Gary Wills, a rare intelligent conservative, explains it..

[rubato]

1.
Health care though one's employment is a form of compensation just like your salary is. An employer has no more right to tell you what HC you can receive than they do to tell you you can't buy birth control pills, plan B, vodka or R-rated movies with your salary.

2.
Should a Christian Scientist only have to pay for prayer services?

3.
Should a Jehovah's Witness employer have the right to refuse to pay for transfusions or a life-saving kidney transplant?

4.
Should a Church of Babalu employer only have to pay for you to kill a chicken to get well?

5.
Should a backwoods cultist force you to hold rattlesnakes and dance for healing?


The Catholic church simply wants to impose its will on the public. This is the same church who kidnapped thousands of children from single mothers in Spain for decades and lied to them that their children had died. The Age of Enlightenment only happened when they were stripped of secular power.


yrs,
rubato

[Gob]

This whole brouhaha strikes me as an excellent argument against our wierd American system of employer-based health insurance, and (yet another) excellent argument in favor of a single-payer health insurance system.

Enough of the Anti-Americanism already!

[Sean]

1.
Health care though one's employment is a form of compensation just like your salary is. An employer has no more right to tell you what HC you can receive than they do to tell you you can't buy birth control pills, plan B, vodka or R-rated movies with your salary.

(My bold)

Is there something that Strop isn't telling us?

Am I to expect an invoice in the mail?

[dgs49]

A couple decades ago, when the idea of insurance mandates first arose (supported by many Republican interests, including the Heritage Foundation), it was presumed that the mandate would apply only to basic insurance, with a relatively high deductible. It would have been intended to protect both the working-poor insured (with jobs that did not provide health insurance), and the Government from having to pay for catastrophic accidents and illnesses. Routine expenses - like BC pills - were completely outside the discussion, as was optical care, dental care, chiropractic care, aroma therapy, and what have you. The proposals were for basic insurance to indemnify the insured against catastrophic medical expenses.

Ever since the invention of the Pill (and later, the greater availability of abortion), there has been a political consensus that the taxpayers should not have to pay, through their taxes, for "medications" and procedures that they found morally abhorrent. No matter that the Constitution has been re-written to give Americans a "right" to use birth control, to get an abortion, to take BC pills, to have an elective sterilization, or to do a number of other things that some find immoral, the common consensus is that "we" should not have to pay for those things with our tax dollars.

And yet the Government has crept more and more into such reproductive matters by nibbling at the edges. Medicaid will pay for abortions or sterlilizations under certain circumstances, for example. But religious-based hospitals treating Medicaid patients were given a "conscience" exemption from having to provide such services, if their faith precluded them. Medicaid patients requiring abortions could be sent to another hospital or clinic to get them.

It is also noteworthy have only a small fraction of physicians are willing to perform abortions (it is prohibited by the Oath of Hippocrites), for moral reasons.

But this long-term consensus is inconvenient for the Obama administration, which has its own overriding agenda, and is wiser than any of us. They not only want to force compulsory insurance on those who may not want or need it, they want to compel the insurance companies to pay for "reproductive services" that they consider socially desirable, even if those expenses are relatively trivial. Note that they are not mandating coverage for teeth cleaning or dental care, glasses & contact lenses, chiropractic adjustments, or regular medical check-ups. Just birth control pills, "morning-after" pills, and abortions. Not condoms either, which if memory serves, fulfill the same "medical" purpose.

While the Catholic Church has been mainly fighting this battle (it was a sharp stick in their eye, figuratively speaking), it is not a battle about the Church. It is a battle about the Federal Government getting involved in matters that it has no business being involved in.

To read the posts from the Liberals here you would think that BC pills are the only way to prevent runaway population growth. The Pill was not generally available until the 1960's, and yet illegitimate births and "unwanted babies" were nowhere near as prevalent prior to 1965 as they are now. And people somehow managed to control the size of their families before the invention of the Pill. Gee, I wonder how that happened?

And keep in mind, this discussion does not have any bearing on what employers and employees may agree is appropriate coverage for their employer-provided medical insurance. As we all know, hospitalization and other medical coverage is part of the bargained-for compensation of the employee in most cases, and can include anything that the parties elect. THIS DISCUSSION is about the scope of coverage of insurance that is mandated by the Federal government.

Carry on.

[Scooter]

Let's have this conversation again when hospitals run by Jehovah's Witnesses are permitted to refuse to perform blood transfusions, and when doctors who are Christian Scientists are permitted to practice without ever being required to dispense pharmaceuticals, and when insurance mandates allow for those exclusions. Until then...

