‘It’s not about contraception,” thundered GOP presidential contender Rick Santorum. “It’s about economic liberty. It’s about freedom of speech. It’s about freedom of religion. It’s about government control of your lives. And it’s got to stop!”
He was talking, of course, about the Obama administration’s recent decisions first to force large religious employers to pay for birth control and “preventive services” (including sterilization and abortifacient drugs), and then to demand that the relevant insurance companies provide it for “free” instead.
The “accommodation” — the White House rightly refuses to call it a compromise — is a farce. If you’re paying for health insurance — or if you self-insure, as many institutions do — shifting responsibilities to the insurance companies doesn’t shift the costs, just the paperwork. A Catholic hospital would still pay for the services; there just wouldn’t be a line item for it in the monthly insurance bill.
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That’s not accommodation; that’s laundering.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius claims that the move will save money — an ounce of prevention saves a pound of “cure” — so religious institutions will incur no additional costs. If that’s true, why haven’t those greedy insurance companies been doing it all along?
If anything, President Obama has made the situation worse. The White House fact sheet seems to offer no exemption at all for religious institutions — or for anyone else: “Under the new policy . . . women will have free preventive care that includes contraceptive services no matter where she [sic] works.” That sounds like a complete win for the “keep your rosaries off my ovaries” crowd to me.
Of course, if religious institutions don’t want to violate their consciences, they can simply stop offering health insurance altogether (providing yet another example of how Obama misled voters when he promised that the Affordable Care Act wouldn’t cause anyone to lose their current coverage). That would at least allow religious organizations to uphold their principles. The result, however, would be to force taxpayers to subsidize practices many find morally abhorrent. In other words, Obama’s solution is to make paying taxes a moral dilemma for many pro-lifers.
I think Santorum’s argument is entirely right: This is about freedom, full stop. When we empower bureaucrats and politicians to make such huge personal decisions for us, it becomes impossible to avoid trampling on liberty. The Roman Catholic Church was simply the first in Leviathan’s path.
If you look at the genetic and neuroscience revolutions waiting just offstage, the future holds enormous promise for personalized health care, including individualized genetic therapies. And yet the government is marching faster and faster toward wholesale approaches that prioritize the health of the system over the health of patients. It is impossible to imagine the myriad arbitrary abuses and petty tyrannies that could result.
Jonah: It is no doubt both true and ironic that the "keep your rosaries off my ovaries" crowd has no problem with banning rosaries from the public square. But I don't think liberals fear your "Handsmaid's Tale" and other scenarios where the tables have turned and conservatives are imposing their way on the liberal elements of the populace because they (rightfully) know that they have irreversibly completed their Gramscian "Long March" through the halls of government, as well as the academy, organized medicine and public health groups, from which the government plucks its ostensibly impartial experts. They know that when it comes down to the nitty-gritty sausage--(er, rule--) making of the modern regulatory state, the butchers are going to be lefties, no matter who the suits in the Oval Office and Congress are.
The folks on the left care about power over other people's lives, that is their overarching "principle". The left cares less about "what" the sheeple are told to do, and more about that the sheeple are being told what to do.
When I joined the military many years ago I had to swear to defend the Constitution against all enemies both foreign and domestic. It's at times like these that one has to wonder - what is a domestic enemy? What could possibly be an example thereof? Maybe we should just take that out of the oath.
It's not even laundering. It's like the serpent in the garden offering the fig leaf as a package deal with the temptation.
Obviously, insurance companies will burying the cost of contraceptives in other line items. Obama's shift in position merely provides nominal Catholic administrators a form of plausible deniability. It is a horribly cynical ploy based on the assumption that the Catholics don't really believe all that church dogma stuff, but only need a kernel on which to build a press statement.
Sadly, human nature would not refute the Administration's reasoning. What will happen?
As one who has worked in the health insurance industry for most of the last 30 years, I can assure you there is nothing "free" in that world. In reality, there is nothing "free" anywhere else either. Except air (so far).
As Rush pointed out yesterday, if this goes through, there is nothing in place to prevent HHS from telling you that you can only have one child. Once the government controls healthcare, they control everything about you.
If you're too fat and you get any kind of assistance they can cut it off if you don't lose weight. If you smoke or drink and you get sick, we can cut off your insurance.
Don't think these people don't want to control every aspect of your life. This is the tool.
The idea that the government would tell you that you could only have one child is not going to happen.
However, what I could very easily see happen is a mandate that your insurance will only cover the cost of the first few children (let's say three children) after which you will have to pay for the cost yourself. Or you will have to pay a surtax to cover the cost of an "extra" pregnancy.
