Mitch McConnell: Ban Birth Control Coverage for Any Reason (salaries, drugs, amendment)
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You or anyone else should have no power to tell me what FREE benefits I should or shouldn't provide no matter what the reason. That is the only morality of this situation that counts.
If you own your own company feel free to provide whatever FREE benefits you desire to your employee's but don't you dare tell me how to spend the money my company earns.
You are NOT the business. You and your wife own a business. The business is not you. It's a separate thing from you. If your business dies, you do not die. Because your business is just the way you make money. Just like a law practice isn't a lawyer. The lawyer is a person. The business owner is a person.
And a business doesn't "think", doesn't have "feelings", doesn't have a morality. A business is a thing. If the business you own provides insurance benefits to its employees, then it provides insurance benefits to its employees. End of story. If you, as the business owner, decide to discriminate against your female employees by trying to control their "sexual proclivities" by cherry-picking your insurance coverage, don't pretend that it's a matter of morality. It isn't. It's you using your business as an economic bludgeon to force others to abide by your personal standards. Not only is it immoral, but it's unprofessional and unethical.
I don't care how you spend the money you make from your company, but if you're company is going to make an investment in its employees via an insurance benefit, keep your nose out of the personal lives of your employees. Because it's NONE of your business.
Do you cover your employees health insurance at 100%?
If not, then you are not providing them with any 'free' benefits.
The insurance company may, in effect, be providing them for 'free', but, I am very willing to bet that what the insurance company pays for contraceptives is a minute amount, and probably already less than a standard co-pay, when one (again) considers economy of scale and so forth.
Without me there is no business and no benefits period. The only reason that my employees receive benefits is because I choose to provide them at my expense.
Yes they pay 25 percent of the policy at MY cost which is a group rate that they couldn't even get close to affording if they paid for it on their own.
Again without me there is no business and no insurance. Hence I should be the only one to decide on what insurance policy options to provide.
Except this provisions does not affect all citizens as you claim. It does however force employers to ignore their conscience when it comes to matters of personal faith, forces them to go against their faith or face substantial penalties, to provide a product from the private market place at its expense, to a specific population, when it is not a part of health care coverage addressing disease specifically, only the prevention of a condition that has yet to exist for those choosing to use the coverage.
The government could tie anything to "health care" that has the potential to effect anyone's life and mandate the employer provide it "free".
It forces employers to ignore their conscience when it comes to matters of personal faith. How so?
The employer isn't the business. The business doesn't have a personal faith. The business doesn't have a conscience.
Are you saying that because someone owns a business that they should be able to economically force their employees to abide by the employer's personal faith? Isn't faith a personal choice? Do you want to live in a society where your personal faith, your religious beliefs become a matter of economic livelihood? Is that how you imagine freedom of religion? If your employer belongs to Emmanuel Baptist Church, should you leave your church and join his? Because otherwise, in the business he won't give you raises, or promotions. Should business owners be able to use their businesses to enforce their religious beliefs?
Without me there is no business and no benefits period. The only reason that my employees receive benefits is because I choose to provide them at my expense.
Yes they pay 25 percent of the policy at MY cost which is a group rate that they couldn't even get close to affording if they paid for it on their own.
Again without me there is no business and no insurance. Hence I should be the only one to decide on what insurance policy options to provide.
Why do you choose to provide any benefits at all? How do you benefit?
You are NOT the business. You and your wife own a business. The business is not you. It's a separate thing from you. If your business dies, you do not die. Because your business is just the way you make money. Just like a law practice isn't a lawyer. The lawyer is a person. The business owner is a person.
And a business doesn't "think", doesn't have "feelings", doesn't have a morality. A business is a thing. If the business you own provides insurance benefits to its employees, then it provides insurance benefits to its employees. End of story. If you, as the business owner, decide to discriminate against your female employees by trying to control their "sexual proclivities" by cherry-picking your insurance coverage, don't pretend that it's a matter of morality. It isn't. It's you using your business as an economic bludgeon to force others to abide by your personal standards. Not only is it immoral, but it's unprofessional and unethical.
I don't care how you spend the money you make from your company, but if you're company is going to make an investment in its employees via an insurance benefit, keep your nose out of the personal lives of your employees. Because it's NONE of your business.
Amazing insight into your thought process.
Agree to disagree. Everything you are stating is so off base there is no reason the continue the dialogue.
