In a post yesterday, I misread a passage in a Department of Justice brief to mean that the HHS contraceptive mandate doesn’t bear on the insurance coverage that universities provide to their students. On the basis of my hasty misreading, I wrongly opined that Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke’s testimony at a mock hearing didn’t relate to the effect of the HHS mandate.
My improved (but perhaps still inexact) understanding of things is that the relatively small number of universities that provide self-insured plans to their students won’t be covered by the HHS contraceptive mandate but that student plans at universities (including Catholic universities) that arrange for outside insurance will be subject to the HHS contraceptive mandate.
My apologies, to Ms. Fluke and to readers, for my errors (and my thanks to those who called the errors to my attention).
Ed: could you clarify please? It was my understanding (admittedly from secondary rather than primary sources) that the mandate applied to all health benefits, not just insured benefit plans. That makes it applicable to self-insured plans as well as insured ones. (How this mandate gets around the ERISA pre-emption is not clear to me.)
You seem to be saying that the mandate to provide free contraception etc. does not apply to self-insured plans.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMeasure twice cut once!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhile I don't wish to contradict anybody's mea culpa, your original point was essentially correct. Obamacare won't punish colleges that don't offer medical insurance to students, and, given that students can easily remain on their parents' plans until age 26, there's not much reason for this student "benefit". The contraception/abortifacient mandate is pretty much irrelevant to the campus.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is the way corrections should be done -- prominently (as prominently as the original publication in which the error was contained), and without equivocation.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIn one sense a correction is not warranted and is inappropriate. Whether a university or entity chooses to self-insure or buy insurance, the cost is basically the same. In the case of an actual insurance policy, the insurance company does not actually "lose" money -- if it loses in any one year, it adjusts the premiums to recoup the loss in subsequent years. More likely, the insurance companies adjusters calculate what the actual costs are likely to be, and then add profit for their stockholders on to make the premium. So an insurance policy is just a way of covering costs. Some policies are actually only "fronting" policies -- administered by the insurance company, but all costs paid by the policy holder.
In the case of self-insurance, a policy holder calculates that it can handle some of the administration itself, and reduces the profit to the insurance company -- which is usually insuring above a certain stop loss level.
In either case, the Catholic church or university will be paying for the abortions, the morning-after pills, the contraceptive planning, and, in Illinois at least, the fees of the doctor who stab the scissors in the back of the head of a child who is born after an abortion -- courtesy of the one bill we know Obama supported as a state senator. Hardly a case of rendering unto Caesar.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseEven if you'd been correct, Mr. Whelan, the Obama administration's mandate would remain an unconstitutional infringement on the First Amendment protected right to the free exercise of religion.
And the violation of the rights of one is a violation of the rights of all - even of the Flukes.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWay to go Ed. Most of the people who have been criticizing this young lady haven't even read her remarks and are just running with what Rush has told them.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis woman promotes sexual relations outside of marriage. That is objectively wrong. She should be admonished.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHer "testimony" was a plea for subsidized sex play. Health Care is the umbrella under which this "entitlement" is placed.
Rush shouldn't call people names on his radio show. Nor should the POTUS have taken time to call this student ...at least not before he calls the families of those shot in the back of head by "co-workers" in Kabul.
As the now defunct Chevy Volt is a metaphor of Obama's Big Government ambitions....as the Fast and Furious trail of dead bodies is a metaphor of Obama/Holder's criminality...as bankrupt Solyndra is a metaphor for Obama's green energy lies and crony capitalism....so today is this vacuous Ivy League woman a metaphor for the "entitled" immorality of ObamaNation.
Sandra Fluke is a proud graduate of liberal indoctrination. And neither she nor they will ever apologize.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHas anyone asked why Georgetown's student insurance plan doesn't cover contraceptives (though it does cover off-label medical use)? Georgetown offers three employee plans that do cover contraceptives (WSJ, "Schools Navigate State Birth-Control Patchwork", 2/29/12). Contraceptives for the grownups, but not for the "kids?" The Fluke testimony brings up the Blunt amendment and seems to try to tie it to Catholic schools' "refusal" to cover student contraceptives. But I can't see how it's their Catholic sensibilities that are holding Georgetown back from adding contraceptives to their student insurance plan.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt gets weirder, and the dishonesty starts to become more apparent. There are two versions of her testimony. ABC has both versions, one at External Link
and the other one at External Link 
The major difference between the versions are these passages:
"You see, Georgetown does not cover contraceptives in its student insurance, although it does cover contraceptives for faculty and staff."
and
"..., especially when the university already provides contraceptive coverage for faculty and staff."
The testimony she actually read excludes that text. The second ABC transcript shows that first passage to have been rather clumsily removed. She may have meant to include that text but removed it (or it was removed for her) before she delivered it. The missing text changes the argument of the testimony a bit. The version of her testimony with the included text makes the argument more against Georgetown's inconsistent policy, with the remedy being universal inclusion of contraceptives. The official version of the transcript with the the excluded text makes the argument for universal contraceptives access to protect women from those evil Republicans and their backward-thinking Catholic Bishop allies who won't allow contraceptive access for anyone. Anyone see Pelosi's hand in this? Or maybe it was Fluke's decision to alter the originally intended testimony.
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