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US Justice Blocks Implementation of ACA Contraceptive Mandate
theodp writes "First approved for contraceptive use in the U.S. in 1960, 'The Pill' is currently used by more than 100 million women worldwide and by almost 12 million women in the U.S. But just hours before the Affordable Care Act was to go into effect, Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a stay temporarily blocking a mandate requiring health insurance coverage of birth control, and gave the Obama administration until Friday to respond to the Supreme Court on the matter. Sotomayor's order applies to a group of nuns, the Little Sisters of the Poor, and other Roman Catholic nonprofit groups that use the same health plan, known as the Christian Brothers Employee Benefit Trust (PDF). The group is one of many challenging the federal requirement for contraceptive coverage, but a decision on the merits of that case by the full Supreme Court could have broader implications. One imagines Melinda Gates is none too pleased. So, will U.S. health care require a Department of Personal Belief Exemptions that are dictated by employers (PDF, 'The Trustees of CBEBT and the management of Christian Brothers Services are dedicated to protecting the employers participating in the CBEBT from having to face the choice of violating their faith or violating the law')?"
They need to quit acting like spoiled brats when they're told to get the fuck in line with an ethical society.
In an ethical society, citizens should have a right to petition their government for a redress of grievances. If the administration had properly responded, instead of stonewalling, then this stay would not have been necessary.
Religious people can't simply leave it well enough alone, and just say "Well if you think contraception is wrong, just don't buy it." Instead, they have to dictate to others what they may or may not do. "We can't allow you to get contraception through our health plan!"
This kind of thinking is wrong and needs to be abolished. Let each person decide what they think is best for themselves. If someone wants to believe a person will "go to hell" if they do something, that's fine. That someone can simply not do it. But don't try to legislate or make it more difficult for others to do what they like to do, provided they're not hurting others.
Yet you clicked on the link and read the article. You sure seem to be big on reading things you don't want to read. Are you a masochist? :)
By that logic you should also exempt organ transplants, blood transfusions and any other medical procedure that any group, religious or otherwise, objects to. In other words, you might as well give the fuck up and stop providing any coverage at all.
You either have healthcare or you don't. No picking and choosing what procedures or medications fit your chosen lifestyle.
A) This is supposedly about health *insurance*. Insurance is for contingent, unlikely, but potentially costly events. Contraception is none of those, being completely knowable, 100% predictable, and inexpensive.
B) In the olden days, by which I mean pre-Obamacare, you could indeed "pick and choose" what procedures and medications your policy would cover. It's the central conceit of Obamacare that Big Fed knows best and is going to make sure you get it, pounded down your gullet if necessary.
Everyone can get access to as much healthcare as they want. This simply is a determination of whether very specific religious organizations are required by law to pay for something they find unethical. Just because something isn't covered by insurance doesn't mean it is denied to them. They must simply pay for it on their own. This isn't something that even costs that much.
10 minutes working on a sig. What a waste.
Contraception is something that allows you to manage the unexpected.
> In the olden days, by which I mean pre-Obamacare, you could indeed "pick and choose" what procedures and medications your policy would cover.
In other words, there are no standards and no concept of consumer protection. Corporations are just free to run roughshod over you. This could be your fundie employer or your crass insurance company that has an obvious conflict of interest.
You have no clue about Guilded Age you seem to long for so much.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It's lucky then that churches don't pay taxes, or they'd have to fund the wars the rest of us have to pay for - whether we agree with them or not.
Technically, you are free to work for any employer or no employer at all. You are also free to buy contraception (or organ transplants on your own). You are free to buy your own insurance as well. The problem is that you disagree with your employer on a benefit that they are paying for. Just like any other employer policy, if you do not like it, you are free to leave (or in this case buy your own). If the religious convictions of your employer bothers you, whether they are right or wrong, technically no one is holding a gun to your head to work there.
Please, please, for the love of debate, never again accuse somebody of committing the "straw man fallacy" when in fact they have not.
You have committed what is now called the Straw Man Fallacy Fallacy. That's when you commit a fallacy by accusing a fellow debater of having engaged in straw man fallacy when they have not.
And please refrain from ad hominem attacks upon other people here. Please do not call other people here "assholes", for instance, just because they advocate an idea that you personally disagree with. That is very poor debating style.
This is not reddit. We engage in intelligent discourse here, like mature adults. Please apologize, refrain from engaging in immature behavior in the future, and we can then all move on to more important discussion.