[dgs49]

Scooter, has it occurred to you that this problem is the result of the fact that the Catholic Church runs hospitals, schools, orphanages, old folks homes, etc, that treat and care for millions of people who are not Catholic? Often on a pro bono basis?

You are such an idiot.

And a Canadian?

[Scooter]

So is it a moral issue, or is it an issue only because the Catholic position is more visible, and therefore more acceptable?

If you are not prepared to accept that a trauma surgeon who is a Jehovah's Witness should be allowed a patient to bleed to death rather than give him/her a blood transfusion, then your position has nothing to do with protecting a health care provider's or institution's right to practice according to their own morality.

[Grim Reaper]

It is also noteworthy have only a small fraction of physicians are willing to perform abortions (it is prohibited by the Oath of Hippocrites), for moral reasons.

There's some things to consider here.

1. The harsh reality under which abortion doctors exist. A guy who performs heart surgery isn't going to have his life, or his family, threatened by insane individuals.

2. Republicans have been busy little bees passing laws (the kind that interfere with people that you so hate) to make it harder for doctors to perform abortions.

3. Not all doctors are even capable of giving abortions. The podiatrist isn't going to have the training to do this sort of thing.

But go ahead, act like you have a point when you ignore reality.

But this long-term consensus is inconvenient for the Obama administration, which has its own overriding agenda, and is wiser than any of us. They not only want to force compulsory insurance on those who may not want or need it, they want to compel the insurance companies to pay for "reproductive services" that they consider socially desirable, even if those expenses are relatively trivial. Note that they are not mandating coverage for teeth cleaning or dental care, glasses & contact lenses, chiropractic adjustments, or regular medical check-ups. Just birth control pills, "morning-after" pills, and abortions. Not condoms either, which if memory serves, fulfill the same "medical" purpose.

Nobody has ever been turned away from teeth cleaning because of religious issues. Nobody has ever been denied dental care because of religious issues. Nobody has ever been denied glasses or contact lenses because of religious issues. Nobody has ever been denied chiropractic adjustments because of religious issues. Nobody has been denied regular medical check-ups because of religious issues.

Notice a pattern yet? Or should I pound it into the ground some more?

To read the posts from the Liberals here you would think that BC pills are the only way to prevent runaway population growth. The Pill was not generally available until the 1960's, and yet illegitimate births and "unwanted babies" were nowhere near as prevalent prior to 1965 as they are now. And people somehow managed to control the size of their families before the invention of the Pill. Gee, I wonder how that happened?

More strawman horseshit. Nobody has ever claimed that birth control is the only way. Oh, and maybe having 120 million more Americans compared to back then might be a contributing factor. But keep ignoring 99% of reality when you make your claims. You act as if nothing has changed since 1965.

[rubato]

Let's have this conversation again when hospitals run by Jehovah's Witnesses are permitted to refuse to perform blood transfusions, and when doctors who are Christian Scientists are permitted to practice without ever being required to dispense pharmaceuticals, and when insurance mandates allow for those exclusions. Until then...

Is there an echo in here?

But the point is correct. Why should any employer be able to impose their own irrational superstitions on their employees?

yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

Whaddaya know? Even non-stupid Catholics disagree with Dave-o. And appear to be the majority.
_______________________
http://www.alternet.org/news/154166/has ... s_bishops/

“…
Current events bear this out. In fact, even more significant than the ground-breaking contraception "accommodation" announced last week by the Obama administration may be its effect on the bishops, who now stand marginalized in their own church, as major Catholic organizations, most of them led by clergy -- the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, the Catholic Health Association (which represents Catholic hospitals), the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and the Sisters of Mercy -- signed onto the administration's plan over the bishops' objections.

Adding insult to the bishops' injury are the polls, which show majorities of Catholics in favor of the healthcare plan's mandate for contraceptive coverage by employer-provided health insurance, even if the employer is an institution, like a hospital or university, that is affiliated with the church. A New York Times/CBS News poll released on Wednesday found that "57 percent of Catholic voters supported the requirement for religiously affiliated employers, like hospitals or universities, to cover the full cost of birth control for their employees, while 36 percent opposed it (7 percent said they did not know)." Further, reported Laurie Goodstein, "There was almost no difference between Catholic and other voters on the question."

… “
___________________________________

yrs,
rubato

[dgs49]

As I have stated on more than one occasion, this is not a "Catholic" issue. It is an issue of the Government imposing its world view (preventing and ending pregnancies are a socially-desirable end) on society through a regulatory mandate.

