Bishops rip HHS mandate That Forces Coverage of Birth Control, Abortion Drugs

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There’s also an amendment to the policy that should please everyone:
The Obama administration released an amendment to the prevention regulation that allows religious institutions offering health insurance to their employees the choice of whether or not to cover contraception services.
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cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/08/01/free.birth.control/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

The new policy is important because it also:
Besides contraceptive use, the list includes free screenings for conditions such as gestational diabetes and the human papillomavirus (HPV), as well as breastfeeding support and counseling on sexually transmitted diseases. The full list is available on the Department of Health and Human Services website.
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Therefore those who want birth control and sterilization can use those benefits, and those who don’t, don’t have to use those benefits. However, everyone can use all the other benefits. Which should make everyone happy because it’s a fair compromise 🙂
 
Rence said:
Therefore those who want birth control and sterilization can use those benefits, and those who don’t, don’t have to use those benefits. However, everyone can use all the other benefits. Which should make everyone happy because it’s a fair compromise 🙂
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I dont know enough about this law. Of course no one does. Those who voted on it had no idea what it really was. But if it is true, and it must be for this to be a socialist solution, that all taxpayers help fund this new system then it is a compromise that compromises belief.

This solution would be different from what is done for the Amish who object to insurance. They neither pay into nor receive Social Security benefits. They are completely outside of the SS system. In this case those who object to these practices on moral grounds would still be contributing to the system. They would just not receive the benefits of the system. Those who object would be forced to pay for a policy they find morally offensive.
 
I think there’s too much government interference here and it will only cause insurance premiums to go up. What’s next, mandatory coverage of botox treatments and sex-change operations, and will I be forced to foot the bill through increased insurance rates? Why can’t I choose a bare-bones insurance plan for myself, one that doesn’t include any coverage for birth control pills, abortions, sex ed, sex change, and so on, but one that will also be really inexpensive precisely because it doesn’t cover all that extra stuff that I don’t need, and I don’t want to subsidize with my own money for others to use? Why doesn’t the government leave us alone, why does it keep forcing stuff on us that we don’t want and don’t need at all?
 
exnihilo said:
In this case those who object to these practices on moral grounds would still be contributing to the system. They would just not receive the benefits of the system. Those who object would be forced to pay for a policy they find morally offensive.
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Yeah, it’s going to force us to subsidize, through increased insurance rates, other people’s medicines and procedures to prevent conceiving and abort their babies. It’s morally reprehensible, and yet another form of moral subjugation and financial exploitation by the government. I think it’s high time to throw these bums out from Washington DC.
 
Yeah I saw the other thread just started about this in the World News subforum. Funny that even the Catholic Obamapologists are still trying to rationalize how this is okay this somehow. Well, not so much “funny” as completely expected.
 
This solution would be different from what is done for the Amish who object to insurance. They neither pay into nor receive Social Security benefits. They are completely outside of the SS system. In this case those who object to these practices on moral grounds would still be contributing to the system. They would just not receive the benefits of the system. Those who object would be forced to pay for a policy they find morally offensive.
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This needs to be challenged in court, and hopefully Catholics and others opposed to the evils of abortion and contraception can gain a full “opt-out” legal exemption/protection along the lines of what the Amish have with Social Security.

Of course, I hope some of the other currently ongoing legal challenges result in “Obamacare” being struck down entirely.

One issue that may be it’s undoing is the entire process of “waivers”. The legislature passes the law. The executive enforces them. At least that’s what I learned in civics class. Now the executive branch has assumed an authority unto itself that allows it to decide who has to follow the law and who doesn’t (with a not cooincidental connection to campaign contributions/political support for the executive). Equal Justice Under the Law?
 
Dan_Daly said:
This needs to be challenged in court, and hopefully Catholics and others opposed to the evils of abortion and contraception can gain a full “opt-out” legal exemption/protection along the lines of what the Amish have with Social Security.

Of course, I hope some of the other currently ongoing legal challenges result in “Obamacare” being struck down entirely.

One issue that may be it’s undoing is the entire process of “waivers”. The legislature passes the law. The executive enforces them. At least that’s what I learned in civics class. Now the executive branch has assumed an authority unto itself that allows it to decide who has to follow the law and who doesn’t (with a not cooincidental connection to campaign contributions/political support for the executive). Equal Justice Under the Law?
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It’s clear that the most economically efficient health systems in the world are public, germany, japan, etc… They spend a fraction of the money that we do as a percentage of GDP, in real dollars per insured… just about any measure, and yet they adequately insure 100% of their populations, while we cover approximately 45%-70% depending on what you consider to be adequate health coverage. So, if your goal is good health care for everyone, then the choice is obvious.

