Posted on 02/10/2012 11:34:49 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Today, the Obama administration hastily called a press conference to announce a change to its HHS mandate for employers to cover contraception at no cost, including religious organizations whose doctrines oppose contraception and abortifacients. Instead of religious organizations footing the bill directly, the revised "accommodation" now says that insurers must cover the costs, which changes --- nothing:
The revised Obama mandate will make religious groups contract with insurers to offer birth control and the potentially abortion-causing drugs to women at no cost. The revised mandate will have religious employers refer women to their insurance company for coverage that still violates their moral and religious beliefs. Under this plan, every insurance company will be obligated to provide coverage at no cost.
Essentially, religious groups will still be mandated to offer plans that cover both birth control and the ella abortion drug
According to Obama administration officials on a conference call this morning, a woman’s insurance company “will be required to reach out directly and offer her contraceptive care free of charge. The religious institutions will not have to pay for it.”
The birth control and abortion-causing drugs will simply be “part of the bundle of services that all insurance companies are required to offer,” White House officials said.
So these employers will still have to provide the health insurance, and the health insurance must cover the contraception and abortifacients. The White House apparently wants t pretend that the funds for these outlays will come off of the Unobtanium Tree, where insurers find money to cover all mandates. This exposes once again a stunning ignorance of risk pools and how costs are passed along to consumers.
Let’s just take this one step at a time. Where do insurers get money to pay claims? They collect premiums and co-pays from the insured group or risk pool. No matter what the Obama administration wants to say now, the money that will cover those contraception costs will come from the religious organizations that must now by law buy that insurance and pay those premiums. Their religious doctrines have long-standing prohibitions against participating in contraception and abortion, and nothing in this “accommodation” changes the fact that the government is now forcing them to both fund and facilitate access to products and services that offend their practice of religion.
Basically, the Obama administration told religious organizations to stop complaining and get in line. This “accommodation” only attempts to accommodate Obama’s political standing and nothing more.
Health Insurance used to be needed because one needs to be able to pay for something serious and catastrophic that happens in your life.
Now we have contraceptions... Next, Viagra and Levitra will be considered ‘needs’, mark my words.
Is it any wonder insurance costs don’t go down?
This is baloney.. The catholics will be paying just as before. The cost is in the premium. Does Ozero think people are this dumb.......YES
How does BO just demand that insurance cover this and it suddenly must be so. He’s not a king or dictator last I checked. Does he actually have this kind of power to tell businesses what they can and can’t do with a wave of his wand? I really don’t like this.
(Why not Viagra?)
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That may be in the part that Pelosi said we still have to read.....you know, after we passed it to see what was in it.
Why not my blood pressure medication? I think it’s a little more serious than birth control.
Yes. It's the new normal.
If insurance companies must provide anything without cost, it’s called slavery.
The story inside the story, that to his credit Rush Limbaugh caught, is how Zero has now just assumed the legal ability to simply modify the wording of legislation on a whim. That’s the real issue, not the supposedly revised health coverage “rule”.
“Next, Viagra and Levitra will be considered ‘needs’, mark my words.
Is it any wonder insurance costs don’t go down?”
Because, maybe the above mentioned products tend to, how shall we say, keep it up?
Where can we find authorization in the constitution for any of this?
Yes, that is why Obamacare MUST go!
We've been arguing that the federal govt doesn't have the authority to force someone to purchase something (to force them into commerce).
But, does the federal government have the authority to force a company to sell something, or to provide a service "free of charge"? That's what Obama is doing here, and I think it's just as big a constitutional problem as forcing someone to buy something.
The federal government has the authority to regulate interstate commerce. It does not have the authority to force either an individual or company to engage in commerce.
“If insurance companies must provide anything without cost, it’s called slavery.”
I think that it runs more in the line of extortion. It’s a shakedown any way you cut it.
My small business health insurance premiums went up 40% in January. Thanks Obama.
Next year, when my insurance has to cover contraception, 26 year old children of employees, and everything else that Obama wants to stick into it, I will not be able to afford to provide insurance at all.
This is, of course, the the intended result. Make private health insurance to prohibitively expensive that everyone ends up having to join the government Obamacare single payer plan.
Why not just forbid pharmaceutical companies from charging for birth control agents and forbid doctors and other health care providers from charging for abortions? After all, it is a ‘right.’
There was some woman on Hannity yesterday that was holding on to the shibboleth of “if they cover Viagra, they have to cover birth control”, and she just would not let go of it.
It was her only answer to “why should others be forced to pay for birth control”.
There IS NO EQUIVALENCE between viagra and birth control.
Viagra is a drug that corrects a faulty bodily function.
Birth control takes a system that is in perfect working order and stops it from working.
Seems to me that the main objective of Obamacare was centralized Federal control of all health care in the country. Obama just ran a beta test, and it worked. People strangely object to the infringement on religious freedom, but don’t seem to have a problem otherwise. If the mandate had been for eye tests that would have been fine.
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