Catholics and contraceptives

slynq,

the issue is that regardless if the Catholic institutions promote contraceptives, they still have to pay for them. The staff always had the option to pay for additional coverage for contraceptives or pay directly for them. That was never a question. The question is and will always be why do we force the religious institutions to pay for it. Separation of church and state has to go both ways. If legislation cannot be written with carve outs for religious institutions, it should also not be written to mandate how religious institutions write and practice their doctrine unless they affect directly someone's right. No one is entitled to contraceptives, or any medication for that matter, so no rights were infringed while doctrine is being applied. Yes we should remove blood transfusions from Jehovah's witnesses policies. They should not pay for something they will never use. Loaded policies only lead to more expensive care. Third party payer systems are one of the main causes of health care inflation and insulating consumers even more from the cost of their decisions can only make matters worse.

I'm assuming that OJFL, you concede that as a matter of principle, there is no conflict between the freedoms of the Catholic church and the government mandate. If the issue of practical cost is your concern, this becomes an issue of employer-employee agreement and benefits.
As an employer, regardless of religious affiliation, Catholic institutions should and ought to pay for their staff's medical care. They can condemn contraceptives as a religious body, but not deny their staff the right to such medical treatment. You must acknowledge that not all staff in catholic institutions are Catholic themselves - and if they're being denied their right to contraceptives because of their employer's belief, we see that infringement runs both ways.
The healthcare debate is not about belief or ideologies - it seeks economical solutions and universalizes American healthcare needs. It then follows that equality, in this case, must necessarily trump religious prejudice.

slynq,

unfortunately I cannot concede your premise. There i indeed a huge conflict, in mine and many views, between the freedom of the Catholic church and the government mandate. As I stated before, the mandate goes against doctrine and hence the conflict arises. If a religious institution cannot live its own doctrine because of a government mandate, what good is this doctrine. And doctrine does not impede the free will of the individual, also a basic tenet of the doctrine.

Your comment shows why we will always have the debate. This sentence "As an employer, regardless of religious affiliation, Catholic institutions should and ought to pay for their staff's medical care. They can condemn contraceptives as a religious body, but not deny their staff the right to such medical treatment." It is flawed. Here is why.

The fundamental question is this: if the Catholic church, or any other religious organization, refuses to pay for care, any health care, does it mean the person is prohibited from access? Of course we cannot draw such conclusion. It is the same thing for hourly workers in any company. If the companies do not pay for, say, cosmetic dental coverage, does it mean the employees are forbidden from accessing cosmetic dental coverage? Again we cannot draw that conclusion. If a company does not pay for vision care, does it mean that the employee is forbidden access to vision care? Again such a conclusion cannot be drawn. That many employers decide to provide those does not mean it is a mandate. The same thing for the contraception.

Many employers decide to provide it. My employer does. But I cannot expect them to keep doing so. I am not entitled to such coverage. No one is. And frankly I would forgo such coverage in exchange for lower premiums and higher pay. It should be my decision and currently it is not.

That is the crux of the problem. Up until now the church did not have to pay for such coverage. But it was always available to the employees through complementary insurance, paid for the employee. Or out of pocket. Finding a doctor that would prescribe contraceptives is not that hard. It never was and probably will never be.

Again this is one of the reasons why third party payer systems are essentially flawed. It is also why the preferential tax treatment for employer provided health care versus individual policies is also wrong. If the employer could buy their own policies with the same tax preference this wold not be an issue as the employer could raise the income of the employee and the employee would be responsible for buying their own health insurance.

And all of this will still be debated for years to come.

I think Obamacare's intent and logical end is near-universal insurance coverage that preserves the private system of hospitals, clinics, and health insurance companies. But I'm sort of a strict constructionist, you see.

My point is this: under Obamacare, the government doesn't run hospitals. The government doesn't provide health insurance. We have a system that has Republican roots, and was endorsed by two of the three leading GOP presidential candidates. So do you think the GOP from the '90s to the mid '00s were a bunch of socialist radicals?

Live and let live is bidirectional. That is precisely my point. The Catholic church interferes in the functioning of the state in a number of areas, and by definition reading directions for political action from the pulpit is interference in the secular realm.

1. The Catholic church [in unholy alliance with extreme Protestant groups that still consider the Pope is the Anti-Christ, while at the same time at least some Catholics regard Protestants as heretics] promotes laws to curtail citizens' rights to control their fertility. The RCC has nor right whatsoever to dictate on this issue to non-Catholics, and certainly not to try to do so using the civil authority of the state.

2. The Catholic church promotes illegal actions by persons illegally in the US and provides protection for them while they are engaged in such illegal actions.

Ir regard to #1 the Catholic Church has an unarguable right to hold and teach beliefs that other members of society do not hold or wish to hold. By promoting political action to put those beliefs into law, they cross the line and interfere in the rights of non-Catholics to have their own beliefs.

#2 No group or church has a right to defy the legitimate enforcement by the state of its immigration laws, and doing so is illegal. A certain cardinal should be summoned before a grand jury on the matter. This goes well beyond promoting morality and by promoting lawbreaking promotes immorality.
Defend this if you can.

Caesaropapism certainly is medieval, priestly celibacy is a medieval change that has had untold negative ramifications, interference in civil governance has been a habit of the Catholic church since late classical times and must cease.

agree

"By promoting political action to put those beliefs into law, they cross the line and interfere in the rights of non-Catholics to have their own beliefs."