The challenge we face is that the insurance lobby wrote our healthcare reform bill, instead of those who are interested in good healthcare. There are some consumer protection provisions which are significant, but the big plum goes to the insurance companies by requiring everyone to buy insurance. This is rather astounding. Imagine owning a business, and having the Federal Govt legislate that every citizen must buy your product?

The difficulty with an opt out system is that those who think it is a great idea generally change their minds in the trauma center when they don’t have insurance and also don’t want to die or remain in misery, perhaps maimed, etc… I recently met a guy who had a major cardiac event. He had no insurance. The bill for the first three weeks was approximately $425,000. He is not worried. The state is picking up the tab. He lucked out in the sense that he has no assets, so he got a full ride on the taxpayer.

With respect to the OT, one must keep in mind that our society is plural. Different people will make different medical choices. Therefore, it makes sense to pay for legitimate medical care, even if a Catholic might make a different personal choice. The reference to botox and sex change is specious because the research shows that gender change recipients are not usually improved psychologically by the operation. That is why Stanford stopped performing them. With botox, it is paid for, for medical and not for cosmetic purposes.
 
Why is 100% of the population covered with health insurance the goal?

There are a sizable number of people who make a reasonable decision that they don’t WANT health insurance. Primarily, young, single men. A young healthy man doesn’t need to go to the doctors often. May an emergency happen? Sure. But if he doesn’t have a family depending on him, he may be willing to weigh that risk and decide saving what he would pay for insurance and possibly having to pay out of pocket if something does come up makes more sense. Why must health insurance be forced on someone who does not want it? Others may not want it for religious reasons- either out of an opposition to insurance all together or an opposition to supporting certain practices (abortion, contraception, etc). Again, why force a program on those who do not want it? Is someone so-called “right” to affordable health insurance great enough that it overides another’s right to religious freedom, simply to get an alleged cost reduction?

What is “legitimate medical care” that might disagree with Catholic teaching? Does it include abortion and contraception?

I will also disagree that state run health insurance is the most effecient and cost effective kind. Why do so many people from other countries come to the US for care? Government is very rarely more efficient at anything then private individuals and groups. If “cost” is brought down by denying care to those who are too “costly”, is the supposed savings in dollars worth the expenditure in lives and quality of life?
 
The difficulty with an opt out system is that those who think it is a great idea generally change their minds in the trauma center when they don’t have insurance and also don’t want to die or remain in misery, perhaps maimed, etc… I recently met a guy who had a major cardiac event. He had no insurance. The bill for the first three weeks was approximately $425,000. He is not worried. The state is picking up the tab.
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Thank you for exposing (one of) the great lies behind “Obamacare”- that there are all these people out there who can’t get care in the US. Before Obamacare, if you went to the emergency room…you got treated. No insurance…you still got treated. “Universal coverage” for emergencies already existed.
 
exnihilo said:
I dont know enough about this law. Of course no one does. Those who voted on it had no idea what it really was. But if it is true, and it must be for this to be a socialist solution, that all taxpayers help fund this new system then it is a compromise that compromises belief.

This solution would be different from what is done for the Amish who object to insurance. They neither pay into nor receive Social Security benefits. They are completely outside of the SS system. In this case those who object to these practices on moral grounds would still be contributing to the system. They would just not receive the benefits of the system. Those who object would be forced to pay for a policy they find morally offensive.
Click to expand...
But the provision is not in the law itself. The provision is enacted under the regulatory power given her in the law by Kathleen Sebelius, acting on a commision recommendation. The greatest ability of the Federal Government to do evil lies not in the power to legislate, but in the power to issue regulations, which of course, are not subject to a vote.
 
Rock_Happy said:
[It’s clear that the most economically efficient health systems in the world are public, germany, japan, etc… They spend a fraction of the money that we do as a percentage of GDP, in real dollars per insured… just about any measure, and yet they adequately insure 100% of their populations, while we cover approximately 45%-70% depending on what you consider to be adequate health coverage].
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Economically efficient does not mean best health care ! How many new pharmaceuticls are developed in Germany & Japan vs the USA ? Whose medical devices industry is more developed and productive ? Those countries also spend less on their own national defense . I notice you didn’t mention Canada . Last summer , the president of the Canadian Medical Association declared publicly that the Canadian Health Care System is BROKEN ! I don’t want a single payer system , which is what you seem to want . Besides as a veteran , you already have access to the VA .

And why do you conflate a lack of health insurance to a lack of health care ? No one can be denied health care at a US hospital emergency room !

