Posted on 01/30/2012 6:59:33 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The decision last week by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to reject the appeals of scores of religious leaders and retain a very narrow “religious” exemption from Obamacare’s so-called contraception mandate has ignited an uproar among Catholic leaders, as well it should — because it’s hard to fathom a government dictate more offensive than this one.
Here’s how we got where we are: Obamacare includes within its massive delegation of power to the federal government the authority to define what constitutes “preventive services” that must be covered by all health-insurance plans sold and purchased in the United States, including plans sponsored by employers. Services defined by HHS as preventive for purposes of this provision are required under the new law to be covered by the insurer or employer with no charge to the insurance plan’s enrollees.
Last August, in the course of writing a rule that would determine preventive health services for women, HHS decided that free contraception and sterilization services are a must. As a practical matter, that means all health-insurance plans sold in the United States in the very near future will include full coverage of products that terminate pregnancies, since some products classified by the FDA as contraceptives — and thus covered under the HHS definition — also act as abortifacients. While it is true that many insurance plans cover such products today, that’s mainly been the choice of the insurers and employers sponsoring the plans. HHS has now made such coverage obligatory nationwide, thus forcing tens of millions of pro-life Americans to pay for “services” with their health-insurance premiums that they find morally objectionable. (Grandfathered plans are exempt from this and other Obamacare rules, but the number qualifying for grandfathered status is expected to decline precipitously in the next couple of years.)
Bad as all that is, it gets worse. Not only must Catholics who work for non-Catholic employers pay for such products with their premiums, HHS also wants religious employers to cover such products in their health plans. Knowing that Catholic leaders and others would strongly object to this requirement, HHS included in the regulation issued last August a narrow exemption from this requirement for employers that are basically houses of worship. Much larger religiously affiliated institutions, such as Catholic universities, hospitals, and charitable enterprises, do not fit within the HHS exemption.
Not surprisingly, Catholic leaders were more than alarmed by the promulgation of this rule and have spent the time since its publication imploring the Obama White House and HHS to reverse course and loosen the exemption definition so that the full array of Catholic institutions and social-service agencies could get out from under this onerous and pernicious requirement. Among the more prominent groups that have weighed in on this are Catholic Charities USA, the University of Notre Dame, and the network of Catholic hospitals that serve millions of U.S. patients every year.
This is not exactly a who’s-who list of the Catholic Right. If ever there were a group of Catholic institutions to which you would think that the Obama administration would want to be accommodating, this would be it.
And so, what was the administration’s reaction to the pleadings of these friendly leaders? Basically, the back of the hand. Last Friday, Secretary Sebelius announced that religious organizations that do not fit within the previously stated exemption criteria will have only one additional year to comply with the regulation’s requirements.
On one level, this was a truly stunning decision. Everything the administration has been doing in recent months has been political, with reelection plainly the primary motivation. But on the surface, this looks to be anything but a smart political move. With one decision, the Obama White House has made it all but impossible to sustain a serious Catholic argument in its favor. The veneer of religious tolerance, so carefully cultivated by Obama in the 2008 campaign, has now been completely stripped away.
On another level, however, there’s nothing at all surprising about what has transpired. Indeed, with Obamacare, it was inevitable — only a matter of time.
The central purpose of Obamacare — and the reason it was and is so strenuously opposed by so many Americans — is to transfer all of the critical decisions about how American health care operates to the federal government. Despite what the president contends, it is a federal takeover. The federal bureaucracy is now in the driver’s seat.
And, with the federal government now calling all of the shots, it is a foregone conclusion that a decidedly secularist and utilitarian point of view will be pervasive in everything that is done. It is simply beyond the capacity of the modern federal government to even consider arguments questioning the wisdom of governmental policies promoting free and abundant contraception. Indeed, it is an article of faith in the modern bureaucratic context that pushing such “prevention” measures onto the American public is one more step on the long march to a more just and humane society.
This is the environment in which we live. The hard truth is that the federal government cannot be trusted today with these kinds of decisions, and there’s no prospect of that changing anytime soon. That’s a big reason why Obamacare should never have been allowed to pass in the first place. Just the sight of Catholic leaders’ being forced to go begging before federal officials ought to be enough to convince most Americans that handing over so much power over such sensitive matters to the federal government was a terrible, terrible mistake.
If the Sebelius decision is allowed to stand, large Catholic institutions all over the country will be forced to stop offering health coverage to their workers, because continuing to do so will be incompatible with their mission. And when they drop that coverage, they will be forced by Obamacare to pay huge fines to the federal government ($2,000 per worker at the outset). For a Catholic institution with 5,000 employees, that’s $10 million that won’t go toward helping the poor, taking care of patients, or educating future leaders.
It is possible that the Obama administration will pull a political stunt later this year and broaden the exemption to curry favor with some gullible voters just before the election. But even if that were to happen, the real lesson of this episode should not be lost on anyone. Obamacare has handed over immense power to a federal government that is essentially hostile to religious sentiments. That’s a very dangerous state of affairs. Job number one must be to reverse course and replace Obamacare with a program more consistent with our Constitution and values.
— James C. Capretta is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He was an associate director at the Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004.
All taxpayers already pay for abortions because Congress votes money to Planned Parenthood.
