Time's Up in the U.S.: Catholic Business Owners Weigh Moral Options in HHS Mandate

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The moral guidance in this article on what non-exempt business owners should do about the mandate comes from the National Catholic Bioethics Center, which gives high-level guidance on issues for the U.S. bishops and Church-affiliated organizations.
This is at www.ncregister.com/daily-news/times-up-catholic-business-owners-weigh-moral-options-in-hhs-mandate

One brief summary of the moral guidance provided by the National Catholic Bioethics Center for non-exempt business owners is at www.zenit.org/rssenglish-35352
A full report from the National Catholic Bioethic Center providing its moral guidance on this matter is available at ncbcenter.org/document.doc?id=450&erid=194625
 
mdgspencer said:
The moral guidance in this article on what non-exempt business owners should do about the mandate comes from the National Catholic Bioethics Center, which gives high-level guidance on issues for the U.S. bishops and Church-affiliated organizations.
This is at www.ncregister.com/daily-news/times-up-catholic-business-owners-weigh-moral-options-in-hhs-mandate

One brief summary of the moral guidance provided by the National Catholic Bioethics Center for non-exempt business owners is at www.zenit.org/rssenglish-35352
A full report from the National Catholic Bioethic Center’s providing its moral guidance on this matter is available at ncbcenter.org/document.doc?id=450&erid=194625
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I’ll tell you what: If non-exempt business owners who are not affiliated with dioceses are being asked to do this, then the bishops had better not be bluffing.

We’ll know in about a year what’s really happened. This stuff gets out.
 
Just to let readers of this thread know: These are all older news articles. Every one of them predates the November elections.
 
There is a Catholic health care alternative, spread the word: Solidarity Health Share

All Catholic employers - do not go along with the HHS mandate

lifenews.com/2012/04/10/catholic-cardinal-a-sin-to-cooperate-with-obama-mandate
Jenn Giroux, the former Executive Director of HLI America, profiles some excerpts from the interview:
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Thomas McKenna: “It is beautiful to see how the faithful have rallied behind the Hierarchy….How does your Eminence comment on the union of solidarity of our bishops?”
Cardinal Burke: “Yes, I have received emails and other communications from lay faithful who say that they are supporting their bishops 100% and they have communicated to their bishops their gratitude and assured them that they want them to continue to be courageous and not to be deceived by any kind of false accommodations which in fact continue this same kind of agenda which sadly we have witnessed for too long in our country which is totally secular and therefore is anti-life and anti-family. I admire very much the courage of the bishops. At the same time I believe they would say it along with me that they are doing no more than their duty. A bishop has to protect his flock and when any individual or government attempts to force the flock to act against conscience in one of its most fundamental precepts then the bishops have to come to defend those who are entrusted to their pastoral care. So I am deeply grateful to all of the bishops who have spoken about this and who are encouraging the members of their flock to also speak up because our government needs to understand that what is being done with this mandate is contrary first of all to the fundamental human right, the right to the free exercise of one’s conscience and at the same time contrary to the very foundation of our nation.”
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Thomas McKenna: “So a Catholic employer, really getting down to it, he does not, or she does not provide this because that way they would be, in a sense, cooperating with the sin…the sin of contraception or the sin of providing a contraceptive that would abort a child, is this correct?”
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Cardinal Burke: “This is correct. It is not only a matter of what we call “material cooperation” in the sense that the employer by giving this insurance benefit is materially providing for the contraception but it is also “formal cooperation” because he is knowingly and deliberately doing this, making this available to people. There is no way to justify it. It is simply wrong.”
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Responding to the comments, Giroux says, “This comment by a high ranking Cardinal is the clearest explanation to date on the issue of an employer’s culpability when providing contraception, sterilization, and abortion inducing drug options in the insurance plans for employees.”
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_Abyssinia said:
There is a Catholic health care alternative, spread the word: Solidarity Health Share

All Catholic employers - do not go along with the HHS mandate

lifenews.com/2012/04/10/catholic-cardinal-a-sin-to-cooperate-with-obama-mandate
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  1. The article you have linked was written before the election. Do you have a new one?
  2. Like I said before, if they expect Catholic small business owners to do this, they’d better not be bluffing.
  3. If it’s legal, the health-sharing thing will replace insurance, but the employer will still have to drop the employee’s regular coverage and pay a $2000 per person per year fine if they do that. This could be one possible tool, again, if it’s legal. But it won’t stop managers from having to optimize in other ways too. $2000 per person per year is a hefty fine.
 
iloveangels said:
  1. The article you have linked was written before the election. Do you have a new one?
  2. Like I said before, if they expect Catholic small business owners to do this, they’d better not be bluffing.
  3. If it’s legal, the health-sharing thing will replace insurance, but the employer will still have to drop the employee’s regular coverage and pay a $2000 per person per year fine if they do that. This could be one possible tool, again, if it’s legal. But it won’t stop managers from having to optimize in other ways too. $2000 per person per year is a hefty fine.
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solidarityhealthshare.com

Their website is under consutrction but it should be up by January 1 when they start
 
iloveangels said:
  1. The article you have linked was written before the election. Do you have a new one?
  2. Like I said before, if they expect Catholic small business owners to do this, they’d better not be bluffing.
  3. If it’s legal, the health-sharing thing will replace insurance, but the employer will still have to drop the employee’s regular coverage and pay a $2000 per person per year fine if they do that. This could be one possible tool, again, if it’s legal. But it won’t stop managers from having to optimize in other ways too. $2000 per person per year is a hefty fine.
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solidarityhealthshare.com

Website is under construction but it should be up by January 1 when they start
 
“The guidelines emphatically reject the option of embracing the contraception mandate as a morally illicit choice. Then readers are walked through two other alternatives: “Provide morally non-objectionable coverage” or “drop all coverage.””

