# Catholics: Are you upset by Obama's new birth control rule? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 12, 2012, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholics-are-you-upset-by-obamas-new-birth-control-rule/615592 "2012-03-12T21:34:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Stratocaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stratocaster/32/16393_2.png) [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholics-are-you-upset-by-obamas-new-birth-control-rule/615592/81 "2012-03-19T10:46:43Z")
I didn’t want to turn this into a debate on our health care system. MsWhatsit, your inability to find coverage for maternity was, I assume, based on the fact that you were already pregnant, since the free market has countless policies to cover individuals that include maternity coverage. At that point, you didn’t need insurance, you needed someone to pay your medical bills. I’m not trivializing it, but I am pointing out that you’re creating an incorrect impression and missing the point I was making in response to Lightnin’. septimus, I am not ignoring that. But likewise is it disingenuous to proclaim that employers dictate my health coverage (not that you did). But that’s not the point. I don’t want to debate our health care system, I am asking why contraception out of all the categories of excluded coverage should be mandated in defiance of first amendment rights. Gorsnak, what’s insulting to the casual reader is the insinuation that employees, who are free to accept or reject a job offer, are handcuffed completely because an employer doesn’t offer exactly what they’d like. Perhaps you’ll answer the question that Lightnin’ has thus far ignored? Do you understand how group insurance works? Should employees get to dictate exactly what coverage they’d like? How will that work exactly? ---
**Author:** ![Lightnin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightnin/32/180_2.png) [@Lightnin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightnin)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholics-are-you-upset-by-obamas-new-birth-control-rule/615592/82 "2012-03-19T11:33:14Z")
> [@Stratocaster](#): > > :rolleyes: When I decide on and buy the policy completely on my own, I am the customer, yes.I did answer. My employer has no such power. I can procure whatever coverage I want and he can’t stop me. > > I also pointed out to you, and I’ll do so again, that there is no practical way for an employer to accommodate every employee’s preference, even if he were inclined to. You didn’t answer my question. Is it just contraception coverage, or do you have similar outrage over anything else your group policy doesn’t cover? Because there’s lots of things your policy doesn’t cover. It seems to me that a good start is to _not deny coverage of specific healthcare items based on religious exceptions_. Nobody’s saying that they (the insurers) have to cover everything- we’re just saying it’s a bad idea for your employer to pick and choose what, exactly, they want to cover. When I take a new job, I don’t want part of my selection process to be to scour the healthcare package to see what, exactly, my potential new employer doesn’t want me to have access to. > [@Stratocaster](#): > > The advantage of group coverage is that it’s much less costly. The disadvantage is that you generally have little or no option to customize it–you take what the provider offers, or you look elsewhere. That’s simply how it works. If you want to customize your coverage to include exactly what you want, then you don’t want group coverage. Which is exactly the argument for universal health care. The larger the pool, the more efficient the coverage can be. And this is why allowing your employer to decide what healthcare you get is a bad idea. Oh, and :rolleyes: right back atcha. ---
**Author:** ![MsWhatsit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb8c5e/32.png) [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholics-are-you-upset-by-obamas-new-birth-control-rule/615592/83 "2012-03-19T11:45:18Z")
> [@Stratocaster](#): > > I didn’t want to turn this into a debate on our health care system. MsWhatsit, your inability to find coverage for maternity was, I assume, based on the fact that you were already pregnant, since the free market has countless policies to cover individuals that include maternity coverage. At that point, you didn’t need insurance, you needed someone to pay your medical bills. I’m not trivializing it, but I am pointing out that you’re creating an incorrect impression and missing the point I was making in response to Lightnin’. Incorrect. My insurance broker was unable to find policies with a maternity rider, period. I obviously can’t speak to all states but at least in 2004 in Ohio, insurance providers were not willing to provide maternity coverage to individual purchasers. And at any rate my larger point is that you cannot simply decide “oh, my employer-provided insurance doesn’t pay for X. I’ll simply go find individual insurance that does pay for X.” Depending on what X is, you may be able to find an individual policy covering it or you may not. Individual policies are expensive, relatively uncommon, and tend to provide less coverage than group policies as a general rule. There is no cafeteria-style healthcare market where you can readily just go buy insurance for the things you specifically want. ---
**Author:** ![tumbleddown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9bcb4/32.png) [@tumbleddown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tumbleddown)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholics-are-you-upset-by-obamas-new-birth-control-rule/615592/84 "2012-03-19T16:51:40Z")
> [@Stratocaster](#): > > No, that’s wrong. There are countless categories of medical care that a given carrier will not cover. And none of them are basic, common _preventative medicine_. Which is what contraceptives are. Recall that the _vast_ majority of women in this country will use medical contraceptives of one sort or another at some point in their lives. Comparing contraceptives to private nursing, artificial insemination or orthotics only shows that we’re off the rails in lala land here. > [@](#): > > Do you have a cite that (this current law aside) it’s already illegal not to cover contraception in the majority of the country? Insurance plans are mandated to cover contraceptives in 28 of 50 states. That’s more than half. And in 11 of those states, there is **no** exemption for religious organizations at all. None. Zip zero zilch nada. If you have employees and you provide insurance, it will cover contraceptives, period. [Even the Catholics know that](http://catholicreview.org/article/work/law-secular-/state-contraceptive-mandates-widespread-but-not-as-broad-as-hhs-plan). > [@Gorsnak](#): > > And of course, you know perfectly well that changing jobs imposes a very high burden on people, and most people are not free to quit their job because the benefit package includes (or doesn’t) elements they don’t like. Pretending that this is anything like a free marketplace is just insulting to anyone reading your posts. I’m not sure where exactly someone is supposed to go when the only local hospital is Catholic and a hospital is the only place where their role is performed. There’s not a huge random job market, especially in rural areas, for anesthesia technologists or surgeons or labor and delivery nurses, you know? This concept of “just go somewhere else” is also pretty facile when we’re just a few months from double digit joblessness and in a recovery that hasn’t expanded the job market worth a damn. ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholics-are-you-upset-by-obamas-new-birth-control-rule/615592/85 "2012-03-20T00:34:00Z")
> [@](#): > > I’m not seeing the connection between “life begins and conception,” and “it’s morally wrong to use birth control.” There isn’t one, the “it’s morally wrong to use birth control.” argument is essentially natural law. In fact, it’s the only consistent argument there is against homosexuality: non-generative sex is completely off the table\*. Of course, this is the part where almost every Catholic says that whether or not they’ve lusted after a women in their own heart or whatever is between them and their priest and yet continues to vote against gay rights as contrary to the Gospels. - I occasionally check Catholic org or whatever it’s called in much the same way as I sometimes consult Stormfront for their position on matters. Apparently manual stimulation of one’s wife following copulation may be theologically allowed if she doesn’t orgasm during coitus and nocturnal emissions aren’t actually sinful, so there is some evidence of adopting progressive principles on intercourse. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholics-are-you-upset-by-obamas-new-birth-control-rule/615592.md?page=4)