This is truly disgusting. Time to change the name of the country to Christian Talibania if crap like this passes.
In their latest move in the battle over contraception coverage, top Republicans in Congress are going for broke: They’re now pushing a bill that would allow employers and insurance companies to pick and choose which health benefits to provide based simply on executives’ personal moral beliefs. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the top GOPer in the Senate, has already endorsed the proposal, and it could come to a vote this week. The measure would make the religious exemptions to President Barack Obama’s health care bill so large they’d swallow it whole.
“This is about gutting the Affordable Care Act and the protections it was meant to establish,” says Leila Abolfazli, a lawyer focusing at the National Women’s Law Center who focuses on health and reproductive rights.
[...]
But Blunt’s proposal doesn’t just apply to religious employers and birth control. Instead, it would allow any insurer or employer, religiously affiliated or otherwise, to opt out of providing any health care services required by federal law—everything from maternity care to screening for diabetes. Employers wouldn’t have to cite religious reasons for their decision; they could just say the treatment goes against their moral convictions.
Suppose your boss believes bloodletting and voodoo are the only morally permissible medical treatments. Should his beliefs be allowed to prevent you from getting treatment for cancer?
Just saw a piece on Olberman interviewing a Steve Jobs biographer. He recounts Steve, the Greatest Capitalist ever Known, you know: making billions while exporting 10K’s of jobs to China?==seems he was sent a letter by some factory worker advocates informing him the labor “force” is working 100 hours a week and could he as the CEO of Apple intercede in China to get 40 hour weeks?
Steve purported wrote back a single line: “I work more than 100 hours per week.”
Steve Jobs died at the age of 56. I wonder if there is a moral to his story? Karma, maybe?
I am not opposed to hard work, but dying young is against my religion.
I think the moral of story was actually …
If you have super-deadly pancreatic cancer, begin medical treatment immediately with real physicians.
Pancreatic cancer has a mortality rate of near 100% and that is not the situation where you decide you will instead go for alternative medicine.
But he did. And he’s dead.
Bingo.
Also, I think, another lesson: make sure the rewards are worth the effort. If that Chinese worker was getting the package that Jobs got (obviously, minus the cancer), he’d have no problem working over 100 hours a week…
Bingo.
With a near perfect mortality rate, what difference does type of care make? A few more weeks of agony?
But yeah===did I hear there was a specific reason he eschewed Western Medicine or was it just a holistic thing?
Latter I think, which means his marketing genius didn’t overlap into much of any other area of his life like care for his fellow man.
A complete picture always shows the most!
His chiropractor said he could cure it through manipulation and massage.
I love people like orchidcup who think Apple (or Microsoft, or Google, or Amazon) hasn’t created 10,000′s of jobs in the US. Or that the jobs have to come to them, not the other way around.
Which says a lot about US unemployment rates. 1950′s thinking.
Whatever exemptions are granted under this or any other bill, you can bet your sweet ass that your premiums will still go up and your co-pay too. Doesn’t even matter what your political affiliation is.
Stunning.
With ObamaCare, the Democrats want the President and his Secretary of Health and Human Services to decide what health coverage you get. I would think that people who find Republicans too ‘Taliban” would be upset with that situation. I think gun training should be covered by all health care plans…
NewfornatSux says:
2/15/2012 at 9:12 am
With ObamaCare, the Democrats want the President and his Secretary of Health and Human Services to decide what health coverage you get. /// How so? What coverage do you want that is now being denied? The biggest benefit of ObamaCare so far is that you cannot be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions. JUST THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU POST!! Funny how often Pukes post like that. Why you hating so erroneously?
I would think that people who find Republicans too ‘Taliban” would be upset with that situation. /// Sure would be if it were true.
I think gun training should be covered by all health care plans…//// and thats because a gun can resolver any and all conflicts huh?
Another Registered Democrat gone bad. Ha, ha.
I’m surprised the Rs are not supporting the Ds in their quest for universal free contraception and abortions. Very short-sighted on both sides.
The way I see it, most R women are pro-life and would seldom consider an abortion. Also more likely to have a religious background that encourages childbirth.
So, most contraception and abortions would take place within the population of D women as they are the one who claim to favor pro-choice stands.
Therefore, the ratio of R:D births would rise and in a generation or so the number of R voters will larger.
Seems to me the Rs would encourage the Ds to move forward while the Ds ought to foresee what havoc their policy might wreak.
You forgot the fact that they are concerned with what you do in bed. It offends their sense of morality to think someone is fucking for fun.
This is a reason that health care shouldn’t be linked to an employer. Buy you own health insurance.
That is exactly what can happen for this contraceptive thing. These Catholic hospitals might just stop giving their employees health care. Unintended consequences of totalitarianism or a step toward single payer? Obama has a plan.
I don’t see why many people have a problem with enforced morality. Conservatives, liberals, progressives, etc. all want to force their versions of morality through the police powers of the state. At least a person can choose employers.
this bill is nothing more than a pathetic distraction, ignore it.
-s
And the Union exemptions for Caesar Obama’s plan are OK?
sheeeeeeeit!
Oh and the corporate exemptions too…. plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose!
Thanks Chairman Obama!
>Secretary of Health and Human Services to decide what health coverage you get. /// How so? What coverage do you want that is now being denied?
My god. Nancy Pelosi said we have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it, but apparently in your case it didn’t take.
The bill says the HHS Secr can determine what constitutes the minimum coverage insurance companies must cover. So if HHS Sec says gun training is preventative health care, then it must be covered. If he said gym memberships must be covered it must be covered. If they said Whole Foods purchases must be covered it must be covered.
In the early part of the last century, there was something called Eugenics. And the Supreme Court of the US was in support of it. And about 30 states forced sterilizations upon those it considered feeble. In order to keep the country pure. This was the pseudo-scientific belief of a few biologists, that spread to many a major university. Eventually the idea caught on with the Nazis, in Germany. Who took it to the next extreme. Death camps. Not until the 1950s, were US states loathe to maintain their Eugenics laws anymore.
http://commondreams.org/views/072100-106.htm
Now what’s this about how the wealthy gets to choose what happens to those they employ, when it comes to health care?