Religious freedom--No coverage for out-of-wedlock pregnancy

[Castello]

None of these debates are relevant.

This is about the US CONSTITUTION.

 

[manualman]

kama, that is a fallacious argument. It would be an extremely easy ACTUAL accomodation for HHS to simply require a different coding system for hormonal prescriptions treating an actual medical conditions to differentiate them from contraceptive use prescriptions.

You’re just trying to turn a non-issue into a loophole to drive freight trains through.

 

[StJudePray4Me]

Ahhh, now I understand. I’m sorry, I wasn’t clear, I meant women who were getting health insurance just for themselves, not as a family. Individual vs family? Would that be the right words? So I figured that if a married woman, who I assumed would get a family plan, wasn’t covered for maternity, surely a woman getting insurance just for herself alone would not be covered for maternity.

While the woman is pregnant, she is the patient. Her individual policy would cover all her prenatal care, and she would be listed as the patient on all claim forms.

When the baby is born, that is a “qualifying event” which allows the employee to add the child onto the policy. The employee would then be electing either family coverage or employee + 1 coverage, depending on the way the group policy is structured ( some have three tiers: single, employee + 1, or family; others have 2 tries : single or family).

So the employee would then have coverage for both her and her child. She would begin paying different premiums and the baby would be listed as a separate patient.

I have worked at several companies in HR and there has never been a policy which denied coverage for an unwed mother. In fact, I had employees who had minor children covered, who became pregnant, and then the baby (the employees grandchild) was covered as well.

 

[StJudePray4Me]

There is no need for every insurance plan to be exactly the same. There is no need for every employer’s benefit plan to be exactly the same.

Employees can consider what a plan does or does not cover before deciding whether to work for a particular employer. Some employers offer no health insurance coverage at all. And that number will increase because of the HHS mandate.
It will also increase just because of the fact of Obamacare.

Yes…and as I understand it, a person who works for the Church is not forbidden to take birth control pills…they just don’t want to PAY for them. So the person, if they feel it’s unfair that they have to pay for their pills out of pocket, is free to find another job that will pay for them.

As far as an unmarried woman being pregnant…as I see it, it is the premarital sex that is a sin, not the pregnancy. It’s not a sin to BE pregnant, is it? Because there’s a lot of women out there having premarital sex…is the one who gets pregnant a bigger or worse sinner? I don’t think so.

 

[St_Francis]

While the woman is pregnant, she is the patient. Her individual policy would cover all her prenatal care, and she would be listed as the patient on all claim forms.

When the baby is born, that is a “qualifying event” which allows the employee to add the child onto the policy. The employee would then be electing either family coverage or employee + 1 coverage, depending on the way the group policy is structured ( some have three tiers: single, employee + 1, or family; others have 2 tries : single or family).

So the employee would then have coverage for both her and her child. She would begin paying different premiums and the baby would be listed as a separate patient.

I have worked at several companies in HR and there has never been a policy which denied coverage for an unwed mother. In fact, I had employees who had minor children covered, who became pregnant, and then the baby (the employees grandchild) was covered as well.

Ah, now I understand. Group policies include maternity, but non-group policies don’t unless you have a separate add-on.

 

[Rence]

Is a violation of religious freedom to require that employer insurance plans cover out-of-wedlock pregnancies to the same extent they cover in-wedlock pregnancies? What if the employer has an objection? Is this any different from birth control?

Well that’s a really good question. A religous based employer can really cite anything as a religious issue. We see employees who violate “conscience clauses” in their employment contracts by co-habitating, divorcing/remarrying, and leading a gay lifestyle being fired from Catholic grammar schools. We see girls who get pregnant being expelled from schools in some cases, losing their scholarships to some religious universities, etc. And now some folks are claiming (without any proof) that JWs who own businesses can refuse their employees coverage of blood tranfusions, of all things What is to stop a religious employer from citing '“religous rights” and “conscience protection” by not covering single women who get pregnant out of wedlock? If one can carve out ABCs simply because they don’t want their employees to use the benefits, why can’t they carve out the whole women’s health package for someone who got pregnant out of wedlock?

 

[Rence]

Really? It’s illegal to fire a pregnant woman? What if she’s dipping into the till every night at closing? What if she’s molesting small children? What if she starts calling customers the N-word? I find that very hard to believe.

If she’s dipping into the till every night, she’d be fired for dipping into the till every night. The fact that she is pregnant is irrelevent. If she’s molesting small children, she will be fired for molesting children. The fact that she is pregnant is irrelevent. If she starts calling customers bad names, she will be fired for calling customers bad names. The fact that she is pregnant is irrelevent. However, if she works for a Catholic grammar school or high school, and signed a contract that had a conscience clause in it, she could very well be fired for being pregnant because it violated a term in her contract. If there is no such contract, then yes, it would be illegal to fire her on the basis that she is pregnant and she could file a lawsuit and yes she would win.