Except this provisions does not affect all citizens as you claim.
A who perchance is not covered by this regulation other than religious institutions?
Quote:
It does however force employers to ignore their conscience when it comes to matters of personal faith, forces them to go against their faith or face substantial penalties, to provide a product from the private market place at its expense, to a specific population, when it is not a part of health care coverage addressing disease specifically, only the prevention of a condition that has yet to exist for those choosing to use the coverage.
As Justice Scalia and I have pointed out, claims of religious beliefs do not trump civil law. This is a long established constitutional issue.
...the "exercise of religion" often involves not only belief and profession but the performance of (or abstention from) physical acts: assembling with others for a worship service, participating in sacramental use of bread and wine, proselytizing, abstaining from certain foods or certain modes of transportation. It would be true, we think (though no case of ours has involved the point), that a state would be "prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]" if it sought to ban such acts or abstentions only when they are engaged in for religious reasons, or only because of the religious belief that they display. It would doubtless be unconstitutional, for example, to ban the casting of "statues that are to be used [p878] for worship purposes," or to prohibit bowing down before a golden calf.
..."prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]" includes requiring any individual to observe a generally applicable law that requires (or forbids) the performance of an act that his religious belief forbids (or requires). As a textual matter, we do not think the words must be given that meaning. It is no more necessary to regard the collection of a general tax, for example, as "prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]" by those citizens who believe support of organized government to be sinful than it is to regard the same tax as "abridging the freedom . . . of the press" of those publishing companies that must pay the tax as a condition of staying in business. It is a permissible reading of the text, in the one case as in the other, to say that, if prohibiting the exercise of religion (or burdening the activity of printing) is not the object of the tax, but merely the incidental effect of a generally applicable and otherwise valid provision, the First Amendment has not been offended. Compare Citizen Publishing Co. v. United States, 394 U.S. 131, 139 (1969)
We have never held that an individual's religious beliefs [p879] excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting conduct that the State is free to regulate. On the contrary, the record of more than a century of our free exercise jurisprudence contradicts that proposition. As described succinctly by Justice Frankfurter in Minersville School Dist. Bd. of Educ. v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586, 594-595 (1940):
Conscientious scruples have not, in the course of the long struggle for religious toleration, relieved the individual from obedience to a general law not aimed at the promotion or restriction of religious beliefs. The mere possession of religious convictions which contradict the relevant concerns of a political society does not relieve the citizen from the discharge of political responsibilities.
We first had occasion to assert that principle in Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1879), where we rejected the claim that criminal laws against polygamy could not be constitutionally applied to those whose religion commanded the practice. "Laws," we said,
are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices. . . . Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary because of his religious belief? To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.
Agree to disagree. Everything you are stating is so off base there is no reason the continue the dialogue.
Thanks for the "amazing". I live to amaze and delight.
And we can agree to disagree. But I will object to your characterization of my remarks as "off-base". You may think that as a business owner you can use your economic power in your employees' lives to impose your values and beliefs. But I consider that an abuse of your power.
I once worked for an employer who was very involved in his church. And every week he pointedly invited me to attend his church. Every week I respectfully declined. But after several months, it became clear that if you did not attend church with this employer, that you would not move up in the company, would not get raises. While it was never explicitly stated, the employer didn't want employees to rise to management level unless they shared his particular perspective that was tied to his religious beliefs.
I knew what he was doing then was wrong, and I think that the issue over insurance coverage of birth control is very similar. It's employers using their economic power over employees to enforce certain behaviors.
birth control is not a right!, buy your own!! you buy your own car, your gas, your clothing, stop being lazy get a job and pay for your own pleasures!!
But Viagra gets covered? It's anyone else's responsibiltity or problem if a guy can't get it up? I'll assume you agree with me on this. Maybe a bit of penile dysfunction will make him humble.
Since you recognize that their are medical applications for birth control therapy is then your contention that an employer is best suited for making the determination that such a therapy is appropriate based not upon their medical expertise but rather their religious beliefs?
Is it further your contention that the religious rights of employers supersedes the religious or non-religious rights of their employees when there is no basis in law or the Constitution that allows such a superiority of employer rights?
And this argument comes from the same people who warn of committees of medical experts (death panels sic) determining what therapies are medically appropriate or cost effective.
Smartest post I've read here in a long time. I swear some of these people want to move this country back to the "company store" days when your employer basically OWNED you.
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