Once again Republicans have managed to obfuscate the point with manufactured outrage that forces us to talk about things that are completely irrelevant to the subject at hand.
And even Sandra Fluke got it wrong—cost is meaningless in the debate about coverage.
Even access is irrelevant.
"First, we need to clarify that the notion that taxpayers are the ones paying for “other people’s” birth control under the new Affordable Care Act is utterly incorrect. The Act that calls for taxpayers to pay for other people’s contraceptives was enacted in 1970 by Republican President Richard M. Nixon, who established Title X under the Public Health Service Act, which provides coverage for uninsured, low-income women to receive taxpayer-funded gynecological exams and contraception.
So taxpayers have been paying for “other people’s” contraceptives for 42 years now under a law written by a Republican president that received overwhelming bi-partisan support in Congress. And not once in over four decades has anyone on the Republican side called for repealing Title X because they objected to paying for other people’s birth control. Not once.
No, the Limbaughs and their followers only became apoplectic over “forced payment for other people’s birth control” when the Catholic church vocally opposed the mandate that insurance policies they negotiated on behalf of their employees include contraceptive coverage under the new health care law that Republicans have dubbed “Obamacare.”
So are churches, religious institutions and other “conscientious objectors” really being forced to “pay for other people’s birth control” under the new mandate?
Every insured individual covered by private insurance in this country (and that’s who and what we’re talking about in this case) is paying for their own insurance. Period. Full stop. Even if their employer negotiated said policy for discounts and cuts the check for the premium to the insurer.
No one is paying for anyone else’s birth control under The Affordable Care Act mandate on contraceptive coverage.
Your explanation is welcome, and enlightening, but it may not be necessary. The Pubbies are suffering a massive self-inflicted wound behind this. The fact that they didn’t see this coming means they’re just too effing stupid to be running the country at this point.
That makes no sense at all. Employers are required by law to purchase an insurance plan for their employees that covers all forms of birth control without any copay. How can the employers not be the ones paying for it when it’s the employers who are the ones paying for it?
As for the “but everyone’s tax money has been paying for birth control for years” line, we already have a lengthy thread going on that exact topic, so I’m not sure what a duplicate thread is supposed to accomplish.
Employees earn health insurance coverage as compensation for the work they perform.
This is how it works:
Employee: $X.00 cash into their bank account + $Y.00 check sent to insurance company on the employee’s behalf = Total Compensation in Consideration for Work Performed on the Job.
The previous thread asks why taxpayers or others who are currently paying for birth control through Title X should all of a sudden be objecting to paying for it under The Affordable Health Care Act.
This thread debunks the notion that anyone other than the insured is paying for their own health insurance policy and all the covered services.
The problem I have with this is that I have never had (or even heard of) an employer that would pay me $X + $Y if I declined the insurance. Or one that paid me less than my coworker simply because I had family coverage (for which my employer’s share (the part not deducted from my gross pay) is larger than my coworkers individual coverage.
If I decline coverage, my check will increase - i have varying levels of coverage I can purchase with ‘pre tax’ dollars - dollars taht I have earned.
Different companies may phrase it differently - but every company where I have signed up for coverage there was a cost to me coming out of my paycheck at the end of the week.
THose that may say ‘we give it to our employees’ still add it as a part of the compensation plan - otherwise they could 'give it ’ to anyone - wether a worker or not.
I get that if you don’t take the insurance, you won’t pay the employee’s contribution - but the employee contribution is deducted from your salary (X). I’m talking about the employer’s share (Y). I pay approximately 30% of my actual health insurance premium through a pre-tax deduction. My employer pays the other 70%. Let’s say I pay $300/mo and my employer pays $700/mo. If I decline the insurance , my take-home pay (but not my salary) will increase $300/mo. My employer saves the $700/month- if that $700 is part of the compensation I have earned, why am I not getting it ? And why do I get more dollars than than my coworker, who has the same job/salary/insurance, but no dependents and who therefore gets an employee contribution of about $440. It’s a benefit, but it’s no more earned compensation than discount theme park tickets are.
There isn’t actually anything you can resolve so succinctly here. The key to this debate is all in how individuals and groups view things, you might view the employer share of health insurance coverage as earned compensation (but with some exceptions it certainly is not treated as earned income by the IRS or your AGI would be much higher at tax time) and your employer might view it as something they are paying for as a cost of attracting and retaining employees, or a cost of complying with laws that regulate the behavior of employers.
It’s sort of like unemployment insurance, at the Federal level employers cover the entire bill (6.2% of wage.) You can view that unemployment benefit as something you’ve earned by working, and not view it as the employer’s money at all. The employer can view it as a benefit he is buying for you under compulsion of the government.
I think both views are more or less valid, and they all really have no practical difference. There is only a semantic difference, but when it comes to Catholic Bishop types it is exactly those petty semantic differences that matter to them. We can agree or disagree about whether that is right or wrong, but that’s essentially the debate, and there really isn’t any strong factual claim to how you choose to look at it.
I guess my take on it is, your semantic claim (it is a benefit earned by you for working) is certainly valid. But so is the semantic claim of the Catholics, that their money is going somewhere that pays for contraception. (By the way, because of the reality of how money flows through the economy I think they are being extremely ridiculous about what they consider paying for contraception and what they don’t.) However that’s the whole point, they don’t like it because they don’t like it, the people that are swayed by this issue really aren’t open to opposite interpretations. The people that aren’t swayed by this issue just plain don’t care (they’d be perfectly fine with forcing the Catholic Church to provide contraception to employees overtly.)