Most voters (and respondents to polls) will always answer yes to the generic question: "Do you favor getting more stuff without having to pay for it?" even if the "stuff" is a social disease. The questions clearly were couched in terms that brought about the desired outcome of the poll.

It's not a Catholic issue.

It's not a Catholic issue.

It's not a Catholic issue.

[Crackpot]

Don't forget to click your ruby slippers.

[Grim Reaper]

Most voters (and respondents to polls) will always answer yes to the generic question: "Do you favor getting more stuff without having to pay for it?" even if the "stuff" is a social disease. The questions clearly were couched in terms that brought about the desired outcome of the poll.

It's cute how you try to marginalize the poll by acting like it was worded in such a manner.

It's not a Catholic issue.

Sure, it's not a Catholic issue, it's just an issue that only (some) Catholics care about.

[rubato]

He's right. It's not a Catholic issue. It is a "Catholic Bishops, a few fringe minority nutcases like dgs, and the lying demagogues of the Republican party" vs the world issue. Most of the Catholic church in most of the educated world ignore this shit.

_________________________
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 1N9AIG.DTL

Religious liberty and credibility

Brian Cahill

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

The recent compromise by the Obama administration on its proposed mandate of contraception was an appropriate response to legitimate and widespread Catholic concerns about religious liberty. Most Catholic organizations affected by the mandate found the compromise acceptable. The major holdout is the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Even though the bishops have no credibility with their teachings on contraception, they were supported by the majority of Catholics in their initial response to the mandate. Now the conference is hanging out there all by itself with little Catholic support, not just because the great majority of Catholics have long rejected church teaching on contraception, not just because 95 percent of Catholic women of child-bearing age use contraception, but because American Catholics now know that 28 states, including California, have had similar mandates in place for some time.

And now American Catholics and the rest of the country know that the real agenda of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is to stop any government health care mandate. This is sad and ironic because the Catholic Church has historically been a strong advocate of health care access for those who need it. Worse, the conference is specifically demanding an exemption for any employer who would have a "conscience" problem with providing contraceptive coverage for employees. In other words, in the name of "religious liberty," these bishops want to force their religious belief on employees who do not share their belief. Not only is this effort turning religious liberty on its head, but it ignores the reality that affordable health care, including contraception, is the most effective way to significantly reduce abortion.

It has been clear for some time that the conference does not speak for the majority of American Catholics. There is no great evidence that the conference even speaks for all the bishops. The problem is that the bishops running the conference - with their overt political activism, with their inflammatory language and with their lack of pastoral sensitivity - have little credibility as true Catholic leaders. And it's not just in the area of contraception.

The conference freely jumps into the political arena on most sexuality issues, but has refused to issue a public statement condemning bullying of gay and lesbian youth.

Even after the contraception compromise was offered, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago described the Obama administration as making a "severe assault on religious liberty." This is the same bishop who only a few months ago expressed concern that a gay pride parade could result in anti-Catholic violence and compared the LGBT movement to the Ku Klux Klan. And Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia described the contraception mandate as the "embodiment of culture war." Four years ago, he told Catholics not to vote for Obama.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York is the president of the U.S. Conference of Bishops. Last year, in an interview on "60 Minutes," he compared homosexuality to incest. And the other day, in attempting to defend his position against the contraception mandate, he assured us, "We bishops are pastors, we're not politicians," and later, "it's not that we hold fast, that we're stubborn ideologues, no."

There are many good bishops in this country who are pastors, who operate out of compassion, who are not ideologues and who understand that a necessary part of shepherding their flock, and a necessary part of serving those in need, is a willingness to manage the tension between Church teaching and how Catholic health and human service providers carry out their mission in a pluralistic society.

I am a Catholic. I go to Mass. I love my Church. I love its rich history of serving the poor, the vulnerable and the marginalized. I am not leaving.

But it seems to me that the Catholic bishops who have led the charge on this issue have succeeded only in showing how wide the gap is between the Catholic faithful and some of its bishops, have left the impression that the issue of conscience only seems to arise over matters of sexuality, have ended up intentionally or otherwise in bed with the likes of Newt Gingrich, have inadvertently become a potential obstacle to affordable health care for those most in need, and have further diminished the moral influence and teaching authority that many Catholics used to respect and desire from their bishops.

Brian Cahill is the former executive director of Catholic Charities of San Francisco. To comment, submit your letter to www.sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1.

This article appeared on page A - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... z1n4FpSp69

___________________________________

yrs,
rubato