The next step is for CEO of BIGCOMPANY to decide that cancer is something decided by God, and that paying for their employees to get treatment to cancer violates their religious beliefs.
Health insurance is weird and not traditional insurance in that sense. Health insurance also covers things like routine medical checkups and dental cleanings with little or no out-of-pocket cost to you, even though those too are completely knowable, predictable, and inexpensive. But of course you realize that.
I've heard it explained thusly: if car insurance worked like health insurance, then every time you put gas in your tank, got an oil change, bought tires, etc., you would file a claim.
And if it worked that way, car insurance would be ridiculously expensive.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
It all gets very complicated. It can work the other way too - there are plenty of companies which are clearly commercial entities, but happen to be owned and run by people of very strong faith. Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby have made headlines last year over just such a scenario. A broad religious exemption can quickly turn into a situation where believers are 'above the law' - able to simply declare that it doesn't apply to them when convenient.
Yet we get presented with totally irrelevant crap like this.
This story is less than an hour old and has 100+ comments. Below it is a 'tech' story that's nearly six hours old that has under 40. Seems to me this topic is of interest to the Slashdot crowd, and the Slashdot overlords are doing their job.
Why isn't a vasectomy or condoms covered by Obamacare? There's nothing in the law that specifies contraception coverage is female-only.
I'm glad someone else beside me said it first.
What these people don't seem to understand: Just because your health insurance covers contraception, doesn't mean you're required to obtain and use it! These people who are going on and on about their so-called "faith"? How about they consider this a test of their "faith" to not obtain or purchase it instead of jamming their fucking "faith" down everyone else's throats!
Women have a right to have control over their own bodies. Get over it already and move on.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
This entire argument is completely skewed, it shouldn't be blocked due to religious considerations, it should be blocked based on the fact that government is dictating to the employers and employees as to how employers pay their employees! Where is the freedom? Where is the freedom to associate, freedom of contract? Where is freedom to run private property as one sees fit? Why are you all accepting as a fact that government can dictate to employers and employees must be paid in contraceptives rather than in cash?
The second valid argument is of-course the fact that government is dictating that insurance cannot BE insurance but instead must be some form of prepaid health management system.
What do contraceptives have to do with catastrophic events that insurance is supposed to cover? Why are contraceptives any more special than food or clothing or machine oil or fuel or housing for that matter?
Insurance is a bet that some event will take place and actuary science is used to calculate the probability of events based on individual participant's and then the bets are placed. What does it have to do with events that are of near 100% probability (that women will have sex?) Insurance is not there to provide you with every day items, in fact insurance shouldn't even cover child birth - it's an EXPECTED event, not an unexpected one, it's an event that people must prepare for and they even know with almost complete certainty when exactly this will happen and they must plan for it.
Medical complications during child birth might be covered by insurance but child birth itself is simply an expected procedure that should be paid OUT OF POCKET just like most doctor visits and most other things, like birth control.
The real issue is that it is a question of individual freedom, not a question of religious prejudice.
You can't handle the truth.
In other words, there are no standards and no concept of consumer protection. Corporations are just free to run roughshod over you. This could be your fundie employer or your crass insurance company that has an obvious conflict of interest.
Since when is consumer choice allowing corporations "to run roughshod over you"? So, in order to fix your non-existing problem, you are forcing people to pay for something they neither want nor need. In essence, in order to prevent corporations from running "roughshod over you", you are allowing government to run "roughshod over you". Wouldn't it have made more sense to pass a law that says insurance companies must offer contraceptive coverage to the customers that want it? That way, you protect the consumer while still preserving their freedom of choice.
Rather than considering to a religious thing, think of it from a liberal point of view; you are forcing gay men to pay for contraception and maternity coverage that they obviously don't need.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Yeah, it really sucks to have to cover treatments that nobody in your church winds up using. E.g., if nobody in your church gets cancer this year, why the hell did the church have to pay for coverage of cancer? It's just a waste of money, right?
The whole point of health "insurance" is to spread the costs out so that everybody who needs medicine can get it, without breaking the bank for anybody. It's not so that we can each pick and choose what risks we choose to pay for. Oh, "contraceptives" aren't a risk? Incorrect. The hormones in birth control pills are used to treat a variety of health issues. Writing a health plan so that it excludes paying for particular medicines is antithetical to the goal of universal health coverage. It's making a petty point, at great expense to those who might need the medicine, because you, a supposed Christian, care more about winning than you do about caring for the sick. I'm pretty sure that's not what Jesus would do.
