Since SCOTUS screwed this pooch on this one, and since they’re pretty much where the buck stops, what has to happen to correct their error? Do we just have to wait for the conservative activist cabal to die out, and for the issue to come up again? Or will it be possible to legislate our way out of it? If so, what would that legislation be? Would it require a constitutional amendment specifically stating that a corporation cannot pray? Or that a person has more personhood than a corporation? Would finally passing the ERA have any effect on such institutionalized misogyny?
I mean seriously, the fight against such medieval ignorance can’t simply be over. Right?
It just underlines the fundamental stupity of making employers pay for health care - a model the rest of the world either never considered or has abandoned for a pile of reasons in which the Hobby Lobby decision is just one tiny grain of sand more.
Employers don’t need to be involved in paying for health care. Involving them just increases ineffeciency, complexity, cost and glitches of this kind. Introduce a rationally-designed system of providing healthcare to the population, and this problem goes away.
I think that’s one of the remedies proposed by the SCOTUS I their opinion, so to speak, if I understand correctly. The majority mentioned that if providing free contraception was important to the government it could do it itself.
However, this is not a constitutional decision. The Court decided this case (correctly, I might add) on the basis of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and that Hobby Lobby was entitled to the protections of the RFRA.
So all that has to happen here to change that is for Congress to modify the RFRA. If Congress changes the RFRA to say, “…and this applies only to non-profit corporations and natural persons…” then Hobby Lobby is out of luck.
Amen to that. The worst think about the ACA is that makes a stupid system-- employer provided health insurance-- even more entrenched in our legal and economic system.
I mean, seriously, do we really need the government to tell employers that they must provide 20 different types of contraceptives to their employees?
Bricker can correct me if I am wrong, but they could also just edit the ACA to say “RFRA does not apply here.” They could have done it in the original ACA bill.
I never said people might not need different types of contraceptives. I need many types of food, but we don’t require my employer to provide me with each one of them. It’s the “require employers” part that you seem to be missing.
If you want to say that employers shouldn’t provide health insurance, I can understand that. But it seems like it is silly to acknowledge that employers are now generally required to provide insurance, but there shouldn’t be reasonable standards of what that insurance should cover.
And I can guarantee you that your health insurance doesn’t cover groceries.
The court (I have trouble using a capital letter for this) did seem to say the government can pay for contraceptives directly, or require insurance companies to do so, as ACA provides for religious institutions. So let’s do it - let’s make that further step, small though it is, toward single-payer. Help make it clear to all that it’s something to be embraced, not feared.
The reason I specifically mentioned “20 types of contraceptives” is that HL actually was OK with 16 of the types. I bet many people reading this thread aren’t even aware of that. So, if you want to litigate this stuff forever, then knock yourself out and require employers to provide 500 types of contraceptives.
This is just one of the many reasons we should be decoupling HCI from employment.
Considering that many anti-abortion folks have claimed for years that drugs like Plan B prevent preganacy by interfering with implantation, but science actually tells us that they work by delaying ovulation, I’m hesitant to think that companies whose main business is glitter and buttons should be in a position to determine the efficacy of medical treatments, especially questions of whether two (or 10 or 20) types of prescription drugs may be redundant.
This is also another example of of the government taking a sledge hammer approach to a problem. Can someone tell me why this is considered a rational policy:
Problem: Some small fraction of women cannot afford birth control.
Solution: Force employers to provide birth control regardless of whether the employee can afford it or not.
A more rational analysis would be:
Problem: Some small fraction of women cannot afford birth control.
Solution: The government provides birth control for women who cannot afford it.
Hell, even this analysis is more rational:
Problem: Some small fraction of women cannot afford birth control.
Solution: The government provides birth control for all women.
I know birth control is a serious topic, but it’s something pretty much every sexual active adult needs, and it’s not terribly expensive. We don’t require dental plans to pay for toothpaste or dental floss, afterall.
The stat about only applying to some of the 20 forms of contraception is also misleading because the opinion in Hobby Lobby will equally apply to the employers who object to all forms of contraception.*
See, e.g. Gilardi v. U.S. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs., 733 F.3d 1208, 1210 (D.C. Cir. 2013), pet. for cert. pending, No. 13-567 (filed Nov. 5, 2013) (plaintiffs oppose contraception); Korte v. Sebelius, 735 F.3d 654, 663-664 (7th Cir. 2013) (same); Autocam Corp. v. Sebelius, 730 F.3d 618, 621 (6th Cir. 2013), pet. for cert. pending, No. 13-482 (filed Oct. 15, 2013) (plaintiffs “accept their church’s teaching that artificial contraception [is] immoral”).