While they may/may not re-imburse you if you decline coverage - it is still part of your overall compensation ‘package’. They would not be paying it at all if you did not work there.
No bishop is being forced to use birth control. No catholic is being forced to use birth control. As an employer, an employer is buying insurance; that insurance company is buying birth control. These are normal functions in a normal society. We all play many different roles in life in order to get by with ourselves, our family, our friends, our community, and our nation. We are willing to grant them their opinions, their proclivities, their beliefs, their religion, and their right to exercise these things themselves for themselves.
Then you (or they) haven’t negotiated very well. I changed jobs last summer, and I negotiated for a higher paycheck based on the fact that I would not need my health insurance paid by them on my behalf.
Boilerplate debate terminology.
I appreciate that argument. However, if I am not employed by you, you will not be covering the cost of my insurance. If I am employed by you, you will be. That ties that insurance payment directly to my employment with you and turns it into compensation for my work.
I also don’t pay taxes on what I earn as an employee in matching 401k contributions, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t earned those contributions through my labor, making them part of my overall compensation package.
Just because the IRS allows me to accept compensation in a form that is not taxed upon earning it, doesn’t make it any less earnings in consideration for my work.
That’s my point-they are paying it, not me. Which really has nothing to do with whether universities , hospitals, bookstores and coffee shops run by religious organizations should be mandated to provide the same coverage that universities , hospitals, bookstores and coffee shops run by non-religious organizations are mandated to provide.
Or perhaps you simply aren’t considering the fairly large number of jobs where people don’t get to negotiate on an individual basis - which include government jobs, union jobs and all sorts of jobs in private industry which have pretty rigid pay scales except for people high on the food chain and which don’t really want to get involved in making agreements that your salary will be decreased by $Y should you decide you want the insurance at some point in the future.
However, that does not negate the fact that as employees, I/you/we/et al receive myriad forms of compensation in consideration for our work. A paycheck is only one of those. Contributions to 401k and other retirement plans are another. Time off for vacation, long- and short-term disability insurance and health insurance are also among them.
All of those—each and every single one—is conditional upon the fact that I’m actually working for the organization that’s providing them. Quit or be fired and like a puff of smoke, every one of those disappear right along with the job.
That is the definition of earning something. I’m not getting health insurance for a company I don’t work for. I must work there in order to earn that benefit. And if I’m earning that benefit, that’s me and my labor “paying for” it. No one else.
Yes, you’ve nicely restated the semantic argument I already elucidated upon. The point remains, the Catholics make an equally valid semantic argument that it is their funds going directly into an insurance benefit that pays for things they find morally objectionable.
No it isn’t. It’s not semantics at all. By virtue of my employment I earn that insurance. That makes it mine, not my employer’s.
It’s not semantics when that benefit is tied directly to my labor and I lose it upon termination of my employment.
And our elected representatives have now made it the law that my employer can no longer restrict my options for the insurance I earn by virtue of my employment, to only cover those things they find morally acceptable. Since it is my insurance and my labor that earns it, I am entitled to full coverage for all of my health needs, for every organ in my body, including my uterus and ovaries.
Earned it in the sense that it’s part of what you get for working there , absolutely. I don’t believe I ever said that it wasn’t earned or even that it wasn’t compensation . But most people (and you might be the exception ) are not paying for it in the sense that they are giving something up in return for the employer’s contribution which is pretty much the definition of “paying”.
Which again, in my opinion, has nothing to do with whether the hospitals, universities, etc should be exempt from this requirement. I have no problem with saying " Yes, universities , hospitals ,bookstores and coffee shops run by religious organizations are required to comply with same requirements as other non-church employers and if they don’t like the idea of paying for birth control coverage, they can get out of the hospital business."
But in the same way that I am not going to convince you to change your point of view you are not going to convince me to change mine. Nor will anyone convince those religious groups to change theirs . It’s not really a semantic problem - as was said earlier, it’s a difference in point of view.
I have no idea how you can say that. What people are giving is their labor. Their labor earns the cash in their paycheck, the cash in their 401k, the cash that covers their vacation time, and the cash that goes towards their insurance.
Earned compensation.
Period.
This really isn’t that difficult.
Or they can just stop falsely claiming that the insurance their employees earn is somehow magically turned into a gift that they’re paying for and that their employees haven’t earned.
At a certain construction site, workers went busily to and fro, building a building.
But five guys sat around in lawn chairs all day. They were also drawing paychecks from the construction company.
The reason they did not do any work is that they were mobsters, and the price for the job site to continue uninterrupted by a strike, or by vandalism, or something else, was that these guys would go on the books and get paid, even though they did no work.
In my opinion, it would not be correct to say they “earned” that paycheck, because it did not result from a free negotiation between employee and employer. It resulted from a threat: pay them this, or else.
If the government requires that an employer pay each employee a Starbucks gift card in addition to their regular wage, I don’t believe it is fair to call that Starbucks card part of the employee’s earned wage, for the same reason the mobsters’ paychecks on the Sopranos did not qualify.