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The administration's bait and switch

Kudos to Wesley J. Smith for keeping up the flow of information on the administration's coercion of conscience against Catholic agencies. And Smith isn't Catholic (as far as I know)!

By now everyone will have heard that the Obama administration is offering an "accommodation" to religious organizations. So, let's see what this amounts to.

As near as I can understand, it works like this: The religious organization will still have to purchase an insurance plan, and the insurance company will still have to offer contraception and sterilization to all employees who have the plan. So what's changed? Well, the religious organizations' plans will be labeled as "excluding" these services. How's that again? Well, then, the employer will refer the employees back to the insurance company. If an employee wants these things covered "for free," the employee will ask the insurance company for them by individual request, and the insurance company, ordered by the federal government, will give it to the employee for free. So now the insurance company is a direct dispenser of medical coverage to individual employees, in virtue of their belonging to an insurance plan through their employer, even though that coverage is allegedly excluded by their plan. How's that for bizarre? Moreover, I have not heard anywhere--and if this is the case, please let me know--that the religious organizations' plans will have lower premiums in virtue of their "excluding" this coverage. If that were the case, presumably the cost for the mandated "free" services would be shifted (someone must be paying, since nothing is really free) to employees who have other plans, from non-religious employers, with that insurer. If there is no reduction in premiums, then the "exclusion" is the purest fiction. In other words, a lie. The employer purchases the insurance; the insurance is paid for by premiums from the employer (and possibly also the employee). The insurance company, in virtue of an employee's membership in that plan via that employer, gives out these services. The premiums are therefore, inter alia, paying for those services. It's darned confusing in a way, but it's also very clear. This is a shell game of a particularly egregious sort. The "exclusion" is no exclusion at all.

If someone has a different sensible actuarial explanation of this "accommodation," do share. But this is what it's looking like now. Hopefully, the bishops, Belmont Abbey, & Co. will not be taken in and will continue to push back.

Comments (27)

Ai yi yi. A lot of bishops will surely _want_ to go along with this. Just make all the fuss go away, so we can get back to the business of horsing around with how the 'seamless garment of life' makes the death penalty for murderers worse than the death penalty for the unguilty unborn. ("It's okay, folks, we're still providing cover so's y'all can vote Democrat!")

A lot of them seem to've already made not-dissimilar compromises with their hospitals. But this seems even less detachable than the 'we provide referrals, but we'd never, honest, Yer Exsullency, perform sterilizations or abortions _here_!' schtick.

Smith is Orthodox. The EO bishops issued a brief statement condemning the mandate.

This accommodation is laughable. I can only conclude that they really do think religious people are stupid.

I can only conclude that they really do think religious people are stupid.

I'm not up on my Alinsky, but I'd guess an Alinskyite actually understands that people aren't stupid. The fabric of society is more fragile than we like to think, and I suspect he think creating a crisis of almost any sort tends to work in their favor. So I doubt they think people are stupid, but they know that even in the backlash there is opportunity for at least an incremental change that might not happen otherwise. It is a desperately cynical and destructive way to think, but I do see the logic.

Mark, I think that means you are agreeing with David Brandt, above. In other words, the bishops don't really _like_ this crisis, and they may be tempted to embrace the appearance, however hollow and deceptive, of compromise on the part of the administration, while actually allowing a substantive change to go through in a leftward direction with the cooperation of the Catholic agencies.

I don't like this accommodation. At all.

My concern is that someone in the Administration has actually been listening to the Church. It's OK for Catholics to pay taxes even though our taxes fund things that would be immoral for us to do ourselves (ahem Planned Parenthood). This is because in part our intent is to pay taxes and obey the law. By the same token, a Catholic hospital could intend only to obey the law and offer insurance. The intent does not involve offering contraception or abortifacients. An employee could get those but only by asking for them, i.e. committing sin. Surely, one is not responsible for the sin of others? It could be argued employers now are creating an occasion to sin and you'll get no argument on that from me.

