Religion
Related: About this forumObama administration, religious non-profits open to contraceptive mandate compromise
By Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter
Updated 1:25 PM ET, Wed April 13, 2016
Washington (CNN)The Obama administration and religious non-profit groups said late Tuesday night they are open -- depending on the details -- to a compromise floated by at least some members of the Supreme Court that could resolve a challenge to the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive mandate.
The unusual request from the court to consider an alternative plan that covers contraceptive coverage to employees at no cost came after oral arguments last month that appeared to show justices evenly divided, 4-4. The delicately worded responses from both sides showed some willingness to the court's idea, but with reservations in terms of how the plan is administered and what happens to future challenges.
At issue in the case is a challenge filed by religious non-profits — including an order of nuns, the Little Sisters of the Poor -- who are opposed to the law's requirement that group health plans provide a full range of contraceptive coverage to women at no cost. The groups say the requirement forces them to either violate their religious beliefs by providing "abortifacients and contraceptives" or pay ruinous fines.
Although the Obama administration has offered them an accommodation meant to respect their religious objections, the groups said it is not good enough because it still makes them complicit in providing the coverage.
As things currently stand, the non-profit groups have to either submit a form to the federal government or to their insurer stating their objections on religious grounds. The court asked both sides to consider an alternative and address the question whether "contraceptive coverage could be provided to petitioners employees, through petitioner's insurance companies, without any such notice from petitioners."
http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/13/politics/supreme-court-contraceptive-mandate-obamacare-compromise/
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potone
(1,701 posts)Obama's plan offered them an accommodation, which, in my view, was more than these groups deserve for attempting to regulate women's private lives. They should be granted no further exemption. I am more than tired of women's bodies and lives being regulated by others. This simply doesn't happen to men and they wouldn't stand for it.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,322 posts)The Little Sisters of the Poor are, frankly, arseholes. They think that the employees' healthcare belongs to the nuns, not to the employees:
See? the petitioners call them their health plans, and think that anything that gives the person whose life it concerns some control is 'hijacking' it.
But their objection is that they'd have to put in writing that they want to withhold contraceptive coverage from that person. They want complete control, but they aren't willing to be open about it. Then again, they have a gullible tendency to believe in magic words (eg transubstantiation) so maybe this ridiculous quibbling about words is to be expected of them.
They want power without responsibility. Which is hypocritical at best, and, at worst ...
rug
(82,333 posts)they like, subject to the klaw.
In that sense, it is very much "their" health plan.
That applies to every employer, the vast majority of whom are not driven by religious precepts (let alone transubstantiation, a particular bugaboo of yours).
Aside from the death grip capitalists have on workers' health, which is the far greater problem, these cases boil down to whether religious employers are required to participate in one aspect of health insurance that conflicts with that institution's core religious practices.
It's a simple matter to accommodate that, which by these accounts, is about to be resolved.
Your link to Stanley Baldwin and Lord Rothermere, while curiously entertaining, is wholly extraneous to the ACA and the First Amendment.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,322 posts)That is the problem with their shitty attitude. If the nuns ever had a slightly humanistic attitude (which can be done by religious people, but the nuns don't care to), they'd realise that they health plan should belong to the person (or people) whose health is involved.
But the nuns see their corporate religious aims as more important than their employees' health, so they have gone to court (unlike the vast majority of employers, who, even though being capitalists, are actually caring for their employees more than the nuns. Just goes to show that being a non-profit doesn't give you the moral high ground).
It's not that the nuns would have to participate in the aspect of health insurance; it's that they've seen a way of making it more difficult for their employees to get contraception. So, being arseholes, they've grabbed that opportunity with both hands. They are trolls - except they're playing with their employees' health.
It would have been a simple matter to accommodate it - all they had to do was designate their employees as people being refused part of their health care cover. But the nuns went to court about it. Again, because they are arseholes. They are hiding behind a claim that they worry about declaring someone as not covered - a claim about words being vital to their religious belief (just as they believe magic happens during the Mass with certain words).
They want power over their employees without responsibility. Which is what press barons desired, and, as Baldwin pointed out, was thought to be the 'prerogative of harlots'. If only the nuns had the moral responsibility of the average harlot.
rug
(82,333 posts)