This is the modern-day version of the Fugitive Slave Act, which forced deputization of private citizens in order to hunt down escaped slaves, even if those private citizens had issues of conscience with the practice of slavery.
Moral absolutes ping.
The left understands, viscerally, that they are working against the Law written on their hearts,
but they are inherently “teenagers” in their rebellion to these “restrictions”.
In forcing everyone to participate in their evil, they make everyone complicit, and therefore can claim “hypocrisy” if anyone complains or works against their evil.
This is very like cannibalistic societies that force people to “participate” so that they will be forever stained and unable to rejoin the part of society that abhors cannibalism.
There is a word for this - fools.
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“Wholelifeheroes.org, launched by Democrats for Life of America, seeks to prove how 16 Democratic Members of Congress remain consistent with their pro-life principles despite voting for the new health care law.”
http://www.christianpost.com/news/pro-life-democrats-hailed-as-heroes-for-health-care-vote-46020/
“Stupak, Dems reach abortion deal”
By Jared Allen and Jeffrey Young - 03/21/10
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/88143-stupak-dems-reach-abortion-deal-eight-or-nine-will-vote-yes
“Stupak nearly brought down the House version on the bill last November when he objected to the abortion language in the legislation. At the last minute, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed to an amendment authored by Stupak that barred any federal funds from subsidizing abortion on the health care exchange that is expected to be set up in 2014 to provide insurance to upwards of 31 million uninsured Americans. Prochoice groups were outraged, accusing Stupak of moving beyond current law, and the amendment was stripped out in the Senate and replaced with softer language that Stupak and his group felt did not go far enough. Sunday’s last-minute Executive Order, expected to be signed by President Obama immediately following passage of the bill, was the compromise that allowed Stupak and his group to vote for final passage of health care reform”
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1973963,00.html#ixzz1kxGX50z0
March 22, 2010
“Pro-life Democrat voting stats on healthcare bill
Noteworthy...
• The only pro-life Democrat to change his vote from a yes to a no due to the failure to include the Stupak-Pitts amendment was Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-IL), pictured left. (Lipinski is the congressman for the district in which Christ Hospital, my former employer, is located. His father, Congressman Bill Lipinski, was a co-sponsor of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act.)
• Other pro-life Democrats who had previously threatened to change their votes from a yes to a no, agreed to an Executive Order reiterating the Senate bill’s accounting scheme in exchange for their votes at the last minute. 20 of the Members who were urged to change their vote from a “yes” to “no” on pro-life grounds, but failed to do so are: Carney (PA), Costello (IL), Dahlkemper (PA), Donnelly (IN), Doyle (PA), Driehaus (OH), Ellsworth (IN), Hill (IN), Kanjorski (PA), Kaptur (OH), Kildee (MI), Langevin (RI), Mollohan (WV), Oberstar (MN), Ortiz (TX), Perriello (VA), Pomeroy (NC), Rahall (WV), Stupak (MI), and Wilson (OH)....
• 19 pro-life Democrats voted against the Senate bill and for the motion to recommit. They are Altmire* (PA), Barrow* (GA), Berry* (AR), Boren (OK), Bright (AL), Chandler* (KY), Childers (MS), L. Davis (TN), Holden (PA), Lipinski (IL), Marshall (GA), Matheson (UT)*, McIntyre (NC), Melancon (LA)*, Peterson (MN), Ross (AR)*, Shuler (NC), Skelton (MO), and Taylor (MS). (* denotes Members with a limited or mixed pro-life voting record.)
• Representatives Costello (IL) and Donnelly (IN) both voted for the Senate bill, but also vote for the motion to recommit.
• Representatives Artur Davis (AL), Lynch (MA), Space (OH), and Tanner (TN) voted against the Senate bill, but also voted against the motion to recommit despite having voted for a similar amendment offered last fall.”
Posted 03/22/10
http://www.jillstanek.com/healthcare-bill-democrat-pro-l.html
When the citizen pays his taxes the liberal/Marxist then points to the citizen and says, “You're a hypocrite! If you were pro-life you would not pay the taxes.”
It's a lawyer's question, I know. But if anyone remembers, I've forgotten. I do remember this question coming up during the train wreck's consideration, but can't remember the answer.
One thing your average sheeperal liberal does NOT want to own up to is that all their “feel good about themselves” policies are paid for through the use of the threat of VIOLENCE.
If you press this point, they get really agitated, because the whole point of being a liberal, for most of them, is to feel good about themselves as “good people”. And when you point out that they advocate the use of violence in order to make their policies “work”, that takes away from their “good person” vibe.
So why does Romneycare get a pass? It specifically includes money for Planned Parenthood.
Oh yeah...this is from NRO....nevermind.
It really upsets the government school defenders when I say that behind every government school teacher stands an armed policeman to force their godless religious worldview on captive students and taxpayers.
Just like education, socialized medicine won't be so bad at first. It will be due to the professionalism and ethics of this generation of medical practitioners and administrators. in the same way socialized education wasn't so bad for a few generations. The American values intrinsic in the people running the schools kept the schools somewhat balanced. But.....In a generation or two, that is when we will see the true horror of godless socialized medicine.
It won't take socialized medicine as long to be corrupted.
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