On Monday, Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine seemingly surrendered to President Obama on the contraception mandate, before the fight had begun.
“It appears that changes have been made that provide women’s health services without compelling Catholic organizations in particular to violate the beliefs and tenets of their faith,” Snowe said.
Collins made a similar statement: “While I will carefully review the details of the president’s revised proposal, it appears to be a step in the right direction.”
But there may be more fight in them yet. Although the senators support forcing insurance companies to cover contraception, they also seem open to an expansive religious-liberty exemption.
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Since her early days in the Senate, Snowe has championed a contraception mandate. In May 1997, she introduced the Equity in Prescription Insurance and Contraceptive Coverage Act with Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. The bill would have required insurance companies that covered prescription drugs and devices to cover contraception as well. (Collins was a co-sponsor.)
Snowe based her case on cost-effectiveness and equity. Testifying before the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee in July 1998, Snowe argued, “With EPICC, prescription contraceptives will be covered like all prescription drugs, meaning a lot more Americans using birth control and a lot less abortions being performed. Sounds logical, doesn’t it?”
She lamented that “women spend 68 percent more in out-of-pocket health-care cost” because of their purchase of birth control. Moreover, insurance companies’ decision to cover Viagra, but not birth control, seemed unfair. “Why the difference in coverage?” Snowe asked. “It certainly can’t be cost. Even those insurance companies who have reduced their coverage to six pills per month still shell out $60 a month for Viagra, more than half the average cost at $25 for the pill each month.”
Snowe was unsuccessful in her efforts to impose the mandate on private employers. But in July 1999, the Senate unanimously approved an amendment offered by Snowe and Reid that forced insurance plans for federal employees to cover contraceptives.
“The federal government serves as a role model for other employers across the nation and this step sends a signal to insurers nationwide: Prescription-contraceptive coverage is a long-overdue provision for health plans for all women of reproductive age,” Snowe said in a press release.
Snowe kept at the contraception-mandate fight, reintroducing the bill in 2001, 2005, and 2008. As the Portland Press Heraldreports, “There was no religious exemption in that bill as written, but Snowe indicated at the time that she would address that issue and a Collins spokesman says that Collins too favored a ‘conscience clause.’”
In 2006, Snowe even filed an amicus curiae brief in support of a class-action lawsuit by a group of female employees who sued their employer for not including contraception coverage in their health plans. “I believe the trial court was correct in ruling that failing to cover contraception under an employer-sponsored health-insurance plan runs afoul of the intent of Congress’s long-standing employment-discrimination laws, and I urge the Court of Appeals to uphold that ruling,” Snowe said.
In other words, Snowe and Collins don’t object to a contraception mandate per se. But in the past few days they have mentioned their qualms over the narrowness of the administration’s religious-liberty exemption.
“Senator Collins said the President’s announcement last week was a step in the right direction but that she wanted more information about its details,” writes her spokesman, Kevin Kelley, in an e-mail. “She has said that a very important issue is how the administration would treat self-insured institutions since there are many Catholic hospitals that are self-insured. She is concerned that she has not been able to get an answer from the administration on this important point.”
For her part, Snowe told the Portland Press Herald, “It shouldn’t be mutually exclusive, maintaining women’s health and religious liberty. . . . We haven’t seen the final language. I would like to look at it. I know there are some differences within the church so if the president can further address those that is always helpful.”
The two senators have signed on to Senator Marco Rubio’s bill, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which would carve out a more generous religious-liberty exemption for religiously affiliated institutions.
“They’re well known as being pro-choice,” says Ken Lindell, chairman of the Maine Republican Liberty Caucus. “Everybody within the Republican party and the establishment and conservatives just accept that as something that they are. But this seems to push the envelope a little bit.”
Yes, the senators each have a 45 NARAL score, but they also both voted against Obamacare. Don’t look for them to oppose a contraception mandate, but in the fight for religious liberty, the Maine twins may just stay true.
— Brian Bolduc is an editorial associate for National Review.
"Yes, the senators each have a 45 NARAL score, but they also both voted against Obamacare."
Sure they did, as cover, after these two twits voted with the Democrats to let the Senate bill out of committee to "talk about it" on the Senate floor. If it wasn't for these two votes, we probably would not have Obamacare now. The Democrats did not have the 60 votes without them to get the bill to the floor but they did have the 51 votes required to make it law.
Well, you obviously know neither your facts or history. Only Senator Snowe voted for the precursor to "Obamacare" in committee. Senator Collins doesn't serve on the Senate Finance Committee so she couldn't have voted for it even if she had wanted to. Also, you are very wrong when it' comes to letting the bill out of Committee; you can't filibuster a bill in committee and it would have passed with or without her vote and moved to the floor because the Democrats had a large majority on the Finance Committee and they all voted for it. Maybe you should actually check your facts before spouting off at the mouth
I remember Snowe at the microphones after her private meeting with the president all starry-eyed and breathless. All I could think of was Frau Blucher in "Young Frankenstein": "Yes. Yes. He vas my BOYFRIEND!"
I am in Snowe's district and am thrilled by this. Uber liberal Chellie Pingree, however, who also "represents" us, is without integrity. Her hedge fund billionaire "man of the people" husband Donald Sussman has just bought part of the Portland Press Herald, which already is as liberal a rag as you can get.
What in this article "thrills" you? These senators, apparently led by Snowe, want a federal govt. mandate as to what private insurance contracts should contain. How do they defend that? It is not needed because the contraceptives' cost is minimal and not "medically necessary". This is health insurance after all. The senator claims to not see the difference between contraceptives and the rx of Viagra for erectile dysfunction? She has to be kidding. She cannot be that simple-minded. So, she claims this because she wants it and she uses feckless arguments that are only meant to deceive people unable or unwilling to analyze what she says. Include among the allies, the author of this article who presents her argument without comment.
