Blunt Amendment DefeatedFollow

So that's why she's leaving.

I think they should've passed it. Serve you guys right for half assing it in the first place.

Which is why our healthcare covers everyone at a smaller cost. No God to get in the way.


Edited, Mar 1st 2012 2:01pm by Uglysasquatch

The former. She does the latter when she counts.

Hah!


Honestly though, from a political perspective, she may have just helped the GOP hugely. The Senate refusing to amend the health care law basically means that the likelihood of large portions of it being declared unconstitutional by the SCotUS went up. Not to mention that this will remain a huge election year issue now.

And? Do you even understand that the issue here is private hospitals and health care providers run by churches will be forced to both pay for and provide services which violate their own religious beliefs? That's the canary in the coalmine in terms of the constitutional issues with the health care mandates in Obamacare, since it directly violates the 1st amendment (which is kind of a big deal in this country). Had the Senate approved an amendment removing the requirement in the case of religious institutions, it's possible the direct 1st amendment violation aspect of the issue could be avoided. But by not doing so, it's left in place making it nearly impossible for the Supreme Court to uphold the mandates.

She's right. They can help prevent scarring in the ovaries caused by Ovarian Cysts. Nasty.

I wonder if it would be cool for Jehovah's Witnesses to deny blood transfusions because it's against their religion...

You've failed to understand what the health care mandates I'm talking about involve.



Not the point. When the government passes a law which says that every employer must provide health insurance for their employees, and every health insurer must provide contraceptive coverage, that law then forces that employer to pay for birth control, even if the employer is a church which has a prohibition against such things.

More directly, if said church runs a hospital it *must* provide contraceptive care or none of its care can be covered by any of the aforementioned health insurers. Which, is all of them now. You honestly didn't realize this back when we conservatives were screaming about the mandates in Obamacare?



Adult women who's lack of working 3-4 days each month would actually cost me enough to care presumably make enough money to be able to buy their own birth control pills, right? More to the point, they're free to pay for insurance which covers such things if they want. No one's passed a law making it illegal for them to do this.


Obama care is a law which makes it illegal *not* to buy contraceptives. Think about that for a moment.

Hate to ask, but you do have a cite for this yes?

The law makes it illegal to DENY women contraception, it does not mean you have to provide it. That's a large difference.

If you are a religious institution, even that is an exemption--those women are able to get contraceptives directly from the insurance company instead.

My favorite part is that this law was meant to earn the GOP support, but actually blew up in their face because it was such a poorly structure amendment.

Huh? Isn't refusing to provide contraception the same as denying it?

The point here is that as a health care provider (like a hospital), you cannot be on the list of providers which insurance carriers can pay out to unless you provide contraception. You have no choice. And since all insurers must follow those same rules, and all employers must provide insurance from that set of insurers, and anyone who doesn't have insurance will be provided it by the government, and anyone who doesn't buy insurance voluntarily must pay a fine to pay into that insurance system, it effectively means that the government has made it impossible for a hospital, clinic, or pharmacy to be in business if they don't provide contraception (among a host of services, but this is the one currently relevant to the religious issue).



But the religious institution (here we're talking about being an employer and not a health care provider), is not exempt from the requirement to provide insurance (or their employees from obtaining it if they do not). And since the insurance company must provide contraceptive care, even if none of the religious employees use the service, they are still paying for it.


Honestly, it's a much bigger problem with the law than just the religious angle. As I said earlier, that's just the most obvious case. The whole set of mandates creates a massive intrusion into people's free choices.

Nope because I still see the option of using birth control or not using birth control, which means if you don't use it you can pretend its not there (because it doesn't affect you at all)

I actually understand Gbaji's argument, I just don't find it to be an especially persuasive one. Even on the religious angle, in my mind the idea of religious exemptions should end once you leave hallowed ground. If churches want to get into the education or medical business, fine for them except they can play by the same rules as everyone else. If you can't handle that, stay in your cloister and I'll continue to defend your right to wave the religion flag from the altar.