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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')?"
Or (and here's a silly idea) implement single-payer.
The fundamental problem here is that the government has coupled health care and employers together. For some strange reason, the ACA did not fix this problem. We need to decouple health care and employers by eliminating the tax break that employers get. If we do that, then we'll no longer care what health care plan our employer offers, just as we don't care what car insurance plan our employer offers.
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.
In a modern healthcare system, prevention is preferred over treatment when possible, and it's generally cheaper. A healthcare system that covers only treatment but no prevention is... poorly designed, with perverse incentives that encourage people to never see a doctor or do anything about their health (because it's expensive) right up until the point that they're in the emergency room, and then we cover that. Which is precisely what people in the U.S. do (and what people nowhere else do, because no rational person would prefer going to the ER over seeing a GP, all else being equal).
The other nice aspect of integrated health coverage is no goddamn billing and trying to screw you over with fine print.
I used to live in the U.S., and the billing there is insane and bureaucratic. If you go to the hospital once, for one day for an outpatient procedure, you will receive bills for months afterwards. The hospital itself, the anesthesiologist, the attending physician, the surgeon, the equipment, any drugs used, everything is billed separately and uncoordinated. Half of the bills are wrongly coded and your insurance denies them, requiring hours on the phone to correct. Nobody can tell you ahead of time what the price is, and what your out-of-pocket cost will be. It's a huge mess and extremely unpleasant for everyone except the useless paper-pushers it keeps in business.
Now I live in Denmark. If you go to the hospital, here is what happens: you go to the hospital, you have the procedure, and you leave. If appropriate, you have follow-up visits. At no point do you receive a bill or have to spend hours on the phone arguing with petty bureaucrats.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I've heard it explained thusly: if car insurance worked like health insurance, then every time you put gas in your tank, got an oil change, bought tires, etc., you would file a claim.
If it worked like the UK National Health Service, all those things would be free at the point of delivery.
Everyone would pay for it in general taxation. But that amount added to taxation would be only 40% of what American's pay for their health insurance. And the payments would be progressive (more paid by the rich, less or nothing paid by the poor).
I'm glad someone else beside me said it first.
What these people don't seem to understand: Just because your health insurance covers contraception, doesn't mean you're required to obtain and use it! These people who are going on and on about their so-called "faith"? How about they consider this a test of their "faith" to not obtain or purchase it instead of jamming their fucking "faith" down everyone else's throats!
Women have a right to have control over their own bodies. Get over it already and move on.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
That's rewriting history slightly. Was it "rammed through" the Senate? Certainly. Though, if memory serves, the House was under Republican control at the time. Also, for the last goddamn time, the ACA is not a *leftist* law. The "left" is still pissed at Obama and Congress about getting knifed in the back over a public option. The ACA started life on the right at the Heritage Foundatrion in 1989. It's a testament to how hard the right worked throughout the '90s and the aughts to drag the country their way that the ACA became centrist enough for Obama to latch onto it like a limpet.
What does this button d$#%* NO CARRIER
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.
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
So your saying that despite the constitution, as long as i consider it 'morally wrong' then i can go out of my way to not pay for it. Whoohoo, im going to call IRS and tell them out of all my taxes, i dont want one penny to go to bombs, wars, or anything that can be used to kill anyone.
Lets put it in a differnt term, They pay people with cash that can be used for anything, drugs, booze, whores...basically anything the church morraly objects to they hand over pieces of paper that allow that kind of behavior. Is the next stop going to argue they dont need to pay employees because of what they can do with cash?
Healthcare is a payment, They could just pay the fine and force employees to get heath insurance from the exchanges and BOOM..its out of there hands. This is not about stopping it, its about religious oppressment, something the cathcolic church is quite good at, and quite fond of.
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
I don't want to fund a *lot* of things my federal tax funds on moral grounds, I still have to pay it.
Sorry, I don't have a lot of sympathy here. If they get to weasel out of buying contraceptives on moral grounds, then I get to decide where my income tax money is spent on moral grounds. No special privileges.
Comment of the year
wrong.
this is about religious organizations with employees with the same religious values. here's a pro-tip, don't work for a religious organization if you don't hold their beliefs.
Wrong. The argument is not that religious *organizations* ought to have some special privilege, it's that employers in general have a right not to cover medical treatments they disagree with.
Medical treatment choices should be matters of *personal* conscience. The Church has every right to teach its opinions to anyone it pleases; it has no right to force its opinions about legal, private behavior on its employees, or to punish them for their purely private behavior.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
I find drones "repugnant". In fact, my religious beliefs demand that I not participate or support such indiscriminate killing.
Do I get to take a pro-rated reduction in the amount of taxes I pay so I don't have to violate my faith and support this repugnant activity?
That's first. Second is that the religious organization or corporation or employer in question is not really paying for the insurance. It's part of the compensation of the employee. That means when the insurance is purchased, it is done so with money that has been earned by the employee. There is no direct payment for birth control or any of the stuff that the Church finds icky. Unless you think those benefits are provided out of the goodness of the hearts of the organizations. No, they do it as part of the compensation package. They're not buying health insurance for anyone who doesn't work there.
Finally, can a corporation really have a religion? Let's be clear: the employers in this case are not religious institutions. They are corporations formed by the religious institutions. Paychecks aren't being signed by the bishop or any religious figure.
But I would think that allowing religious groups to have special exemption from certain laws based upon their beliefs is going to be a road that at least five of the Supreme Court justices will not go down.
After all, we all have religious objections to paying taxes, no? You want to open that can of worms?
You are welcome on my lawn.