My response to them would be:
"If this were a matter of the employers chosing for themselves, plaintiffs would have a valid point. If this were a matter of plans churches were offering to their clergy, plaintiffs would have a valid point. But this is a case where the employers in question are not making personal choices and are not acting as a church, but are acting as ordinary employers offering coverage to employees who don't necessarily follow the same beliefs as their employer. And an employer does not have the right to dictate to their employees based on the employer's religious beliefs. Plaintiffs aren't asking merely to be allowed to follow their own beliefs. They are asking to be allowed, as an ordinary employer, to say that because they don't believe in X that their employees are not allowed access to X either. If plaintiffs arguments are valid, then it would be acceptable for a business run by a Jehova's Witness to offer coverage that forbade treatments involving blood transfusion simply because the business owner followed that belief system. And we don't permit that. We don't allow a business owner to force his employees to follow his beliefs just because they work for him. We don't allow him to say "Profess to follow my beliefs or you won't be allowed access to health insurance.". To allow that wouldn't be freedom of religion, it would be the antithesis of freedom of religion."
This is another very good example why a single payer system is better. Is it any of your employers business if you are using contraceptives? I would say no - even if you are a nun. With a single payer system only you and your doctor know what medical treatments you are using.
Anarchists never rule
As a Canadian, it seems that the only policy the Republicans have is "vote no to anything Obama or any Democrat proposes". We don't care that Obama won the presidential election, we will thwart the will of the people for our rich masters. We will do our best to raise taxes on the poor and middle class while giving the rich tax breaks. We will reduce food stamps to the poor. We will do our best to ensure the middle class have the worst access to health care of any western nation. We will continue to show we say we are Christians while doing exactly the opposite of what Jesus preached.
That last bit of hypocrisy is particularly galling.
Anarchists never rule
It is long past the time when any religion should expect the government to take any notice of its beliefs in a secular society. A secular society should ignore religion because if you don't, how do you draw the line? Should I be allowed to stone my neighbor to death if he doesn't observe the Sabbath? Allow my child to die from an easily cured malady because I believe in faith healing?
Religion has no place in making the laws of a secular nation.
Anarchists never rule
The Democrats had the majority, but the Republican's used the pseudo-filibuster bullshit to prevent any legislation from passing. When they realized that the ACA they let slip through was much bigger for Obama than they expected, after major negotiations neutering it and in-fact supporting the individual mandate as a compromise, they panicked and since then just "filibuster" instead of trying to negotiate on everything. (Saying your negotiating and compromising when its 'my way or the highway' every fucking time even after concessions are made by Democrats on the various legislation pieces does not actually equal negotiating and compromising).
The Dems had majority, but the Reps used the loopholes to command the power like they were the majority. That's why people can be confused about it.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The insurance provider is required by law to provide coverage for contraception, but it's still free to charge what it wants for that coverage based on risk. Why don't they create a plan which they offer only to specific groups people where that plan still provides coverage for contraception/maternity/etc, based on a vastly reduced risk factor. The risk of a nun wanting contraception is very small, but not non-existent I'm guessing. The risks of a nun needing maternity care are slightly higher (e.g. in cases of rape, where the nun would never choose to abort or prevent pregnancy with a morning after pill). The point being, because the risks are low, the insurance provider can say: Hey, on our plan, you won't pay for cover of contraceptives, maternity, family planning etc, but we will still provide the cover if it happens, because the risk is so low the cover can be paid for out of a little bit of the general risk pool. Every insurance provider manages has a general risk pool, where they aggregate all the possible events that occur so infrequently as to be entirely stochastic over the time periods in question, for example, a year, 5 years etc. They just can't plan for covering the expenses down that level of risk detail, because the stats don't work at such low frequencies. I'm sure there will be cases, but very rarely, in which maternity care and even possibly contraception might be medically necessary for someone who hasn't acted against their faith. Again, the case of rape springs to mind, but there's also the use of oral contraceptives to deal with disease related hormonal imbalances, and probably others.
There are sensible ways to do this where faith doesn't need to be compromised, so yeah, this is about a certain group of people trying to enforce their own way on other people. Cristian Scientists refuse a wide variety of modern medical procedures becasue it goes against their faith. Will they get to challenge mandatory health care in it's entirety?