And we'll have a president who will piously tells us that: "at some point you've had enough children."
I didn't think I'd hear the argument made that sterilization and contraception were necessary for "women's health", and I sure wasn't expecting that to be shored up by the argument that providing them "free" would actually save the Insurance companies money because costs were less than taking a pregnancy to term. Really, how many more baby steps is it from "having babies cost more than condoms" to "we're not going to cover babies"? And once you get there, is it really a stretch to imposing mandates that prevent babies - not covering contraception and sterilization but actually requiring them?
Crazy, yes. But we're already heading down the road, and we'll keep going toward that point unless and until freedom of choice for our healthcare is restored to us all - providers, employers, and consumers.
Why are pregnancies covered? Pregnancy is a choice, just like birthcontrol right?
If you can't afford the $5-10k for a normal birth, don't have a child.
Why should insurance cover it? Insurance should be insurance against something going wrong. If the birth is more than the normal cost, then insurance should kick in.
You think the political left would ever tell welfare mothers whose illegitimate children they encourage and finance that they've had too many children?
People with no money are actually the only humans the left wishes would reproduce more, as it multiplies the government's power over people, and insures that power is wielded over one generation to the next.
Don't think these people don't want to control every aspect of your life.
A few years ago, the American Pediatrics Association enacted a policy prohibitng its members from treating any children whose parents kept a handgum at home, except for in emergency cases. The (public) thinking being that, "Hey, guns are unhealthy for children. Why should we spend effort helping to keep a child healthy when he's in an unhealthy environment anyway?" Fortunately, most pediatricians are members of only the AMA, and not the APA. Nevertheless, we were already seeing this kind of nonsense before O-care ever came along. (CAPTCHA: string along)
"If you're too fat and you get any kind of assistance they can cut it off if you don't lose weight. If you smoke or drink and you get sick, we can cut off your insurance. "
So what? The religious right has no issues with telling others "how" they should live their lives, what's the difference if a group tells fat people or smokers how to live their life? How about we tally up the costs of treating lung cancer, diabetes, and a humungous multitude of other diseases which have the potential to be avoided with lifestyle modifications and add up that cost?
I have a better idea, make health insurance costs similar to auto insurance costs, based on risk and driving, ie lifestyle habits. If you want to eat at McDonalds every day, smoke a pack of cigarettes and never exercise hey it's your God given US constitutionally protected right to do so, but the next time you cry about how someone who is unemployed is eating up your taxes think about how much YOU will end up costing my taxes when you inevitably get sick.
- risk for smokers (even though some outlive the non-smokers)
- risk for drinkers (will drug users also have to pay more - oh, wait, they'll be the ones whose health care is "free")
- risk for breeders (can't have too many children)
- risk for unhealthy sexual lifestyle (don't be ridiculous - gays and promiscuous people shouldn't have to pay for the risks THEY take!)
Those "risky" behaviors that are penalized will be the ones that Liberals oppose.
If the risk assessment were fair, sure, that would be reasonable - but it won't be.
The 'religious right' (whatever THAT is) does not have the power of the state or the law to enforce compliance with what it wishes others would do. See the difference?
For most of my life, I've been hearing about the 'threat' of religious fundamentalism to various forms of freedom. But I can't think of a single thing we God-bothers have accomplished toward this end. Meanwhile, I watched the secular state gain control over more aspects of our lives, while it proselytizes the statist creed to our children, and our culture becomes coarser and more dysfunctional.
If the devil's greatest trick was convincing people he didn't exist, the Left's greatest trick has been to project everything it is doing upon all who disagree with it.
Vinny,
Spot-on! Thanks for that succinct statement of the obvious. I get too worked up over these wrongs to voice them reasonably. Well, I guess we live in interesting times. Again, Thanks!
Most people in the US don't seem to have a problem with government-mandated one child restrictions. Every time you buy something made in China, you are in effect supporting this policy with your pocketbook.
"If you're too fat and you get any kind of assistance they can cut it off if you don't lose weight. If you smoke or drink and you get sick, we can cut off your insurance."
Sounds good to me. Where are all the "my tax dollars!!" people when it comes to those that don't take responsibility for their own health using your money to cover for their life of carelessness?
Your comment will be valid if - you don't drink coffee, soda, eat products with sugar, fast food or anything else the gov't. says you shouldn't. Remember, they will have a moving target in order to make sure you never quite comply. When one's own ox gets gored, it's not quite as funny.
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