Contraception Coverage and the Stupid "War On Religion" Redux
My colleague Nick Gillespie made the excellent point two days ago that if health insurance coverage were de-linked from government funding and mandates, then the current "war on religion" nonsense that some politicians are peddling with regard to the requirement that organizations run by the Roman Catholic Church buy health insurance the covers contraceptives would never have occurred. People could use their own money or (as Nick suggested) vouchers to buy whatever kind of health insurance they wanted.
One more issue: health insurance is just a form of compensation offered by an employer. It's not the employer's money; it belongs to the employees. Since that is so, why should the employer's views on the morality of health insurance coverage trump that of their employees?
University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Art Caplan has posed an interesting hypothetical in his latest MSNBC column:
Imagine that the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses, which is based in Brooklyn, NY, creates a printing company that happily employs people from many faiths and cultural backgrounds. The company's sole task is to print all the Witness literature that its followers distribute door-to-door all over the world. That literature clearly states the Jehovah's Witnesses adamant opposition to blood transfusion. Then the federal government then issues a national set of minimal standards which all companies operating as public entities must provide as part of the health insurance coverage they offer.
The Governing Body is outraged because on that list are blood transfusions. They issue a statement accusing the President of trying to crush religious liberty by forcing their printing company, which employs many non-Jehovah's witnesses, to cover transfusions.
In that instance, would politicians be rushing to slam the health care plan on the basis of religious freedom? Would anyone in the media be sympathetic if the entire leadership of the Jehovah's Witnesses said they would not budge an inch in including coverage of blood transfusions at their printing company no matter what government, doctors or even their own employees believe that ought to have covered? I doubt it.
And yet, this is exactly the reaction that has greeted the pronouncement by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that they feel persecuted by the inclusion of birth control in the list of covered benefits that they need to provide when they operate institutions in the public arena.
Get employers out of the business of buying health insurance and the whole stupid issue goes away. But as far as I know none of the members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy nor any of the grandstanding politicians on either side is making that sensible suggestion.