Religion A says that pill X is against their religion. Insurance company is a Religion A organization, but government says that Insurance company cannot refuse to give pill X regardless of what they believe. In short, the government has decided that you must provide a service you believe is immoral.
Jehovah's Witnesses believe that blood transfusions are immoral. Christian Scientists believe that most modern medicine is immoral. The Church of the Holy Buck believes that any treatment that negatively affects the bottom line is immoral. Should all of those be allowed to refuse to pay for any of them? If a religious organisation finds that it is immoral to perform a particular service, then they are welcome to get out of the business of providing that service.
No one is forcing churches to be in the insurance business and I can cite several passages from the bible, including quotes from Jesus and St. Paul that indicate that they shouldn't them. If they want to be religions, they can have any crazy rules that they want. If they want to be businesses, then they have to abide by the rules that apply to businesses.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
...shut down your business. Seriously, if these convictions are truly heartfelt, then the rational thing to do is to sell/get out of the business. (I'm thinking about the Hobby Lobby case here, more than anything else.)
I personally know a Quaker or two who intentionally keep their earnings below the taxable level, so they won't have to pay federal income taxes - and therefore indirectly support war. This causes them a great deal of personal hardship, but... hey, havin' principles isn't always easy.
As an American, it has become increasingly clear that neither side has a real agenda outside of protecting the interests of their financiers (big business on one side and unions/the entertainment industry on the other). Both sides choose a handful of issues to rattle their sabers about during elections, but neither actually want to get what they argue for or they will have to find something new to stir people up with.
Obama ran on a platform of protecting civil liberties and then stood up in front of the nation and defended the NSA spying on each and every citizen. Bush ran on a platform of fiscal conservatism and then spent far more than his predecessor.
Modern American politics consists of distracting the public while you sell their rights to whoever funded your campaign. Championing one side or the other is naive.
you can get the pill for about 20 bucks a month, When I was younger and my girlfriend and I became sexually active, I drive her to go get them, it was no big deal. Sorry, but something like that is in no way needed to be paid for by insurance, If you cant afford 20 bucks a month for the pill, or use free condoms that you can get damn near anywhere, maybe you shouldnt be having sex to begin with.
I want someone to explain to me why its ok that I should pay for other peoples sex drugs? To be fair I dont believe you should be able to get viagra on insurance either
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
So now my plan is gone, I'd have to pay more than four times the amount for a bronze plans that does all sorts stuff I won't use to subsides others. Sorry no fucking thank you.
You seem to be hugely mistaken about how insurance works. We ALL pay into a pool and share the risk so that we individually won't be crushed by the financial burden of an illness. Insurance (even catastrophic coverage) cannot work unless everyone pays for stuff they probably wont need.
I have voluntarily gone uninsured because, the penalties are cheaper and I can always buy a plan for the first time after I have a condition.
You cannot buy a plan after the fact because they do not kick in immediately. Most plans even through the health exchanges take at least 2 weeks (usually more) to take effect and cannot be purchased at any time. In all likelihood you will incur a huge amount of medical bills in the event of an accident or serious illness prior to receiving coverage.
Of course now a catastrophic event might bankrupt me leaving everyone else to pay the costs; something I would have previously felt bad about but now, I see it as hey society tried to pick my pocket first; so screw'em.
You aren't screwing anyone but yourself by being cheap. But enjoy your bankruptcy. I'm sure it will be a lot of fun.
This is like the two people one parachute problem: a hypothetical that you are using to prove a point that is obviously wrong. The point of health coverage is to spread the cost evenly. As a heterosexual male, who apparently is not _actually_ sterile, you are in fact part of the risk pool for pregnancy—it's just someone else who actually has to carry the child. Even if you were not, the point of spreading the cost out is so that people who need health services are able to get them. The lady you assure us you aren't going to get pregnant will never get testicular cancer. But she's paying into the same risk pool, and that's okay—the point is to cover everyone's risk, not to try for some unattainable notion of fairness where the exact costs are calculated down to the last basis point.
The ACA does a lot more than that. It ensures that your children can get insurance up to the age of 25 on your health plan. It ensures that you can't be dropped or bankrupted if you have bad luck with your health. It limits the amount of your premiums that can be spent on things other than delivering health care. It ensures non-discrimination. It's a pretty crappy plan compared to what we progressives actually wanted, but it's definitely an improvement over the status quo. The subsidies are in fact described as and delivered as subsidies, just as you suggest they should be.