 

[vsedriver]

Except the insurer cannot tell if the pill is going to be used for contraception or because of an actual medical indication. Not without the breach of patient-doctor confidentiality anyway.
What you are advocating for here is, essentially, denial of coverage of the whole class of drugs because they have potentially immoral uses.

Why isn’t dental, eye, and hearing coverage mandatory?

Your insurance company knows why you are being prescribed certain drugs. It’s called a ‘diagnosis’. So yes, you can determine who is getting birth control drugs for a medical condition and who is not.

 

[vsedriver]

Also, in Europe, a contract attempting to regulate private sex life of the employee would not only be void, it would be laughed out of court.

But in the USA we have the 1st Amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Europeans can do what they like with religions.

 

[iloveangels]

Why isn’t dental, eye, and hearing coverage mandatory?

Your insurance company knows why you are being prescribed certain drugs. It’s called a ‘diagnosis’. So yes, you can determine who is getting birth control drugs for a medical condition and who is not.

Oh surely you don’t think that insurance companies are all blind to that. They see the coding on your doctor’s slip with the diagnosis. They know. Not only that, they keep track. They have whole departments that keep track of this stuff so they can know the statistics of different diagnoses etc, so they can keep their statistics up to date. Insurance is all about statistics.

The idea that they just pay your bill and don’t look is incredibly simplistic. They do. Medical statistics is part of what they pay for.

 

[Rence]

Why isn’t dental, eye, and hearing coverage mandatory?

Your insurance company knows why you are being prescribed certain drugs. It’s called a ‘diagnosis’. So yes, you can determine who is getting birth control drugs for a medical condition and who is not.

The insurance company knows. The employer cannot due to privacy laws.

 

[iloveangels]

The insurance company knows. The employer cannot due to privacy laws.

Correct. Your employer isn’t supposed to know. And they may not, if you don’t say anything. But people run their mouths too much, and they often do know as a result of that.

Obviously at some point, with a pregnancy, the employer is going to be able to guess. And eventually the woman will have to say. You can’t have the baby at work! In the case that the woman is both pregnant and a bad employee about to be fired anyway, the employer may well err on the safe side, waiting til she delivers and then canning her.

But if she’s a bad enough employee, yes, they could fire her, pregnant or not. She has no protection against scheduled layoffs where a certain number of employees are getting laid off for financial reasons either.

There is no reason to treat her any differently than anyone else. Look, a lot of people have children and dependents to support. Having people dependent on you, including children, is part of an adult life. You’re supposed to manage your own life and have some responsibility. This is part of the responsibility of being an adult human being. You can’t be a child forever, and you shouldn’t want to be. It’s pathological.

 

[jilly4ski]

Ah, now I understand. Group policies include maternity, but non-group policies don’t unless you have a separate add-on.

Actually I don’t know if that is correct. If the group policy covers maternity, then it doesn’t matter if it is single, single+1 or family, they all get covered. (Some married women have single coverage, because it is cheaper to have her covered by her employer and her husband covered by his employer, rather than get a +1 or family plan). But the group policy doesn’t have to cover prenatal coverage, and instead offer a “rider.”

 

[Allegra]

If she’s dipping into the till every night, she’d be fired for dipping into the till every night. The fact that she is pregnant is irrelevent. If she’s molesting small children, she will be fired for molesting children. The fact that she is pregnant is irrelevent. If she starts calling customers bad names, she will be fired for calling customers bad names. The fact that she is pregnant is irrelevent. However, if she works for a Catholic grammar school or high school, and signed a contract that had a conscience clause in it, she could very well be fired for being pregnant because it violated a term in her contract. If there is no such contract, then yes, it would be illegal to fire her on the basis that she is pregnant and she could file a lawsuit and yes she would win.

And yet, there are at least two woman at our parish school who are clearly quite pregnant and neither of them are expecting to be terminated. Let’s be realistic. The hypothetical woman in question is NOT being fired for being pregnant. She is being fired for having sex out of wedlock. The law in question was designed to protect woman from being fired for the sole reason of being pregnant. There are many employers who would be happy to fire a pregnant woman to avoid being stuck with the inconvenience of having to hold her job for her while she takes maternity leave. Those are the women this law was meant to protect. It was never designed to protect a woman’s right to engage in sex with whoever they want.

 

[Allegra]

It’s legal to fire her for a gross misconduct: roydens.co.uk/content19.htm , but not for a reason directly connected with pregnancy. And it’s obvious that having sex is related to pregnancy . There is UK case law about this very situation I linked upthread.

Also, in Europe, a contract attempting to regulate private sex life of the employee would not only be void, it would be laughed out of court.