There is another choice: Go out of business. Work for somebody else. Retire. When the government tries to impose immoral obligations on business owners, the results cannot be good. Not only does it trash the First Amendment, it’s bad for the economy.
 
iloveangels said:
  1. If it’s legal, the health-sharing thing will replace insurance, but the employer will still have to drop the employee’s regular coverage and pay a $2000 per person per year fine if they do that. This could be one possible tool, again, if it’s legal. But it won’t stop managers from having to optimize in other ways too. $2000 per person per year is a hefty fine.
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Any plan which spreads the cost of medical coverage should qualify, I would think.

We’ve probably have been overdependent on commercial insurance (and employer-based insurance) anyway, and I would like to see plans like Medi-share work for everyone. And hope that medical providers would honor them.
 
The problem with all this is that there are two different fines depending on what you decide to do about Obamacare if you don’t comply.
  1. The first is the case where you drop all insurance for employees and let the employee contract with a state exchange to get their own insurance and pay for it themselves. The fine for that is $2000 per person per year.
  2. The second is the case where you get a insurance plan for your employees that doesn’t cover abortion. The fine is $100 per day per employee for that. $36,500 per year per employee.
The questions about this kind of sharing plan are:
  1. Will it be considered insurance and thus get the second kind of fine, since the individual won’t have to go to the exchanges to get insurance?
  2. There is a fine for those who don’t get insurance. Will this trigger that fine?
  3. If a person gets into this sharing plan, will doctors and hospitals actually honor it?
  4. If a person gets into this sharing plan, will medical costs really be covered? At what percent?
 
And I personally really don’t think this is about Catholic small business owners. I really think that this is about dioceses, parishes and “Catholic” hospitals and universities. I wouldn’t get really very excited about this if I were a small businessman until I saw the dioceses, parishes, and “Catholic” hospitals and universities do the right thing first.
 
Perhaps every Catholic small business owner should just go out of business rather than cooperate with the unconstitutional HHS mandate.
 
If an employer chooses a high deductible plan will most of these costs be directly paid by the subscriber?
 
JimG said:
Perhaps every Catholic small business owner should just go out of business rather than cooperate with the unconstitutional HHS mandate.
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Except that might leave them without a livelihood in this terrible economy. :cool:
 
iloveangels said:
Except that might leave them without a livelihood in this terrible economy. :cool:
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I agree it’s a terrible choice. Cooperate with evil or forgo one’s livelihood. If they all go out of business (or are forced out of business by the government) people lose jobs and the economy suffers. If they cooperate with evil the economy will still suffer and evil grows. If Catholic institutions close down, the economy suffers. I think the administration is more concerned with imposing its will than with the economy.
 
JimG said:
I agree it’s a terrible choice. Cooperate with evil or forgo one’s livelihood. If they all go out of business (or are forced out of business by the government) people lose jobs and the economy suffers. If they cooperate with evil the economy will still suffer and evil grows. If Catholic institutions close down, the economy suffers. I think the administration is more concerned with imposing its will than with the economy.
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I still maintain that this isn’t really about small business owners, and what they do or don’t do. I don’t even believe that most of the pronouncements on this really apply to them, although they are forced to comply with the law or not in some fashion they devise. I don’t envy them. They’re not getting a lot of help. And it’s going to be as ironic as all get out if the bishops are bluffing in some fashion.

This is really about the large institutions that Catholics run on grant money from the federal government. It’s about all the non-Catholics that these institutions employ and all the non-Catholics that are their clients. And to a much lesser degree, it’s about Catholic schools and other public diocesan operations, most of whom also employ non-Catholics and have non-Catholics as clients. It’s ultimately about whether those institutions are CATHOLIC in the genuine sense of the word or only CATHOLIC on the sign out front. Money has the power to force honesty, even when more reasonable things have not. It’s past time to come to terms with this issue. Are these Catholic institutions or not?? Good question. Long overdue question. Long avoided question.

If we don’t answer the question–YES or NO–and make resolutions one way or the other accordingly, the next crisis will be worse, and the one after that worse yet. We are going to be forced to decide what we have in those institutions…and in doing so, what we are.
 
iloveangels said:
It’s ultimately about whether those institutions are CATHOLIC in the genuine sense of the word or only CATHOLIC on the sign out front. Money has the power to force honesty, even when more reasonable things have not. It’s past time to come to terms with this issue. Are these Catholic institutions or not?? Good question. Long overdue question. Long avoided question.

If we don’t answer the question–YES or NO–and make resolutions one way or the other accordingly, the next crisis will be worse, and the one after that worse yet. We are going to be forced to decide what we have in those institutions…and in doing so, what we are.
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Exactly.

And a question to be asked: if they were to strip the “Catholic” label, would it hurt their business?
 
ProVobis said:
Exactly.

And a question to be asked: if they were to strip the “Catholic” label, would it hurt their business?
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Yes, this is a concern for these hospitals and universities, I suppose. The Church and these institutions have been using each other for some time.

But the fact of the matter is that they are no longer tied together in meaningful ways, and they’re getting less and less tied together all the time. It’s only a matter of time til they separate anyway, the way they’re going. I know there are a lot of people who don’t like hearing that—nostalgia and all that. But that’s how it really is nowadays. The sooner we own up to it, the better off we’ll all be.

There is a place for a college or a university that follows Church teaching faithfully, of course; it’s just that some larger “catholic” institutions we’ve been talking about aren’t them. They’ve decided to take another path in their development, and we have to acknowledge that. Ignoring it no longer serves anyone’s purposes, and it’s quite dishonest to ignore such big differences, to tell the truth.
 
Are folks seriously suggesting that large Catholic businesses such as churches should give up their federal subsidies? That’s just bizarre.
 
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