Please tell me this is wrong and won't be a tough call (political considerations aside) for the Bishops.

Ok, so far as I can tell, there are 2 options:

1. Obama and Co. really could not care less what is really being offered, as long as it makes _enough_ bishops and other religious leaders back off the confrontation. They don't have enough moral sense to figure out that this is a straight up lie (instead of, say, a well-disguised lie), and so they cooked it up hoping _enough_ people bought the silly nonsense.

2. Obama and Co. shiftily know perfectly well that this is a bald-faced lie, but they hope that enough muddle is created in the spin, the maneuvers, etc. that not everyone else knows it is a lie, and people just decide to live with it. This would be consistent with Obama and Co. thinking everyone but themselves are truly stupid.

Every time I try to write another option, it keeps resolving to one of these. Sure, this may be a second-step in a plan that includes, down at 20 or so, "giving in" in some fake fashion and returning to status quo ante, only not quite. For example, amidst all this brumble that the bishops have kicked up at RELIGIOUS organizations being forced to violated their consciences, the bishops have more or less admitted (by their actions) that (a) it is just as immoral for a Catholic business owner to buy this insurance, and (b) the bishops didn't kick up much fuss about it until the shoe pinched their own feet. If Obama ends up "giving in" to the religious groups, he wins with respect to all the other employers, with hardly a word. How stupid (or lazy) does he think we are? Well, when it comes to Catholic officials, experience leads us to wonder if he has rightly estimated their capacity or readiness to pitch in.

Jimmy Akin at ncr "it's MORE evil!"

Mark, I think that means you are agreeing with David Brandt, above. In other words, the bishops don't really _like_ this crisis, and they may be tempted to embrace the appearance, however hollow and deceptive, of compromise on the part of the administration, while actually allowing a substantive change to go through in a leftward direction with the cooperation of the Catholic agencies.

After rereading I see I was confused. David was referring only to the bishops, and I was thinking he was referring to the administration too when I spoke of an Alinskyite. David may be right, but I was only meaning to refer to the administration as Alinskyite. I don't understand the bishops, but I think the intentions of the administration are pretty clear.

I think the administration is being extremely manipulative and counting on the bishops' desire not to continue to have a crisis. That may well be Alinskyite. Hopefully they are betting wrong.

Just a thought. Providing birth control is possibly a cost saver for the insurance companies and probably saves the institutions bucks in terms of lower premiums over time. Every birth means prenatal costs, delivery costs, and 0 - 26 yrs. costs.

Relax. The Bishops are not fooled and they are not rolling over;

"The only complete solution to this religious liberty problem is for HHS to rescind the mandate of these objectionable services.
We will therefore continue--with no less vigor, no less sense of urgency--our efforts to correct this problem through the other two branches of government. For example, we renew our call on Congress to pass, and the Administration to sign, the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. And we renew our call to the Catholic faithful, and to all our fellow Americans, to join together in this effort to protect religious liberty and freedom of conscience for all."

Or maybe it costs us more because of all those people who don't exist who might have discovered a new low-cost fuel and...Oh, never mind. Cute talking point, though. I'm sure we'll hear it much more often. Very clever: Religious organizations who don't want to cover contraception should be forced to pay _more_ for their employee premiums because babies are so expensive.

Oh, by the way, Al? There are secular employers who purchase insurance from totally secular insurers who don't cover contraception. Because they consider it a lifestyle drug and don't want the extra cost. So I guess they disagree about how expensive it is not to fund contraception. That's why, y'know, the feminists had to force through laws in various states requiring contraception to be covered. Because somehow, those darned insurance actuaries were too stupid to figure out by themselves how expensive it really was not to cover contraception.

The new liberal meme, however, will surely drown out those small inconvenient facts.

