Sure. I’m not sure why you think this is a point, though.
I can’t force you to take debating this seriously.
Let me repeat: The Catholic church, as an institution could certainly have ended slavery in any primarily Catholic country whenever they wanted. But they waited more than a thousand years. No, they didn’t take it very seriously.
So, I utterly destroy your argument and you run away? How about a link to whatever bullshit you’re claiming to have pulled from yonder hat?
You can’t be serious? I show you that you’re wrong, and you just move the goalposts? Don’t you think honest debaters should admit when they’re wrong?
It seems to me that we’ve decided your freedom of conscience has little bearing on what you’re required to pay. When I was eight, my parents took me to a meeting at which some Quakers explained how to protest military interventions in Central America through withholding portions of income tax. The point was, it was civil disobedience. They had no legal right to refuse to pay for things they found morally abhorrent; instead they chose to risk legal consequences in order to protest the morally abhorrent practices.
Would that the Catholic hierarchy were as ethical as those Quakers. After they got done protesting capital punishment and unjust wars through withholding their taxes, maybe they could get around to civil disobedience over contraception.
And the government is paying for any of that…porn magazines, abortions, motels? Employers pay for that via insurance. I don’t get your point.
I want the government involved in my HEALTH CARE. Birth control for me for much of my life had nothing to do with my bedroom. But even this has nothing to do with the government in my bedroom, it has to do with my compensation received from my employer covering basic health care needs for women. Like the ability to control dysmenorrhea via a medical prescription.
Our social interest in subsidizing birth control is our social interest in preventing pregnancies for which the parents are unready. No doubt that their are other reasons to use birth control, but it is not clear why those women should have that subsidized, just as I don’t have my contact lenses subsidized, even though I need them to see. The contact lenses are considered an expense that I am obligated to bear on my own (and I don’t think that’s wrong). Nor is any employer obligated to provide me with vision insurance.
What is the social interest in non-birth-controlling birth control that is so great that we should curtail an employer’s freedom to design the benefits package they offer?
One thing that keeps coming up in shrill posts on my Facebook feed is the claim that “The Pill is the ONLY medication not covered by insurance!!!”
It’s starting to make me twitchy. No, no it isn’t. Not by a long shot. There are plenty of drugs that aren’t covered by your insurance policy. You’re probably, however, healthy enough not to know about them. They simply haven’t come up to be denied.
Come to work with me for a day and you’ll get to hear about all sorts of excluded drugs and the worse-side-effects alternatives that are covered and the out-of-pocket drugs that people have to pay for even if they have Part D or other prescription coverage.
Now, The Pill is probably the most common, cheapest, widely prescribed drug not covered by some insurance policies. It may, arguably, be in the public interest to help more people be able to afford it, as Kimmy Gibbler points out. Regardless of income, it may be in the public best interest to make it as easy and cheap as possible, so as to encourage its use. It may be in the financial best interest of the insurance company to provide it, as it may - MAY - reduce their costs in the long run.* But it’s not the only drug not covered on some insurance plans. Stop saying that before I have to drive to your house and slap the stupid out of you.
Sorry, this is sort of strawman-y in this thread, but if I go off on another Facebook Friend, I may have to ban myself from Facebook, so y’all got to hear it here. This thread is pretty disjointed and ranty at this point anyhow.
*I’m not convinced of that, by the way. Paying $300 a year for The Pill for 100,000 women would *not *be cheaper than paying $10,000 in prenatal care and birth costs for 2000 women who get pregnant and stay pregnant *because *they don’t get The Pill through insurance - the other women paying for their own contraception out of pocket. It’s true that providing The Pill for a *specific *woman is cheaper than paying for her to have a baby, but it’s not a binary choice. If you don’t pay for The Pill, she’ll often pay for it herself, and save the insurance company the price of *both *The Pill and a pregnancy.
I don’t know what the actual numbers are - I don’t know how many women are covered by insurance, I don’t know how many women will pay for their own contraception if their insurance doesn’t cover it (or get it through Planned Parenthood on a sliding scale or through similar programs). I don’t know how many women are taking The Pill despite being unknowingly infertile. I don’t know how many women get pregnant each year who wouldn’t get pregnant if their insurer covered the Pill. But I do know that, like all preventative medicine, the numbers aren’t simple when they’re on a huge scale. Prevention is only surely cheaper than treatment when you’re talking about 1 patient sure to get the expensive condition you’re trying to prevent.