That such none sense is proclaimed by Republicans without clear denunciation is why we have the mess we do today. Snowe is as innocent of the Constitution as Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi. Now, what is possibly "thrilling" about this?
Which District is that? Pretty sure Senators represent the entire State?
In the event -- the RINO twins can be for government provided contraception all day long.
However -- the ISSUE is whether the government can COMPEL anyone to provide what the government wants to provide -- EVEN IF DOING SO VIOLATES THEIR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.
If the "free exercise" clause in the 1st Amendment means anything in this day and age of the "living Constitution", then the government has NOT the right.
If, however, we are now in the age of complete "consitutional relativism", then the Founder's great experiment is already over, and it's only a matter of time before more than a small minority notice it.
Do you understand that what insurance companies want to make contracts to cover is no one else's business? Whether you think coverage for something is "stupid" -- what does that mean anyway?--is irrelevant. The contradiction in Snowe's statement is that ED is a health disorder and pregnancy is not. But whether a company wants to insure neither both or one or the other -- is their business-- I do not even know whatnyoummean when you venture an opinion on this.
As far as I'm concerned, it's their fault this is even an issue. If it weren't for their doe-eyed belief that the Dems would have played fair and engaged in serious debate on the healthcare bill (instead of locking out Republicans and ramming it through), it would have died in committee. They're as Republican as Arlen Specter and Charlie Crist.
The problem is that the people of the United States, in this case Down Mainers, no longer elect high thinkers to the Congress. We get soft-spined, political weathervanes who tow the line of the loudest screaming special interest group...rather than following the will of the majority of their constituents...or, more importantly, the Constitution.
Just look at Snowe's rationale for covering contraceptives -- men get prescription Viagra but women have to pay for contraceptives. But doesn't Viagra and such medications exist to correct a medical flaw or problem? Viagra *restores* functionality...conversely, contraceptives are a preventative measure (because everything works, if you know what I mean.)
The Maine Twins are just two more cogs in the wheel who perpetuate the government-individual co-dependence...using political popularism to provide cover for wholly unconstitutional activities. I wished they worried more about the wholesomeness of the Constitution rather than get-me-re-elected gotcha politics.
At a time that we need constitutional patriots, we get these two weak sisters. What thinking citizens wouldn't think that our nation is hopelessly fated to spectacular failure?
"Yes, the senators each have a 45 NARAL score, but they also both voted against Obamacare". If it wasn't for these two twits, we probably would not have Obamacare. The Democrats did not have the sixty votes needed to move the health care bill to the Senate floor so Olympia Snow and Susan Collins helped them out. With only 51 votes needed to pass the bill, Snow and Collins could vote no while still assuring that the bill became law.
When will health care go back to health insurance and the cost will be cut in half?
Where is personal responsibility anymore? (accept with those of us left working)
Nothing is free. I realize the mandate requires contraceptives be covered without a co-pay, but that is not the same as free. Someone is paying premiums on the health insurance that is now required to include coverage for contraception without co-pay. There is no accompanying rule against raising premiums to cover the cost.
The biggest problem with this mandate is that it is bound to raise the cost of contraceptives. If companies are required to pay for it, that's a great incentive for the makers of contraceptives to increase the price. That is the inevitable consequence of guaranteeing payment for something on a mass scale.
There are public health clinics in almost every city that provide prescriptions for $10, including for the pill.
This notion that there are swarms of poor women getting pregnant because they cannot afford the pill is fallacious.
They're choosing to get pregnant because of the short-term incentives their government has given them through the profligate welfare programs.
How perverse to give them the incentive to have children they cannot afford, and then use that as some excuse to force Catholic hospitals to provide coverage for contraception in their employees' health insurance plans.
I'd urge the Maine twins to step outside their home state, where the population is a wee-bit less homogeneous, and actually meet some poor women, who have ready access to birth control that they actively CHOOSE not to utilize.
This isn't about equity in prescription coverage. It's about forcing a widening of the wake caused by Griswold, Eisenstadt and Roe -- three of the most baseless legal decision ever rendered by a tribunal that calls itself judicial.
Do these folks even appreciate that the US Constitution is silent on all of this?
As a transplanted Mainer who escaped North Massachusetts by moving west, I sympathize with all who are frustrated at these two "twits."
However, there is one huge issue. By their DEAD SILENCE on the issue, the GOP has allowed this issue to be framed as the Dems want to allow contraception and the GOP doesn't. Of course that's not true, but the GOP knows all the good arguments that have appeared on this string. When was the last time anyone heard any Republican making these arguments?
We cannot expect even twits to commit political suicide because the GOP refuses to fight.
Neither Collins or Snowe are GOP, they are Dems. I also just don't get the deal re. insurance coverage of contraception. And I also don't get the insurance coverage of ED drugs for men. Look, this country is broke. WE don't have the money to spend on anything except true medical, life saving/ altering medicines. We can't juice up folks sex lives. And as to the poor, Planned Parenthood provided free contraception, why do we all have to pay? No wonder we're going broke, libs like Collins and Snowe feel its incumbent on the Govt. to pay for everything. Just like Greece. Just where are these sanctimonious self-serving women going to be when it blows up and all this addition to the federal teat can't be met? Are they going to explain to the folks that they overpromised or just stand there and blame conservatives and Bush?
Collins and Snowe are embarrassments to the Republican Party and a waste of space in the Senate. The people of Maine who seem to live in some bubble should be voting these two women out of office. But then again, New England has been a rotten appendage of this country for many years. Perhaps like California, they should be cut off and left to drift afloat.
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