This is where your argument strays. In the matter at hand, the RCC is not actively promoting any legislation to curtail the government's ability to go about the distribution of contraceptive services to citizens in a secular way. RATHER, the Church is OPPOSING legislation that will force it to participate in this distribution. There is a clear distinction that needs to be made.

I've answered this elsewhere. It can't be isolated as a single issue because religious conservatives and liberal religious and secular people are engaged in a shoving match. They perceive a win on any point by the other side as a loss and the beginning of a slippery slope.

Both sides are promoting legislation and legal determination favorable to their beliefs, and not coincidentally hostile to the beliefs of others. The areas in contention are nowhere more interconnected than in this issue [insurance coverage, family planning and women's health and rights].

Unless they stop fighting over everything and recognize that it is necessary to reach an accommodation or compromise it won't stop. Whoever said, "Turn the other cheek" had it right [hint, its in Matthew 5:38-42].

This is actually a point that should be amplified. When should the state function interfere with religious belief and practice, and when should such interference be prohibited?

The usual answer is that, like other laws, state interference with the liberties of the citizen should only take place when there is an overriding concern for health, safety and public order.

The list of generally prescribed activities includes: polygamy, polyandry, cannibalism, human sacrifice, public orgies, etc. Each one of these can be shown to have overwhelming negatives.

In the US Constitution and amendments, there is a clear statement of religious freedom. The founding fathers [see Madison on the topic] clearly intended that this was to protect religion from the state, the state from religion, and religions from each other.

The Catholic church is free to teach its dogma and the people are free to go along or, in the US for centuries, to leave the church without fear of retribution.

The Catholic church is NOT free to interfere with any citizen's civil rights, nor to seek to force its dogmas on those who believe otherwise. This is not anti-Catholic discrimination, because the liberties of Catholics and the Catholic church are likewise protected from others.

There are those who hate religion and would abolish it, but in the US the number is extremely small. The problem is that religious aggression increases the number of people who have a negative attitude towards religion. That is precisely why Europe today is so anti-religion. The Constitutional freedom of religion in the US is responsible for protecting religious belief here. Meddle with it at peril.

The "free exercise" of religion does not grant you an unlimited right to ignore any law that you claim, ipse dixit, violates your religion. It's settled Constitutional doctrine that a law of general applicability (and this law is most certainly that) which incidentally happens to violate the strictures of some religion or other, but was passed for a valid purpose unrelated to hosing that religion (again, obviously true here), is constitutional.

It's up to the people writing the laws/regulations whether they want to offer religious exemptions at all. Those exemptions are not constitutionally mandated. The government can, in fact, draft Jehovah's Witnesses if it wants to-- it just makes zero sense to do so, because all you'll end up doing is pointlessly throwing otherwise productive citizens in prison.

That's the problem with insurance in general. Hopefully you don't get sick, but if you do, it's the healthy neighbors (insurance premium contributors) paying your bills. Need an organ transplant or heart surgery? Good luck paying for that out of pocket without insurance.

An economist colleague got sick at a conference in Washington,DC. After going to the hospital to get some medicine, he was shocked by a bill of more than $600 for a worthless brief consultation and even worse service. I shudder to think of the poor parents who have to pay out of pocket for a childbirth / delivery with complications - simply because having babies is an "elective" experience. So do middle class families have to save up 20 - 40K if they want to have kids because insurance doesn't cover a medical / hospital childbirth? So when does health care insurance take over for a sick baby with some kind of defects? Or can the clever lawyers for the insurance companies weasel out of it claiming "pre-existing" congenital condition.

Great system. Let the poor fools on the dole get their childbirth paid for by Medicaid or whatever you call it. Let the middle class who have to pay out of pocket bleed because private insurers decline to step up. Peculiar incentives indeed.

No, insurance is an option citizens may freely choose in their pursuit of happiness. Government health care is a service involuntarily funded by your neighbors. The government confiscates from the labors of one to give to another. If I did that it would be theft. The government is inherently inefficient, has massive overhead, and is unable to make tough management decisions to fix its problems. Take the USPS, for example. The less GDP consumed by government the better off we all will be.

Because private healthcare is the mark of an atomized and selfish society where people do not care about their neighbors and do not see the government as the collective representatives of the people that should provide services to them funded by collective contributions in the form of taxes. If you choose to live in a society then be prepared to pay up to help it prosper, either in the form of money or labor - everybody should contribute in one way or another, to the best of their ability. I am a historian of European and American industrialization and can say without a doubt that social services (those "free things" that you hate) have brought our society out of the short-lived, malnourished, desperate hell that it existed in until the early to mid twentieth century. To put it another way, if everyone coughed up a few extra dollars to pay for free birth control for all women, there would be less mouths to feed, less social security to pay for (eventually), and less poor people to rescue from the jaws of starvation or crime. We (the human race) are breeding ourselves to death and we can certainly selflessly do our part in America not to contribute to an overpopulated world.

It's funny, because usually when people talk about "inherently inefficient," "massive overhead," and "unable to make tough management decisions" in the health care context, they're talking about the existing system we have.

The systems run by governments are many times more efficient than the American system (as are the mixed public-private systems like Germany's, for that matter, although I'm not a huge fan of those). Your mantra isn't just overgeneralized, it's provably false.