Today, the Senate is poised to vote on a proposal by Missouri Senator Roy Blunt that could potentially eviscerate health insurance guarantees for millions of Americans under the guise of protecting religious liberty.
The Blunt Amendment is indeed a blunt instrument, part of a deeply cynical and wholly phony debate over whether requiring employers to offer a basic package of benefits in their healthcare policies violates the “conscience” of those who may disagree with some of those health services (e.g., contraception) on the basis of religion or morality.
This started, of course, with resistance by some employers to contraception coverage.
Under the original rule that would have required Catholic hospitals and universities to pay for contraceptive coverage, there was a barely plausible religious liberty argument. Once the regulation was changed, so that insurance companies were to offer the coverage directly to employees without charge, even that argument evaporated. (Think about it: how does the fact that your employee can get a medical product that your religious beliefs prohibit you from using violate your First Amendment rights? You aren’t being forced to use it, and now, not even forced to pay for it.)
This is a violation only if your “religious liberty” includes the right to tell other people how to live.
For most of the talking heads and lawmakers making all the noise, this wasn’t even really about contraception. The real motive for this entire manufactured controversy is the Republicans’ persistent effort to kill the Affordable Care Act. The Blunt Amendment would give every employer the right to opt out of coverage for health care procedures and products that offend his conscience. (How we would know that a particular coverage really bothered his conscience rather than his pocketbook is an open question.)
Don’t believe working women should have babies? Don’t cover maternity benefits.
Don’t believe in immunizations? Don’t cover the costs of vaccinations.
Don’t believe in artificial “assistance” for sex? Don’t cover viagra.
Okay, you get the idea. Passage of this proposal would make health coverage unworkable–which is, of course, the point. It has nothing to do with religious liberty, as I’ve previously explained, and most Senators clearly understand that.
One of the saddest footnotes to this dishonest nonsense is watching Dick Lugar, of all people, jump on this bandwagon, in yet another pathetic effort to pander to the Tea Party zealots trying to oust him.
The day before yesterday, Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine announced she wouldn’t run for another term. There were evidently limits to what she was willing to do to placate the irrational know-nothings who have assumed control of the GOP. Lugar would have done better to emulate her, and depart with dignity.
The Dick Lugar who stood up for freedom in South Africa when his GOP colleagues backed the apartheid regime, the Dick Lugar who was not afraid to be a “maverick” when he thought he was right is long, long gone. The Senator we have today is a mere ghost of the Senator who once represented Indiana.
Emergency Room Doctor: “This kid’s wearing a Lady Gaga Tshirt. Lady Gaga likes the gays, this Tshirt offends my conscience, I refuse to treat him.”
Thanks Blunt Amendment!
What did you think was going to happen?
With all the backroom, after-hours, evasion-of-the-media, all-players-but-the-Republicans negotiations that went on to create “Affordable Care”, you’re going to belly-ache about this? We’re all supposed to roll over and play dead?
Is the Blunt amendment over 2000 pages long?
Does take over approximately a sixth of the economy?
Do you have to vote to pass it in order to find out what’s in it?
Have Democratic amendments been routinely rejected for the bill?
Does it mandate the hiring and intrusive power of a mass of health care bureaucrats to administer?
The Republicans may blow this election by not sufficiently denouncing the likes of convicted Wall Street hedge fund managers and indicted former Goldman-Sachs directors. But, the GOP (drawbacks and all), are still closer to the American belief that government is to have limits and free enterprise is to thrive- not the other way around.
It’s very disappointing Sheila to see you take a position against religious liberty and the Free Exercise Clause. I don’t believe in the Catholic Church’s teaching against artificial birth control either, but the notion that it is okay for government to come in and dictate to religious institutions what they can and cannot do with regarde to the Church’s fundamental beliefs is an outrage not to mention quite possibly unconstitutional. What’s next…the federal government going to deny tax exempt statuts to the Catholic Church because they discriminate against women in not allowing female priests. Again, it’s not a policy I agree with , but it is not the role of government to pick and choose which religious beliefs are acceptable.
First, we’re not talking about church activities — this applies to hospitals and universities that might happen to be affiliated with religious institutions; serving and employing populations that have nothing to do with the particular religious institution.
Second, the Blunt Amendment went far beyond religious institutions and simply gave employers the right to gut insurance coverage by declaring their moral sensibilities to be bruised.
Third, we’ve been through this. “[The] right of free exercise does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a valid and neutral law of general applicability on the ground that the law proscribes (or prescribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes).” 494 U. S. 872, 879 (1990).
So, happily, you can stop being “very disappointed” with Sheila.
It’s obvious that Sheila Kennedy doesn’t get it, but it’s sad to read what Doug just wrote which proves that he doesn’t get it.
THESE ARE CHURCH ACTIVITIES. Before the government bullied itself in, and before many denominations backed out, these were all “church activities”: education, healthcare, care for the homeless, etc. No one should have to pay for this. Show me where government-provided healthcare can be found in the constitution.
Well, your allcaps are certainly persuasive. But, I think the power to regulate healthcare is found in the bits about common welfare, commerce, all powers necessary and proper to execute those powers, and supreme law of the land. Right next to the authority to build and maintain Interstate highways.