHS has not pointed to any example of a publicly traded corporationasserting RFRA rights
If Alito had really gone out of his way to address this, the opinion would have found the mandate fails on either prong. Or, at least add a "for the sake of argument" before saying the majority assumes the mandate serves a compelling government interest.
Even if you and I have a difference of opinion on whether Alito went out of his way to indicate the government really didn't have a compelling interest (and I don't think we have much of a difference), it certainly has no play in the outcome here, but I wonder if the "assumption" might come back in some other case (not necessarily before SCOTUS) and be used to justify a different HHS regulation.
I hope this is the case, also. I’ll yield to your optimism for the day. :-)
No “exception” should be needed to assert your freedom of religion. It’s not an “opt in” principle.
“I may stand alone here, but I think this ruling is a disaster for the reasons stated.”
The ruling was narrow, but precise. It found the HHS regulation violated the RFRA. There was no need to go beyond that reasoning, and it did not. I would have preferred to see a more expansive reading, but I am thrilled it was not 5-4 for the other side!
“Can this ruling be applied to small businesses who operate based on their religious convictions?
I’m thinking of bakers who refuse to create wedding cakes for gay marriages.”
In theory, it does. It would require a court to find that the government has a compelling interest in homosexual wedding cakes, and that the least restrictive way to achieve that goal is requiring religious bakers to bake them.
Now, will lower courts pay attention? I doubt it.
My fellow conservative FReepers,
The U.S. Supreme Court made history today. I believe that this is the first time that a majority of the court has agreed with a plaintiff’s argument that LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION!
This is a MAJOR DEFEAT for the abortion industry and liberals who have tried to argue that life only begins at birth.
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