This looks like a link to a letter similar to what Gino is quoting. Good job, gentlemen:

http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2012/02/our-understanding-of-rule-bishops-on.html

I don't know Lydia, maybe they were running around a dollar to pick up a dime. Then there is always this.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40201197/ns/health-health_care/t/pregnancy-not-covered-most-individual-health-policies/#.TzXhZ8gSF8E

and this,

"Researchers estimate that over a 5-year period, employers can save $9,000 to $14,000 (in year 1993 dollars) by providing comprehensive contraceptive coverage. Experts suggest that employers may begin to see some savings in the
first year of coverage."

http://www.businessgrouphealth.org/benefitstopics/topics/purchasers/condition_specific/evidencestatements/contraceptiveuse_es.pdf

Al quotes from the study:

"Researchers estimate that over a 5-year period, employers can save $9,000 to $14,000 (in year 1993 dollars) by providing comprehensive contraceptive coverage. Experts suggest that employers may begin to see some savings in the first year of coverage."

And if every family only had one child, each family would have more disposable income over a 5-year-period. But in 30 years, those parents would bankrupt the country due to the fact that the younger generation would not have enough workers to produce the wealth to fund their social security, medicare, and medicade payments (not to mention the crap load of taxpayer-dependent entitlement pensions from state governments).

So, the study you site is actually worthless, since the real measure of "success' would have to be assessed over a 30-year-period and would include the social fabric, not just an isolated industry at a sliver of time.

Never knew you were a Keynesian, Dr. Beckwith. Another version of the paradox of thrift? Of course if we increased productivity and robotics we could finesse your problem - at least until our new robot workers hit critical mass and became our new robot masters (I, for one, would welcome our new robot masters).

Because somehow, those darned insurance actuaries were too stupid to figure out by themselves how expensive it really was not to cover contraception.

Secretary Sebelius prattled on about how contraceptive coverage would save insurers lots of money, but noted that buying the coverage separately costs upwards of $600/year (which discourages people from getting it). Her claim requires us to believe that GREEDY health insurance companies which put PROFITS BEFORE PEOPLE leave lots of $20 bills on the sidewalk.

"If an employee wants these things covered "for free," the employee will ask the insurance company for them by individual request, and the insurance company, ordered by the federal government, will give it to the employee for free."

And since the insured need to learn how to do this, the compromise likely orders institutions to sign the insured on to a "how to get contraception and sterilization" mailing list.

Let's not pretend all these insured are independent, self-controlling adults. Some of these insured are students right out of high school on the university health plan. Their parents specifically entrusted Catholic schools with moral formation.

Oh, plus we have the ludicrous vision of a monk-run college's insurance plan telling the monks and priests on the faculty how to get sterilized.

Yuval Levin's point is devastating, and unanswerable: This supposed compromise actually carves out a special class of citizens who get "free" contraception, abortion and sterilization--people who work for religious organizations.

Any clergyman who falls for this insulting head fake is a fool, or a coward.

Providing birth control is possibly a cost saver for the insurance companies and probably saves the institutions bucks in terms of lower premiums over time. Every birth means prenatal costs, delivery costs, and 0 - 26 yrs. costs.

If there is actually an insurance company out there that came to this conclusion, then they ought to fire their research department. Insurance is designed around the sum total of premiums in always being higher than payments out, due to the somewhat important concern of not going bankrupt. It also means that adding another person to the rolls is on average always an increase in profits. I suppose you could assume that none of the children born to current customers will ever be customers themselves, but that sounds like a pretty sorry business model.

Maybe next we'll see calls to provide sterilization to all girls at birth. Imagine the savings when there are no more people!

Mark Steyn brilliantly points out how unsurprising this outcome of Obamacare actually is. His personal favorite description of the jurisdictional authority of Obamacare was this:

"The Secretary shall develop oral healthcare components that shall include tooth-level surveillance."

This is all utterly unsurprising. And do we have right now any better example of the folly of those with just-so causal stories about wrong turns in political history or public expressions of philosophical understandings of reality, without which we'd supposedly not need to be constantly on the alert for those who wish to rule over us? There has never been any such, nor could there be.

