Obamacare requires employers to pay for contraception and sterilization coverage. This includes coverage of "morning-after" contraceptives, whose makers admit the drugs can kill a fertilized egg by preventing or "affect[ing]" implantation.I'd be the first to take umbrage if my employer tried to influence my most intimate decisions about health and reproduction. But what is the employer doing in this part of my life in the first place? How in the world did we decide that it was a good idea for everyone to get his medical coverage through his employer? Yes, I know about the post-WWII wage-fixing issue, but I mean how did we not realize what a horrible solution this would be in the long run? I suppose back then it was hard to imagine what medicine would become decades later. In the 40s and 50s, medicine was a weak thing.
Nor will it help if we get our medical coverage through Uncle Sam. If we really value the freedom to control our own medical care and our own reproduction, we'd do well to keep our arrangements with our health providers private.
I agree with you here. A state that can mandate that your employer shall cover these things can just as easily mandate that they shall not.
ReplyDeleteThere are at least three ways in which Obamacare is simply unacceptable to me.
1) The violation of religious liberty is one of them. This is a clear First Amendment violation, as blatantly unconstitutional as anything I've ever seen the government do.
2) The shackling of people to the state is another: you will be required by law to buy a product you can't afford, or to pay a tax you may not be able to afford simply for being alive. Since you can't afford it, and the other choices are prison or having whatever you may happen to own seized and sold by the IRS, you'll take the "subsidies" they offer -- making you a welfare case.
SCOTUS has decided this is a constitutional way for the state to structure its relationships with the citizenry -- turning most of us into wards who are too impoverished (by the state's own demands) to meet the demands placed on a citizen. It's immoral to take charity you don't need, but we're going to be made to do it, because we won't be allowed to live within our means any more.
There's a whole set of violations of basic morality here.
3) The violation of the Tenth Amendment involved in the Federal government doing something that falls pretty clearly within the scope of powers reserved to the states or the People. This is in a way old hat -- the Feds have been doing things like this for decades -- but in another way it's newly relevant because we have developed such deep divides as a society.
This system isn't just unconstitutional under the Tenth, it's forcing us into conflicts about our basic values. Using the Federal government to do this is going to compel people to have a conflict about things that could be resolved peacefully if we used federalist mechanisms to allow people to live out their different values in peace.
So it sounds to me like they want to violate my religious rights, shackle me into mandatory welfare, and command me to live according to whatever rules those outside my community decide to impose.
Any of those is worth fighting; the lot of them together is worth fighting literally if necessary. I hope that more peaceful means of resistance will prevail, of course, but they really don't seem to understand that they are compelling a conflict.
As for the employer issue, I think most of them are willing for you to take your money and go buy insurance on the market if you don't want to take any of the plans they happen to participate in. Those plans tend to be more expensive for similar sets of benefits, but that's not your employer's fault. If it's really important to you to have a service their insurers don't offer, you certainly can obtain other insurance.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to which, an employer refusing to offer plans that cover things like birth control isn't interfering in anyone's intimate decisions. Even if you were somehow required to use their insurance plan, you still have a salary you can use however you see fit. That can include buying these perfectly legal products on your own, out of pocket, if they are really important to you.
So really, there's an issue about why it's so expensive to buy insurance as an individual. That's a real issue, but it's not an explosive issue. There's no reason for this huge fight to happen.
But it will nevertheless be a huge fight, if they try to force me to live against what morality tells me is right. That they are violating the Constitution to do it makes it worse.
The whole point of power, is to force someone to do something they do not want to do. How much kick is it for the tyrant to get someone to do something willingly? The whole point is the forcing. Rub their nose in it- that is the measure of power. That is what these leftists want- why do we think it is anything else? They do not want to leave us alone to manage our affairs, they live to meddle, and force. And it is immaterial to them how far we sink- as long as they have their goodies, and the ability to destroy someone else, they will be pleased.
ReplyDeleteThe Left and only the Left decided this, as part of their inhumane alliance and death cult utopianism.
ReplyDeleteSince the Left are masters of America, the rest can only obey or die as slaves.