We keep focusing on the rights of “providers”, and it just illustrates how screwed up our health care system is.
Why are Catholic Hospitals a “provider” of health insurance for their workers?
Why isn’t the focus on the rights of the PEOPLE to choose their health insurance? Under Obamacare, I am forced to buy health insurance that includes the mandate to fully cover abortion pills. Since insurance is collecting a little money from everybody, to pay for those who file, my money is going to pay for abortion.
In a free market, I should be allowed to shop for a provider that doesn’t include things I find morally repugnant. But under Obamacare, every provider is required to include these pills — except, if we win this fight, certain PROVIDERS who have religious objections.
But these providers who will get exemptions are specific employers, and unless I work for them, I can’t buy the insurance they are “providing”.
Note that the word “provide” is a misnomer here. Normally the “insurance provider” would be the company that insures you, that pays out if you have a claim. In this case, it’s not “providers”, it’s 3rd-party payers. So a Catholic Charity is seeking an exemption from the law, so that when they are REQUIRED to be a 3rd-party payer for insurance for their workers, they can contract for insurance that doesn’t include abortion pills.
This means some provider will be allowed to make a special insurance package for these religious institutions. But not for me, if I want to buy an individual policy.
Of course, half the problem is the government giving tax breaks to EMPLOYERS and then forcing employers to buy insurance for their workers, rather than giving the tax breaks to individuals, and removing the employer mandate, allowing individuals to buy insurance directly instead.
If you combined a removal of employers from the equation (which should mean employers would then provide additional pay to workers equivalent to what was going into insurance), with an individual choice as to what kind of insurance they want, NOBODY would be forced to pay for insuring anything they didn’t like.
If I hate all abortion, I could find an insurance company that simply doesn’t cover abortions at all, in any kind, even though they are still “legal” for now. My money wouldn’t go for it.
If I think homosexuality is a crime against nature, I could find an insurance company that doesn’t offer same-sex partner benefits, and thus lower my cost of insurance slightly since same-sex partners engage in risky behavior that drives up their cost of health care, and can’t be made to pay more money for that risky behavior.
And nobody else would “suffer” for my choice. If another person didn’t like being in an insurance poll with religious folks, they could find a company offering atheist health policies. Maybe someone else wants insurance that doesn’t cover children at all, like the old folks communities.
All this would be ours, if we didn’t have employer-provided insurance, Obamacare, regulations, and a nanny state looking to “make our lives better”.
If we weren’t forced to buy insurance, nobody would have to debate over whether religious institutions had to pay for immoral treatment.
In my opinion I think it’s pretty pathetic Boehner is out there begging for Obama to change this and only threatening to take Congressional action if he doesn’t. Regardless of what Obama does the Congress should be overturning this in law so no president can ever wield this power as a weapon at all.
But, that still leaves Catholics/Christians stuck in a moral quandary with their employer's mandated insurance or even the government insurance exchanges.
Catholic Church can be pretty clever at times...what would happen if the Catholic Church were to offer its congregation health insurance of moral conscience? Someone posted a link to a Christian scheme, but I am not sure it holds up under the individual mandate?
But...there just might be a place for an Insurance of Conscience...
Would such a scheme then fall under the exemptions much like the Amish do?