As the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary said "We will soon learn just how much faith is left in faith-based institutions." Indeed. The only solution is a vigorous response by citizens and the faithful. If we aren't up to the challenge, I'm sure some will tell us how it was all inevitable given some theoretical misunderstanding of freedom caused by the Enlightenment, or those silly Founders putting stuff about "happiness" and/or "equality" in the Declaration. But if that happens (and I'm hopeful it won't) the truth will not be that people were confused about the abstract conceptions of those things, but that those who understood it perfectly well (if anyone is in fact confused) didn't have the courage to defend their freedoms against those determined to take it away from them. Without a vigorous response to those who wish to rule over us, no abstract theoretical system can make less necessary a vigorous response to tyranny. And without it we'll deserve the government we get.

Sorry if this was a thread-jack, but it is a connection that I think needs to be made, and I think many anti-democrat agitators play a role similar to the Bishops in this drama with the supposed decline they decry. But I won't comment any more on that.

Excellent point Mark. Of course if Al gets his way and the government runs everthing, then it becomes a cost and never a profit. Therefore fewer kids means less cost for the government. Anything to eliminate people is a plus in that type of accounting.

"Mark Steyn brilliantly points out how unsurprising this outcome of Obamacare actually is. His personal favorite description of the jurisdictional authority of Obamacare was this:

"The Secretary shall develop oral healthcare components that shall include tooth-level surveillance."

Steyn goes on to comment thusly,

"Before Obama's Act of Supremacy did the English language ever have need for such a phrase? "Tooth-level surveillance": From the Declaration of Independence to dentured servitude in a mere quarter-millennium."

Mark, my apologies but there is no way and no reason to be kind here - after all you found it brilliant - you totally fell for it. Anyone with an IQ above doorknob level and even a smidgeon of intellectual curiosity would have had their BS alarm go off upon reading that comment. Dude, Steyn is either an idiot or he is a liar and playing his readers for fools.

If one types "tooth level surveillance" into the google scholar one gets things like:

"Send correspondence and reprint requests to Dr. Griffin, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Oral Health, Surveillance, Investigations and Research Branch, 4770 Buford Highway, MSF10, Chamblee, GA 30341. E-mail: sigl@cdc.gov. Web site: http://www.cdc.govnccdphpdoh. At the time of this study, Dr. Jones was affiliated with the Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Economics. She currently is affiliated with the University of Georgia, Terry College of Business, Department of Banking and Finance. At the time this study was conducted, Dr. Tomar was affiliated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Oral Health, Surveillance and Investigation Branch. He currently is affiliated with the University of Florida College of Dentistry, Division of Public Health Services and Research."

Which is from a 2007 article in the Journal of Public Health Denistry,

and this 2005 CDC report,

"Surveillance for Dental Caries, Dental Sealants, Tooth Retention, Edentulism, and Enamel Fluorosis --- United States, 1988--1994 and 1999--2002,"

and this 1999 New South Wales Public Health Bulletin,

"Dentistry shares an interest with public health in using surveillance data to assess the oral health of the population, define dental public health priorities, evaluate public health programs and identify emerging problems and research priorities."

"Surveillance" is clearly a term of art in the world of public health dentistry. Anyone who resonated with Steyn's comment needs to take a good hard look at how they process things. This is a perfect example of why folks who get their information from sources like Fox News are less informed then the general populace.

Al, I found the article brilliant and Steyn's a humorist. The quote was tongue in cheek. Maybe it was pointless of me to quote it, but I'm sure where you want to go is down the "death panels isn't a valid metaphor" type of disagreement over literalness, which isn't interesting to me. You called me stupid, and I'm happy with that because I'm not nervous on that score whatever other issues I may have. Cheers.

BTW, it is a different Mark commenting in the "How to Lie with Statistics" thread. Not me.

Geneva College, a Covenanter school in western Penn. has filed suit against the Obama regime's mandatory inclusion of the morning after pill in employer provided health care. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12053/1211738-298.stm

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