Very well, I’ll explain. You’ve said that religious institutions will not be forced to pay for birth control because “the cost is absorbed by the insurers”. But now I’ve pointed out that when insurance companies are required by law to cover all forms of birth control with no copay, they can simply pass along the cost increases in the form of higher rates, and you respond “sure”. So now we’re in agreement that cost of the birth control coverage that Obama is forcing on the insurance companies will not be absorbed by the insurance companies, but rather can be (and presumably will be) passed along to the employers who purchase the insurance. Therefore your claim that “the cost is absorbed by the insurers” is incorrect.
Of course, and I can’t force you to stop making incorrect statements such as “The insurance company saves money by providing birth control.” Even those strongly in favor of laws mandating birth control coverage don’t believe that. This page, for instance, gives a figure of an additional cost of $16/month.
Really? How would they have done that? It’s not as if the Catholic Church had the power to make laws even in most countries that were majority Catholic. When Catholic clergy were in charge, slavery was abolished; for instance, when Father Hidalgo was leading the Mexican independence movement, he made the abolition of slavery his top priority. But most of the Americas during the time of slavery were ruled by secular leaders with little interest in Catholicism, and that’s why slavery was legal.
You have not utterly destroyed my argument; you’ve utterly destroyed your own argument. First you said that Obama’s new rule “doesn’t apply to churches”. Then you quoted a passage from the mandate saying this: “The exemption from the mandate has four prongs: the religious employer must (1) have the primary purpose of inculcating religious values, (2) primarily employ people of its own faith, (3) primarily serve people of its own faith, and (4) fall within a certain tax-code provision (that it’s tax exempt, and it doesn’t have to file tax returns in the United States). So, it is a very narrow exemption that basically means very few religious entities will be exempted from the mandate.” This means that the exemption does not cover many churches (as I’ve explained in twoprevious threads that you participated in), so contrary to what you said, many churches will be mandated to pay for birth control coverage.
You can’t be serious? I show you that you’re wrong, and you just move the goalposts? Don’t you think honest debaters should admit when they’re wrong?
[/QUOTE]
When I say that “Hospitals and colleges that churches own are obviously neither secular nor businesses. They’re religious non-profits”, I’m entirely serious. Why wouldn’t I be? Isn’t it a self-evident fact that you’re incorrect when you classify religious charities as “secular businesses”?
Since you were wrong about whether Obama’s mandate required religious employers to pay for birth control coverage, wrong about churches being exempted from the mandate, and wrong about Catholics supporting slavery, you certainly should admit to being wrong. I’m not holding my breath while I wait fir it to happen, however.
And who do you think the employers pass that cost on to? That’s right, their employees, who probably want it covered. Quit pretending that the people who want it covered aren’t helping pay for it. I know, how about we just say the BC part comes out of my share of the payment, hum? Will that make you feel better?
“39% of Likely U.S. Voters believe the government should require a church or religious organization to provide contraceptives for women even if it violates their deeply held beliefs. Fifty percent (50%) disagree and oppose such a requirement that runs contrary to strong beliefs”
Of course that’s a different question than whether individual employees want their employer’s insurance to cover birth control, but I doubt you have any evidence that employees of all religious institutions want their insurance to do so.
That’s all beside the point, anyway. The point is that people and groups should have the freedom to decide what types of insurance they will and won’t purchase with their own money, and that Obama’s mandate takes away that freedom. Finagling over the precise amount of the cost that will or won’t be shifted around to one party or another doesn’t change the fact that certain parties are being mandated, by the government, to spend their own money on things that they wouldn’t choose to purchase otherwise.
You just described the cost being absorbed by the insurers. Look, you obviously have zero intention of changing your views, but it is a fact that the insurance companies are paying for the birth control for these religious owned institutions.
Those insurance companies must get the money from somewhere, but they aren’t getting it in specific from the religious-owned institutions. They are getting it from all their income. And as I said, it saves money for the insurance companies.
You need to figure the cost based on the number of women who would have become pregnant over the same time. In any case, your cite says some analysts and offers no citations. You want more cites?
As I said before, I assume they could have used their power to interdict slave-owners. As to whether that would work, I don’t know with any certainty. But it got kings to step in line.
You’re missing the point. People made slavery illegal. When society grew enough to see that slavery was morally wrong some of the church got on board. But for more than a thousand years they thought it was not a huge problem and it certainly wasn’t on their front burner.
My initial argument was that since Catholics accepted slavery, should they be immune to labor laws. This is tangential, I’ll admit. But I was trying multiple avenues in order to worm a thread of understanding into the thick, rock slabs of your ideology.
No. Stop here. You are not saying a true thing. You said churches. Churches. Not a building with secular purpose that a church owns. Churches. Not a hospital. Churches. Not a college. Churches.
You said churches and now you are counting everything a church owns as a church. Factually, the law doesn’t apply to churches. You repeat the law and demand that it does.
Frankly, I expected better.
