United Press International:


Fails to mention that a choice not to provide coverage brings stiff financial penalties under the new mandate

Read more here re EWTN's suit

EWTN is represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. The Becket Fund represents Belmont Abbey College which brought the first lawsuit to challenge the HHS rule back in November 2011 when the Abbey already feared a mandate would come, such as did come down Jan. 20th.

December 21, 2011 Colorado Christian University, an interdenominational Christian college, filed a similar challenge in Federal Court, also represented by Becket Fund.

It was announced today by President Obama himself that he is changing the rule so that the religious-affilaited institutions do not have to provide such coverage in their health care plans. The women working for these institutioons can have coverage directly from the health insurers, according to the announcement.

The only question is who will pay for it and how. If the employer does not pay for it with the health care premium, the employee would have to pay for it and thus not have the same coverage as the rest of the women in the country. After all, if these coverages are to be free and without copays, how is it to be so for an employee who must go outside her employer's plan when the employer's plan does not include it or pay for it.

We'll wait to see how this plays out.

Bob

Actually, there is a question about whether a political appointee should be empowered to make decisions about what you or I or any one else should be required to buy.



Those who stay parked on their dupas will indeed see how the government orders them to pay or play.

When I heard this reported today also included was that our Catholic, Orthodox, Pentecostal....... institutions also "only" will be required to tell the employee where they can obtains all these services.

We don't offer these but you can go to XYZ where you can obtain the contraceptives, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs.

The USCCB was last I heard holding off any response until they could see the actual documentation of the mandate.

They're controlling the terms of the discussion and everyone else is so concerned with the fox in the henhouse that you've missed the elephant in the parlour.

I love a good mixed metaphor.

Forget about religious institutions. Consider the ordinary individual in a secular business, now forced to pay for abortion.

I get the feeling Americans have no understanding of the deep pit their once-great nation stands over at this moment, ready to jump.

What the Administration proposed is effectively "money laundering": religious institutions that object will not have to pay for a policy that includes contraception and abortion services; these will have to be provided free of charge by the insurer if asked by the individual employee. "There you go--now you don't have to buy insurance that covers abortion or contraception", says the Administration.

But wait--when insurers are asked to cover a specific class of clients "for free", they do so by raising premiums on everybody else--including religious institutions that do not wish to pay for abortions or contraception. So, the Church DOES end up paying, just not directly--the money is laundered through the premiums, and sanitized by slight of hand.

I do believe Obama thinks the bishops--and all of us--are blindingly stupid.

But the bishops for once prove that they are not, and have issued a statement strongly condemning the "faux accommodation".

By the way, since when do rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights have to be "accommodated"?

This is coming from a President who says there are no "death panels." They are just consultations which will tell the unfortunate patient that HHS has changed the rules. Hospice care will be "revised." (gobbledegook doublespeak)

“It turns out that our Founders designed a system that makes it more difficult to bring about change than I would like sometimes.” The President on Matt Lauer 2/6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp8ZESkgIcg&feature=email

I think the Founders had Young Men in a Hurry like Barack Obama when they designed it.

If this situation doesn't change, I want to know what happens to religious institutions that are self-insured. For example I am employed by the Diocese of Buffalo and we are self-insured through an agreement with the Catholic Health System of Buffalo. Right now we have all diocesan, Catholic Charities, Catholic Cemeteries and 10 parishes/school on our plan and the idea is to roll it out to all Catholic entities in the Diocese. So what happens in our case?

Actually it was the Founders, by and large, who were the young men in a hurry to sever ties with Great Britain in 1776. Most were about this President's age when they drew up a Constitution that was ratified in 1787. And, according to Gary Wills, they weren't the religious scions Glen Beck would have us believe. As can be seen from the struggle over the adoption of the Bill of Rights, they were very concerned to get it right, and it has been a struggle to get it right ever since. I like the President's mature, measured response in the Youtube clip. At fifty-one, he's not so young.

Yeah, but once they got what they wanted, they didn't want anyone else upsetting the apple cart. I'd be very careful citing Gary Wills if I were you. While the man can be a serious scholar, he prefers to be a polemicist with his skills at the service of the Left. And if you think Obama is mature and well-measured, you are very easily deceived..

Especially Papists, of whom, with the exception of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, they were no friends, and had little interest in seeing their rights upheld. Yes, I cite Wills with trepidation, but in his well-documented book, American Christianities, I think he's pretty much on the money concerning the church-state issue. Washington and Adams both rued the day when political parties would arise, and lived to see the outcome. I generally do not put my trust in princes or the fleetness of men, but in that short clip on Youtube I thought President Obama's response was thoughtful, mature and measured.

I guess Their Graces stand in opposition, and for once, I find myself in full agreement with them.

That's a good question. It seems they'll have to offer birth control or start buying insurance again from an outside provider (if that's made morally feasible by a revision of the "compromise") or pay the substantial fine for not providing insurance to their employees.