Barry Care will ruin medicine in the USA . My physician ( an Internist and a Cardiologist ) discouraged his daughter from going to Med. School , she is going to Vet School now . Physicians in their 50’s will leave the practice of medicine . The best and brightest students will avoid medicine ! Barry and the left do not value medicine . The Democrat party should have passed an " Affordable Legal Care " bill 1st , so they could have demonstrated their sincerity & good will ! What do you think the Trial Lawyer"s Association would have said about that proposal ?
[but the big plum goes to the insurance companies by requiring everyone to buy insurance. This is rather astounding. Imagine owning a business, and having the Federal Govt legislate that every citizen must buy your product?]
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The private insurance companies did not vote for this bill , besides , they will wind up getting hosed in the long run because Barry and the Democrats have an ultimate goal of a single payer system. Mandating these services drives premiums up and employers stop offering health insurance . Then the employer pays a modest annual fee ( 750 Dollars per year , I believe – but correct me if I’m wrong ) and winds up paying less than if they offered their own health insurance coverage .
[With respect to the OT, one must keep in mind that our society is plural. Different people will make different medical choices. Therefore, it makes sense to pay for legitimate medical care, even if a Catholic might make a different personal choice. The reference to botox and sex change is specious because the research shows that gender change recipients are not usually improved psychologically by the operation. That is why Stanford stopped performing them. With botox, it is paid for, for medical and not for cosmetic purposes.]
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Really , since when are contraception , abortifacients and sterilization " Legitimate Medical Care " ? Since when is fertility a disease ? How does an embryo "earn " the death penalty ? What is that embryo " guilty " of ? Really , sterilization should be mandated medical coverage according to the federal govt . ? This isn’t the federal govt.'s business ! How is this different than the federal govt . telling Ford Motor Co . what vehicles they should offer ? Can Barry tell Ford they have to make school buses and step vans ( I use them because I don’t think Ford currently makes them ) ?

Health insurance policies are in the purview of state govt . , not federal ! What business does Washington have telling every Private Insurance carrier in all 50 states what services they MUST provide , AND DO IT FOR FREE( i.e. , neither charge for them , or demand deductibles or co-pays ) ??? BARRY still thinks there is a FREE lunch !! But what should we expect from a community organizer ( especially one who crawled up ACORN’s fanny ) ? Why isn’t this an infringement of the 10th Amendment ?

So let me get this straight RockHappy , you are just fine with Catholic Hospitals , Schools , Universities ,service organizations and dioceses being MANDATED with purchasing Insurace policies that MUST cover , Contraceptives , Abortifacients AND Sterlization services ? You support this ? You do realize that the Barry Administration is giving us the choice of either sinning or dropping insurance coverage ( but you know the $750 fee for the fed . govt . policy will cover the same services , don’t you ) ?

This administration is Totalitarian at heart , but why shouldn’t it be ? The LEFT has always been Totalitarian !
 
Dan_Daly said:
Thank you for exposing (one of) the great lies behind “Obamacare”- that there are all these people out there who can’t get care in the US. Before Obamacare, if you went to the emergency room…you got treated. No insurance…you still got treated. “Universal coverage” for emergencies already existed.
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actually, that is a misconception. an emergeny room is legally required to stabilize the patient and not one iota more of treatment. i know of several cases first hand of cases of motorcycle accidents and such where limbs were set and splinted, road rash cleaned up and the patient shown the door. the reason i found out about them is when they came in again with infections and serious complications for lack of care. in one case case the use of the elbow was reduced by about 60% permanently. the initial repair was made by the chief orthopedist at one of the more prestigious medical centers. but the “universal coverage” which you claim exists did not cover followup care. so a 19 year old man lost the use of his right elbow for life. would you like 100 or 1,000 similar stories or how well our universal care is? how about 50,000? this is not a small problem.

we may disagree on how to do it best, but i hope that as Christians we can agree that our health care system is not working for a large number of people, and that the charitable thing to do is to find a solution. every other advanced country can do it as lower cost than we do, and provide better coverage. we should be able to learn from their mistakes and come up with a pretty good system while saving money at the same time.

the private insurers will lose out. but i think that i OK. they are a big part of the problem.
 
Obama administration holds to birth control insurance rule, gives religious groups more time to comply

The Obama administration will allow religious organizations a one-year delay before they must comply with a new rule requiring employers that offer workers health insurance to include access to contraception with no out-of-pocket cost, according to people familiar with the decision.

But the rule itself and the employers covered by it remain unchanged. This is likely to disappoint religious groups such as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which had lobbied hard for a permanent exemption for employers that consider birth control a violation of their religious beliefs. Women’s advocates greeted the decision with relief, because they had feared the administration was planning to significantly broaden the list of groups exempt from the requirement.

The rule, first proposed by the administration in August, does exempt employers whose primary purpose is to inculcate religious values and that mainly employ and serve individuals who share those values. However, the bishops argued that this definition was too narrow — excluding a wide range of religious universities, hospitals and schools that do not currently offer birth control coverage.