So a hospital owned by a church is a church? Is a hospital owned by lasertag business a lasertag arena?
This is feeble. If you have to drag this deep to pretend that you win, it’s easier to just admit you were wrong.
No, I wasn’t. The coverage is provided by the insurance company and they absorb the cost.
That’s a fact and you’re just running from it, because you have decided that you’ve been wronged. Look, people you respect have lied to you about this regulation. You were incensed and ran off to debate without knowing any of the facts. It’s not cool, but it’s done.
I fucking quoted the relevant requirements in the law. I fucking gave you text that specifically explains that churches are exempt. But you have now decided that hospitals owned by the RCC are churches. That mini-golf courses owned by a Rabbi are synagogues and a falafel stand owned by a Muezzin is holy ground. :rolleyes::rolleyes:
Tell me, if the church owns a carwash, does that count?
Perhaps I was wrong about supporting it. They certainly allowed it to happen for more than a thousand years without working against it.
If I’m specifically showing you the text and you laugh at it, this isn’t a debate. This is you dancing around like a Dervish.
It doesn’t take away that freedom. A church-owned business doesn’t have to pay for birth control coverage. It is provided by the insurer who absorbs the cost.
That’s a fact, by the way.
And people and businesses have the freedom to not have insurance. They just pay a penalty, because they will get treatment anyway.
Again I ask, are you really debating in good faith? Let’s look at that figure in context:
(emphasis added).
Note that the context is that some people think it’ll cost $30/person/month, and even that high cost is much cheaper than paying for pregnancies; others think the cost is $16/person/month, for certain contexts. Although the article isn’t precisely clear, that’s almost certainly the gross cost, not the net cost; they’re saying that in some cases it’s even cheaper than $30/month, but even when it’s more expensive, it’s still cheaper than pregnancy costs.
I await your sheepish retraction with bated breath. Bated, I tell you!
The question, as WhyNot pointed out, is whether $30 x (all covered women) is less than the cost of covering pregnancies that could have been avoided with free BC, keeping the following two points in mind:
(1) Many women are willing to pay the current copays in place
(2) Many people who don’t pay the current copay aren’t doing so because of inability to afford, but due to unwillingness to pay the expense and unwillingness to comply with the other commitments of BC (e.g., taking it regularly and as directed). In other words, we’re spending a lot of money (that could otherwise be used more effectively) to let BC go stale in the medicine cabinets of women who prioritize BC so low that they won’t even piece together the some $35 per month to pay for it.
Is this directed at my post? Because my point is that is seems misguided to subsidize BC when we don’t need it to induce its use among those disposed to use it and when, in light of its already low cost, we have reason to question whether a significant fraction of the new, marginal users of BC brought onboard by the new subsidy are actually going to use the medication as directed.
That is to say, I worry that many will take this new, free BC (because, why not? it’s free!) and then promptly never use it appropriately. I believe this because if one is not willing to make the minimal sacrifices associated with obtaining it at $35/month price point, I’m not sure one is going to just because now it’s free. So basically, we’re subsidizing a lot of BC that’s just going to be flushed down the toilet. Seems like a waste of money, right?
That’s a curious attitude. Considering that those women will have to make the effort to go to their gynecologists, fill the prescriptions, and so on, I doubt the number of women you are talking about is significant.
Anyway, I have to assume the studies referenced above take into account the failure rate of hormonal birth control, which is always expressed including the rate of failure due to user error.
When exactly did I “count everything a church owns as a church”? I don’t recall doing any such thing.
That’s all besides the point. You say that churches are given an exemption from Obama’s mandate, and you posted this description of the exemption: “The exemption from the mandate has four prongs: the religious employer must (1) have the primary purpose of inculcating religious values, (2) primarily employ people of its own faith, (3) primarily serve people of its own faith, and (4) fall within a certain tax-code provision (that it’s tax exempt, and it doesn’t have to file tax returns in the United States). So, it is a very narrow exemption that basically means very few religious entities will be exempted from the mandate.” Obviously many churches, including those that don’t own hospitals or schools, fall outside the mandate, or at least could be interpreted as falling outside the mandate. The church I attend is a normal one, with a steeple and pews and an altar and all the normal church stuff, and with no school or hospital attached, yet depending on how Obama’s bureaucrats interpret the deliberately vague wording of the exemption, it could easily be excluded from the exemption. Therefore your claim that all churches are exempted from Obama’s mandate is incorrect. Regardless of how many times you repeat the incorrect information, you will still be wrong.
So, it’s not that you don’t believe that churches have been exempted, it’s that you don’t believe they’ve *really, really *been exempted, and they’re just going to get thrown down that slippery slope the first chance they get?