The non-profits said that even filling out the form or sending a government the letter declaring their objections to covering birth control was a burden on their faith
But yet those same religious “non-profits” will gladly accept your money to perform an abortion in one of their hospitals. They just call it anything but. $$$$$$$$$ talks. I know that this happens as I have listened to my father, a Catholic Hospital Board Secretary, talk about how they figure out naming the procedure and others that they have supposedly banned.
Clearly, they just want the power to exclude reproductive health care from their employees’ benefit. Anything shy of “go buy your own birth control” is going to be a burden in these people’s eyes, and they’d make that illegal too if they had the power.
That they are putting off the decision and making someone else do it (the lower courts). It’s likely they are just offering a short term ‘punt’ of the issue. It will probably come back.
It’s also possible the conservative groups are rethinking their strategy and may just accept the best of what they can get.
“Their competition is kicking their rear ends in those states because they were prepared for what getting on the exchange would entail.”
Yes this is the other part of the story but how can the competition, smaller carriers, remain profitable if UnitedHealth drops out. Consumers would lose one of the lowest-cost plans available in much of the country.
And I think the risk corridor ends this year as well, making it even more difficult to produce a profit.
“Now, they have to provide significantly more documentation and must declare rate increases on their own websites that are over 10% if such increases are, in fact, granted.”
This is the part that bothers me the most (for my wife) as the providers are boxed in on premiums but not deductibles. As the deductibles increase insurance becomes less and less affordable.
“12 out of 23. These are private businesses that fail and succeed based on their own merits. Most businesses fail, this has nothing to do with Obamacare.”
This has a whole lot to do with O’Care as it will affect affordability. Remember, O’Care has to be both accessible and affordable.
After having to get involved in the details of my wife’s O’Care I believe it will implode. Premiums are still cheap for her but her deductibles and more co-pays are making it unaffordable.
These religious employers have only one objection to signing the form – it provides their employees with the opportunity to act on their own religious views and exercise their own religious freedom in making decisions about contraception use. Rather than being burden in a way that can force them to comply with their employer’s religious dictates.
That’s outrageous.
How can interfering with the freedom of religion and conscience of others be considered a legitimate exercise of “religious freedom?”
Maybe sometimes in some dioceses. But there are a number of documented cases where Catholic hospitals have left women in the process of a spontaneous abortion waiting for hours or days until they had passed tissue before doing a D&C.
That is simply bad health care. Waiting risks sepsis, frank hemorrhage and other so-called undesirable outcomes. Why do they wait? Because the Bishop (highly trained health-care professional that he is) doesn’t want anything remotely resembling an elective abortion in one of his hospitals.
It’s one thing when the options are laid out for the parents and they choose to take a wait-and-see approach. It’s a different matter entirely when the Bishop insists on wait-and-see regardless of the circumstances and preferences of those involved.
And don’t think that you can identify a Catholic hospital by its name. Here in Northern Cincinnati we have Jewish Hospital. You’d think, “Oh – Jewish Hospital. Clearly not Catholic, right?”
Thanks for playing, but you’d be wrong. Cincinnati’s Jewish Hospital is owned and operated by Mercy Health Systems, a Catholic Healthcare Ministry Serving Ohio and Kentucky.
Yeah, it seems to be spreading. It almost looks like people are adding extra apostrophes just to be safe because they’re not really sure of the rule. Apparently, most of the people they know also don’t know or don’t care.
It will always bugs me, but I stopped correcting people.
Insurance company lobbyists were major players in writing the law. Unfortunately, they had to pare back their billions in bonuses, quit ripping off their customers and actually start paying legitimate claims.
They all lowballed their premiums to grab the windfall of new customers, but many of them miscalculated and started losing money. So, some exorbitantly jacked up their rates (again), while others just wheedled the government for more bailouts or just dropped out of the market.
What we’re seeing is that for-profit health insurance companies can’t compete in the healthcare marketplace. Eventually as a nation we’ll smarten up and go single payer, but I guess we have to play this game with them first.
ETA: Just to clarify, the ACA is not the source of the problem; the insurance companies are to blame for their current financial woes. The insurance companies tried to feather their nests and lost. The law was intended to expand access to affordable healthcare, but it was written primarily by and for lobbyists - lobbyists for companies that are now crying crocodile tears that they can’t squeeze as much profit from sick people as they thought. For-profit insurance companies will continue to wreak havoc on our national healthcare system until we have a public option or Medicare for all.
