During the time of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I the English Parliament passed laws requiring all citizens, and particularly those who sought public office, to sign an Oath of Supremacy in which the signer acknowledged that the English monarch was the Head of the Church of England. In 1606, under James I, an Oath of Allegiance was added which required the signer to agree, among other things, that no Pope could depose a King or absolve the signer from the requirements of the Oath. Roman Catholics obviously had a problem denying the authority of the Pope over the English Church and limiting the Pope's authority. Sir Thomas More refused to sign the Oath of Supremacy and was executed for treason. Although the requirement to subscribe to these oaths would subsequently not carry the death penalty, Roman Catholics and some non-Anglican Protestants, who could not subscribe to them, were for many years excluded from high office in England - that is, except those willing to compromise their principles and sign the oaths.
The American Founders believed these Oaths to be abusive, some of them being subject to exclusion from office under them, and they were forbidden in Article VI, Paragraph 3 of the U.S. Constitution.
How does this relate to ObamaCare, you ask? Well, the Little Sister's of the Poor have been told by the Obama Administration that they will have an exemption from the birth control mandate if they just sign a paper which directs someone else to provide free birth control to their employees on their behalf. All the Sisters have to do is put aside their principles and sign the paper implicating themselves in behavior they believe goes against their Church teaching. It will cost them nothing except a little bit of integrity.
And what is the point of the birth control mandate anyway? No person would, in a rational world, buy insurance for birth control if she did not plan on using it. Therefore, anyone seeking such insurance would be charged a premium equal to at least 100% of the anticipated cost of the product. The only reason a person planning to use birth control would buy insurance for it is if other people who didn't want it, or thought it was immoral, were forced to pay some or all of its cost. Indeed, what purpose is really served by this mandate except to potentially implicate every businessperson of faith in conduct he or she considers immoral, and establish the precedent that the government can freely do so despite the First Amendment?
Similarly, the recently announced further delay in the employer mandate for smaller businesses requires an employer looking for an exemption to certify that, if he fired anyone, it was not because of ObamaCare! They could not possibly audit companies claiming the exemption. And how would you disprove it anyway unless the employer specifically said or wrote somewhere that he had fired people because of ObamaCare? So just like the Sisters, all the employer has to do is tell a falsehood, and then keep his mouth shut, to get the financial benefit. And of course, when Republicans later argue that ObamaCare is costing jobs, the Democrats will respond that the vast majority of small employers have certified that they did not fire people for that reason. There is no point, and no authorization in the ACA, to require employers to lie to get an exemption. This also implicates the First Amendment.
This practice by the Administration is corrosive of religious and speech liberty, business integrity and the political process. The first breach in principle, no matter how small, is always the hardest. After that each breach becomes easier.
The argument about having to foot the cost of somebody else's birth control is invalid. The nature of health insurance is that you're paying for others if you're healthy, and if you're unhealthy somebody is paying for you. Same premise here, so the argument must be that all insurance is bad or none of it is, not this selection.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, the idea that birth control is amoral is outdated. Birth control is only amoral from the religious perspective if it enables sex while preventing pregnancy. Based on the point I made above, the additional cost on the premium is irrelevant, and it's only amoral if the employees use it. Finally, preventing birth control on religious grounds is a third world sentiment; just think about AIDS in Africa.
Ben, you insure risks that you might suffer a loss, but might not. You never insure against a risk you don't have, nor would an insurance carrier ever, in a free market, insure over a certain loss without charging a premium equal to the expected loss.
ReplyDeleteTake another example. Should health insurance cover elective plastic surgery such as a nose job? I like my nose and would never change it. So why would I pay anything to insure against the cost of a nose job? The only people who would buy nose job insurance are those planning to have one, in which case the insurance company would have to charge a premium equal to the cost of a nose job in order to break even. Same is true of birth control. It's something most everyone knows in advance whether they will use it or not. This is not insurance, but pre-paid medical. And even those who will not need it or want it will have to pay for others to use it.
Take another example, why would a renter insure the building in which he lives? That risk belongs to the landlord, not the tenant. Insurance socializes risk, it does not socialize cost.
And as to the Little Sisters in particular, I am not a Roman Catholic and do not share the teaching against birth control. But if I am defending religious liberty for myself, I must defend religious liberty for all, even when I do not agree with the teaching of another religion.
Nobody is preventing the secular employees (presumably not the Little Sisters themselves who have taken a vow of chastity) from making their own moral decisions and buying their own birth control.
But thanks for commenting. I hope to post more frequently in the future.
I'm going to concede your point because, you're right, I have lost sight of the reason we have insurance, and that reason is to hedge against risk; in this case, the risk of health insurance. Viewing birth control as elective, and as a sure thing (should one choose to use it) then you're right, by definition insurance should not cover it. I would like to propose another idea, though, as a thought.
ReplyDeleteWhat if we viewed birth control as insurance against pregnancy, and by paying for birth control with insurance, the insurance is really against the risk of getting pregnant? Pregnancy isn't a sickness, certainly, but it can be destructive if it happens to someone who isn't ready for it. The natural response to this is "then abstain from sex" which makes sense, but let me counter that with another thought.
Car insurance is protection against the damages caused by crashing on the road. Crashing in a car is not a sure thing, therefore insurance should cover it; if people abstained from driving, then their car wouldn't get into an accident. By this reasoning, with the accident the possible result of a voluntary action (driving), should it be covered by insurance? To summarize: pregnancy may occur from sex, accidents may occur from driving. Accidents are insured, shouldn't pregnancy also be insured by way of insuring birth control?
I thoroughly enjoyed your response, I'm used to commenting on the thoughts/beliefs of people my age and it usually ends up being incendiary, so it was nice to see a reasoned, calm response from you.
Good thoughts Ben. I think you can think of birth control as a kind of insurance against unwanted pregnancy in that you pay a small amount for the birth control and protect yourself from the much larger risk. But it comes back to the same issue: you would not buy birth control unless you were (1) planning on having, or hoping to have, sex and (2) not wanting to get pregnant. Nobody else would rationally buy birth control.
ReplyDelete