Under the arrangement to be announced Friday, insitutions that do currently offer contraception — including many Catholic universities and hospitals — will not be eligible for the one-year waiver.

washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/obama-administration-holds-to-birth-control-insurance-rule-but-gives-religious-groups-more-time-to-comply/2012/01/20/gIQAR84nDQ_story.html

The arrogance of this administration! Archbishop Timonthy Dolon visited Obama, and obviously nothing regarding religious freedom got through to Obama.
 
Michael Sean Winters reaction:
  • One sentence in the statement from HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius stands out: “The administration remains fully committed to its partnerships with faith-based organizations, which promote healthy communities and serve the common good.”
Code: 
What can those words “fully committed” possibly mean? They have punched Sr. Carol Keehan and Fr. Jenkins and many other Catholics who have taken shots for this Administration in the nose. They have jumped over the First Amendment to coerce religious organizations to do something we find morally objectionable. They have given people who loved the Affordable Care Act reason for pause, great pause. They have given the Republicans a huge battering ram with which to beat swing voting Catholics over the head.

I say “they,” but the full responsibility for this decision rests with the President. NCR has learned that the President called Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, this morning to tell him the news. Wouldn’t you have liked to be on an extension to listen in on that conversation. The president looked Dolan in the eye in November and said he would be pleased with his decision. I am guessing that Dolan is not pleased. He is not alone.*
Comments from Thomas Peters:

Winters is right that this decision is a huge blow to liberal Catholics who have tried to cover for Obama. But Winters is wrong that the President’s decision comes as any sort of surprise. Of course Obama would throw his liberal Catholics supporters under the bus to please his leftist secular supporters. Obama’s wedding with liberal Catholics has always been one of convenience and he just filed the divorce papers. I therefore find it hard to sympathize with liberal Catholics who are shocked by this decision, because I’ve been warning for years that their relationship with Obama was bound to end in heartbreak.

I do, however, respect Winters for being right to stand up for religious liberty and criticize a President he supported as a candidate. For that I applaud him and I hope that more liberal Catholics acknowledge how foolish they have been to support Obama’s anti-Catholic policies. I urge them to join me and other Catholics in common cause to begin to address this deplorable state of affairs.

catholicvote.org/discuss/index.php?p=25190
 
Archbishop Dolan: “How about letting our elected leaders know that we want religious liberty and rights of conscience restored and the administration’s mandate rescinded. We can’t afford to strike out on this one.”

More…
 
Attack On Life, Religious Freedom: Obama Kills Conscience Exemption in Contraception Mandate, RC Bishops Ready for Court Battle

Occassionally, despite their embrace of Alinskyite groups, the U.S. Catholic Bishops get something right. Last August, they wrote against Obama’s universal contraception mandate, and called for meaningful conscience exemptions (emphasis mine):

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) sharply criticized a new HHS “preventive services” mandate requiring private health plans to cover female surgical sterilization and all drugs and devices approved by the FDA as contraceptives, including drugs which can attack a developing unborn child before and after implantation in the mother’s womb…

Cardinal DiNardo [stated,] “Could the federal government possibly intend to pressure Catholic institutions to cease providing health care, education and charitable services to the general public? Health care reform should expand access to basic health care for all, not undermine that goal”…

Former Planned Parenthood director Norman Fleishman has approvingly stated that Obama’s birth control mandate, together with Communist China’s one-child policy, is a good start towards the goal of implementing massive population control…

Whatever the intent, the Obama administration’s actions will very likely be harmful to Catholic and other Christian institutions, including hospitals, schools, and adoption agencies. The situation is all the more dire as today the Obama administration rejected the conscience protections that the Bishops were asking for…

lexflyingfish.blogspot.com/2012/01/attack-on-life-religious-freedom-obama.html
 
Joseph_L_Varga said:
I think there’s too much government interference here and it will only cause insurance premiums to go up. What’s next, mandatory coverage of botox treatments and sex-change operations, and will I be forced to foot the bill through increased insurance rates? Why can’t I choose a bare-bones insurance plan for myself, one that doesn’t include any coverage for birth control pills, abortions, sex ed, sex change, and so on, but one that will also be really inexpensive precisely because it doesn’t cover all that extra stuff that I don’t need, and I don’t want to subsidize with my own money for others to use? Why doesn’t the government leave us alone, why does it keep forcing stuff on us that we don’t want and don’t need at all?
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Because with respect to the hope and change Obama promised, the change to socialism requires government control of our every move. It’s all about controlling the people…from what they eat to what they may say and what they cannot say. (hate crime) It’s all about the control.
 
This once again demonstrates the Obama Administration’s contempt for religion in general and Catholicism in particular. Catholic institutions will be forced to provide contraceptive coverage with no copays, including Plan B. Catholic institutions must pay for practices which violate core doctrines or be forced out of business.
 
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