The fact that the insurance companies will be required to provide contraception “free of charge” apparently means that they will be required to shift the cost of contraception from the religious organizations to their non-religious organizations. But at the end of today’s fact sheet, the White House notes that in some cases covering contraception can reduce premiums. That means that if the insurance companies actually cost-shift the coverage of contraception to non-religious organizations, it might lower the insurance premiums of non-religious organizations and raise premiums for religious ones. Either way, this just piles a mess on top of a mess. Otherwise, as Yuval points out, today’s announcement changes nothing.
Religious organizations should not back down an inch. With the tax penalty on individual health insurance, the federal government forced employers to become part of the national infrastructure of health care. Their freedom of choice is illusory because their participation is coerced, through a tax penalty on individual purchase of insurance, which is economically equivalent to a tax penalty on them. On top of that tax penalty, Obamacare imposes an employer mandate, with a more explicit tax penalty. Now, having forced employers, including religious organizations, to purchase health insurance, the federal government is going to require them to provide a service that they think is murder.
It doesn’t matter what gimmick the president comes up with to hide the fact. Religious organizations are penalized if they don’t provide health insurance, and their health insurance must cover contraceptives and abortifacients. Today’s announcement is an “accommodation” only in the minds of those who share the president’s infantilized understanding of economics.
If the Supreme Court were still enforcing the inherent limitation in Congress’s power to regulate commerce “among the several States” under the Constitution, we wouldn’t even have this problem because the federal government wouldn’t be able to regulate health care at all. But since the New Deal, the Court has abandoned its role as guardian of the Constitution’s limits on federal power. In that sense, our country is in a post-constitutional era, slouching towards a tyranny-of-the-majority. As Walter Lippmann predicted would happen if the New Deal was allowed to stand, “constitutional checks and bills of rights exist only by consent of the majority.”
What Obama is doing with the contraception mandate should shock the conscience of everyone who believes in the protections that our Constitution is supposed to provide. Obama took an oath to uphold the Constitution. That makes his lack of interest in what the Constitution says even more inexcusable than his economic illiteracy. All Americans should be outraged by this casually tyrannical assault on our basic rights.
— Mario Loyola is director of the Center for Tenth Amendment Studies at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
So, the reason people should violate their consciences is because it might make some insurance policies cheaper?
Compelling National Interest... textbook case, right? Right guys?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThey'll fold. They'll rull on everyone else's rights of conscience in the interests of social justice and their partnership with government.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe phrase "more Catholic than the Pope" comes to mind.
Hey, winning elections isn't everything. Fight on if you think you must. I'm not about to stop you.
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Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCarol Keehan and the Catholic Hospital Association are all happy about Obama's compromise. Democrat 1st, Catholic 2nd.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe Supreme Court's job of policing the Commerce Clause was relatively easy before 1913 because the U.S. senators were elected by their respective state governments and they primarily represented the collective interests of the state governments. This meant that the states could collectively prevent the enactment of federal laws that encroached upon the sovereignty of the states. At that time, U.S. senators took the limitation of federal powers to those enumerated in the U.S. Constitution seriously because they represented very well informed constituents in the form of state legislatures' majority leaders and governors who did not want the federal government trampling on state prerogatives.
After 1913, the U.S. Senate stopped being concerned about constitutional limitations on the federal government's power because they now represented the citizens directly who care little about such procedural issues. The U.S. Supreme Court quickly followed the senate because there was no practical way for the court to constantly declare federal government programs unconstitutional over a long period of time. We should repeal the XVII Amendment and we would see a return to checks and balances on the federal government's powers within a few years.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseA similar result could be obtained (in a more democratic way) by having federal judges appointed by randomly selected governors, subject to the consent of a state legislature. It would also break the poilitcal deadlock over judicial appointments, if a state in deadlock would lose its initiative to another state. SCOTUS appointments can be drawn by lot from the lower benches, for a fixed term after which they would return to their old judgeship.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAmen! Unfortunately, the "people" have lost their ability to reason clearly and see the violence the Seventeenth Amendment has wrought to our system of government.
Captcha: the full monty
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe "compromise" is even worse than that.
The Catholic Church is still being required to purchase insurance policies that provide for abortifacients and contraceptives, contrary to its core beliefs, or pay a stiff fine.
The fine is the worst part of the bill/mandate. If the Church adheres to its faith, and refuses to buy policies that provide those benefits, it must pay the fine. This is the equivalent of the jizya, a tax under Sharia law that requires non-muslims to pay a price for their failure to convert to Islam. The Catholic Church need not overtly join the church of secular progressivism with its worship of abortion, but if it does not, it must pay the price.
It is absurd to think that any change in premium or policy language changes this basic fact.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFORGET the "religious organizations". it is MY rights that are being violated here. MY right to choose health insurance that doesn't pay for abortions. The only reason religious organizations are involved is because the government is now FORCING employers to buy the insurance for their employees.
Let me illustrate. Michelle Obama thinks we all eat like idiots. What is to stop the administration from putting a regulation in place that says certain foods are healthy, and therefore should be supplied free of charge by your insurance? Of course, this drives premiums up. And we as individuals have to pay those premiums, either directly or through the employers who will pay us less and pay insurance companies more. And if that food is something we don't want, too bad. Heck, they could force jews to get free pork products -- they wouldn't have to eat them, but they'd be paying for them.
If the government can force you to have specific insurance coverage, they can force you to buy specific food. Maybe they can force you to EAT specific food.
On an entirely separate matter, is Obama (and the media and all the democrats) STUPID? We all know that if you buy "insurance", and that "insurance" REQUIRES that you get something "FREE OF CHARGE" with "NO COPAY", and that virtually everybody WANTS that item, and will get it, that the COST of the insurance will include, in the premiums, an amount from each person either EXACTLY EQUAL to the cost of that "FREE" stuff, or maybe a bit higher, since we need to pay for the executives and workers who have to administer it.
If you have something you get every year, or every month, and everybody is supposed to get it (like a checkup), the price is simply built into everybody's premiums, and what we really have done is guaranteed the doctors a set of patients once a year. Yes, the point was they wanted us to all go to the doctor. So, they made us PAY to go to the doctor whether we wanted to or not. That's all that is happening here. We can still skip, but we already paid for it. The Abortion pills, the contraceptives, and dozens of other things -- we are now PAYING for them, all of us. We can choose not to take them, but we have already paid for them.
Insurance is only insurance if it covers things that you don't expect will happen -- not when it's something you are sure will happen. You might as well buy "insurance" for gasoline.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLet's tax the churches. The above arguments are nonsense. Why not just have billionares appointed to the US Senate.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"That means that if the insurance companies actually cost-shift the coverage of contraception to non-religious organizations, it might lower the insurance premiums of non-religious organizations and raise premiums for religious ones."
If a religious organization chooses to limit employee health coverage in a manner that increases overall costs for its patient pool, paying higher premiums seems like a very equitable consequence. Unless, of course, Mr. Loyola espouses a type of socialism whereby the non-religious organizations are forced to subsidize the anti-contraception crowd's self-inflicted higher costs.
I'll try a clunky anology: if a Muslim organization excluded prostate cancer screening on religious grounds and experienced higher insurance costs as a result, how many NRO commentators would be crying foul and asking for the greater community to foot the bill? The answer is ZERO.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWho exactly thinks that condoms and birth control pills are murder?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"You might as well buy "insurance" for gasoline."
* ahem * - you do of course mean "electricity", not that nasty gasoline, right? Get with the program.
Liked your post- well said.
Oh, America, where have your powers of reason and sense of justice gone?
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