Having sex isn’t an outcome of the pregnancy. The sex obviously happened first and that is the behavior that is being disciplined. The pregnancy is just the evidence that got her caught. If she got outed in some other way, would it be okay to fire her than? The law was probably meant to prevent employers from firing women for reasons connected to pregnancy, not sex. In other words, it pertains to things that are caused by the pregnancy, not the thing that caused it in the first place. For example, it would be illegal to fire a woman for not being able to lift heavy objects that she would normally be able to lift. Or it would be against the law to fire a woman because she has to have extra breaks to pump breast milk. Such a law was designed to protect women’s right to produce the next generation without losing their job. It wasn’t designed to protect her sex life.

 

[Rence]

And yet, there are at least two woman at our parish school who are clearly quite pregnant and neither of them are expecting to be terminated. Let’s be realistic. The hypothetical woman in question is NOT being fired for being pregnant. She is being fired for having sex out of wedlock.

You’re right. But that only works when conscience clauses exist. If there is no contract requiring ‘moral’ behavior, by law a woman cannot be fired for being pregnant and cannot be fired for having sex out of wedlock.

The law in question was designed to protect woman from being fired for the sole reason of being pregnant. There are many employers who would be happy to fire a pregnant woman to avoid being stuck with the inconvenience of having to hold her job for her while she takes maternity leave. Those are the women this law was meant to protect. It was never designed to protect a woman’s right to engage in sex with whoever they want.

I agree with that too, except the last part. A business still cannot fire a woman, no matter how many sexual partners she has had in her private life…unless there is a conscience clause in her contract, and I don’t know of too many entities that do that aside for a handful of Catholic grammar schools and some Catholic high schools. And hey, I agree with them. They should have those clauses after all they are rolemodels, not just employees. But you don’t see such clauses in entities such as hospitals or universities too often.

However the orginal post did ask an interesting question considering the calls for conscience protection regarding the insurance coverage for ABCs issue. Seriously, could a religious employer deny a pregnant woman health care coverage because she is in conflict with the employer’s religous beliefs? If religious employers can ‘opt out’ of providing coverage for ABCs, and if some can ‘opt out’ of covering blood transfusions as some people claim (which hasn’t proven to be true anyway), hypothetically speaking, the new exemption for the new mandate might make it possible to deny healthcare coverage to a woman who has become pregnant out of wedlock on religious freedom claims.

 

[Rence]

Correct. Your employer isn’t supposed to know. And they may not, if you don’t say anything. But people run their mouths too much, and they often do know as a result of that.

Obviously at some point, with a pregnancy, the employer is going to be able to guess. And eventually the woman will have to say. You can’t have the baby at work! In the case that the woman is both pregnant and a bad employee about to be fired anyway, the employer may well err on the safe side, waiting til she delivers and then canning her.

But if she’s a bad enough employee, yes, they could fire her, pregnant or not. She has no protection against scheduled layoffs where a certain number of employees are getting laid off for financial reasons either.

There is no reason to treat her any differently than anyone else. Look, a lot of people have children and dependents to support. Having people dependent on you, including children, is part of an adult life. You’re supposed to manage your own life and have some responsibility. This is part of the responsibility of being an adult human being. You can’t be a child forever, and you shouldn’t want to be. It’s pathological.

Absolutely, and part of that responsibility is applying for government aid to help pay for your prenatal care, your child’s healthcare until the age of 18, WIC, food stamps, stipends, etc. After all, it’s there to help those in need. And the government does a really good job helping these folks meet their responsibilities when they are unable, for many and different reasons beyond and within their control, to not be able to do so themselves.

 

[iloveangels]

Absolutely, and part of that responsibility is applying for government aid to help pay for your prenatal care, your child’s healthcare until the age of 18, WIC, food stamps, stipends, etc. After all, it’s there to help those in need. And the government does a really good job helping these folks meet their responsibilities when they are unable, for many and different reasons beyond and within their control, to not be able to do so themselves.

Suckin’ on the government’s big sloppy buzzoom. Ain’t nothing like it, is there Rence?

 

[Rence]

Yup, I’ve seen it time and time again. It’s no wonder the governement is trying to make ABCs as easy to obtain as Skittles. Like I’ve said in previous posts, with the amount of money they spend on it, I’m suprised everyone isn’t a recipient of little pink boxes of ABCs delivered straight to their door curtesy of the government.

 

[iloveangels]

Yup, I’ve seen it time and time again. It’s no wonder the governement is trying to make ABCs as easy to obtain as Skittles. Like I’ve said in previous posts, with the amount of money they spend on it, I’m suprised everyone isn’t a recipient of little pink boxes of ABCs delivered straight to their door curtesy of the government.

That’s probably next. In their zeal, they’ll probably be sending them to everyone, even little old men.