image via Salon.com
So Obama says that no employer may choose not to cover contraception.
Bishops have taken a holier-than-thou approach, naturally, which amounts to little more than finger wagging. Eli has a sweet reply to their claim that the state should not involve itself into church affairs. But the preaching needs to continue from there.
Churches are exempt from the contraception coverage requirement. The Obama administration was very clear that the regulations do not apply to the family of pastors (on pastor’s health care plan provided by the church) or to Stacy the secretary at the local First Congregation. So then, who constitutes the controversy? Large organizations affiliated with a church. The University of St Thomas. Georgetown University. Baylor University. These are not bastions of hardcore fundamentalists, even though there may be some lurking around campus, but rather nearly-secular institutions clamoring to have some ties to a particular religious outlook. That will upset some of the Baylor folks, but that’s only because they know I am correct. Let us not forget the hospitals. Baylor Health Centers operate in one of the poorest areas of Dallas as well as numerous facilities in suburban areas and rural areas. Where Baylor has an extensive network of medical offices, imagine the scope of the Catholic affiliated hospitals throughout the country. This ruling is not about church secretaries.
These are organizations that employ thousands of people and not everyone is a believer of the affiliation. Universities are also notorious for hiring some of the poorer elements of their communities. There are some jobs you cannot pay your already-indentured (read: students) to do. It’s the preying on the poor in the name of profits or dogma that Obama is targeting in this new pronouncement.
Let us also look closely at the Catholics. The Baptists will be upset regardless of what Obama says (the sky is blue) and they seem to have at least internalized that they will oppose and resist Obama regardless what he does. The Guttmacher Institute cites 98% of Catholic women have used contraception. Is this another case of the bishops being so out of touch with their laity? I’ll refer again to Eli’s argument about pedophilia. The nerve.
Plus this new decision numbers out. Covering contraception is cheap, even when the economies of scale are not on this scale. It is, however, a burden on the individual payer, sometimes insurmountable when there are physicians refusing to write prescriptions and pharmacists refusing to fill those prescriptions, and given the enormity of the costs on the other end, this is a sound government policy. It is much cheaper to pay for a prevented pregnancy than to pay for raising an unwanted child. Hell, it’s far cheaper to pay for an abortion than to raise an unwanted child, but no politician can make that argument even though that is the true alternative these pious idiots are really clamoring for.
At the end of the day it is measures like these that must take place if we are to continue an employment based insurance scheme. The system has become too full of carved out niches and cadillac plans to support itself. If changes like these are not made, then a new scheme of insurance will need to be found. In the long view that would be preferable, but there are actual people paying the costs for these decisions.