Health Care and Contraception: Did the Supreme Court Get It Right?

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  1. Was the Supreme Court right to rule that the Affordable Care Act violated the religio

    • 1024
      No - The ruling allows bosses to impose their religious beliefs on their employees. Besides, the Constitution grants religious freedom to individuals, not corporations.
    • 483
      Yes - The religious beliefs of company owners take precedence over their employees' right to have access to birth control.

140 members have participated

Should religious family-owned companies be required to cover contraceptives under their insurance plans? The high court says no.

I'm curious how you nurses feel about this? Please take a second to vote in our quick poll.

This is a highly political topic, I'd rather not turn this into a hot argumentative subject, so please keep your comments civil :) But please feel free to comment. Thanks

Here is an article on the topic:

Hobby Lobby Ruling Cuts Into Contraceptive Mandate

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In a 5-4 decision Monday, the Supreme Court allowed a key exemption to the health law's contraception coverage requirements when it ruled that closely held for-profit businesses could assert a religious objection to the Obama administration's regulations. What does it mean? Here are some questions and answers about the case.What did the court's ruling do?

The court's majority said that the for-profit companies that filed suit-Hobby Lobby Stores, a nationwide chain of 500 arts and crafts stores, and Conestoga Wood Specialties, a maker of custom cabinets-didn't have to offer female employeesall Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptivesas part of a package of preventive services that must be covered without copays or deductibles under the law. The companies had argued that several types of contraceptivesviolate their owners' religious beliefs. The ruling also covers a Hobby Lobby subsidiary, the Mardel Christian bookstores.

Well, duh...it's tobacco, so it's natural​! ;)

:lol2: Yeah, so is poison oak.

There are many rebuttals out there about the outrage about supposed hypocrisy but I found one particular article that shows how 401K's work . . . . at Forbes . .not Mother Jones. ;)

Apparently, this also means that Hobby Lobby can't have a 401(k) plan for their employees. Why? Well, according to Redden and Ungar, the Hobby Lobby owners are religious kook hypocrites. The company 401(k) plan has investments which themselves invest in companies that make the abortion drugs.

Ok, that's a fair point. If the claims that Hobby Lobby "invests" in these companies are based on the 401(k) plan it offers employees.... Then that's unfair and a stretch.

Specializes in Critical Care.
To be fair this does actually relate to Obamacare . . . .

Nuns Still Face Obamacare Mandate Despite Hobby Lobby Ruling

That is amazingly bad reporting. The Little Sisters of the Poor (LSP) case is actually pretty interesting, but they aren't actually being required to cover contraception in their health plan, they've been exempt from that rule all along.

Their complaint is that the process of becoming exempt involves filling out a form to confirm they are a religious organization. There's other assistance out there to help people afford contraception (not funded by LSP) that their employees in theory could use, but they only qualify for that assistance if they don't already have covered contraception. One of the purposes of the form LSP doesn't want to fill out is to confirm that their employees don't have contraception coverage.

What LSP is suing over is that they want to retain the ability to make it more difficult for their employees to obtain outside payment assistance for contraceptives by not filling out the form.

Specializes in Critical Care.

Spidey's Mom and IVRUS, I get that there's some sympathy towards HL's argument, although it doesn't really have much to do with the end result of the ruling. The court pretty clearly didn't agree that any of these four drugs could be considered abortifacients.

If you feel this was justified based on the possibility that these possibly are abortifacients, how would you feel if it applied to all twenty forms of contraception? How would you feel if the court said HL can have their employee's insurer remove supposed abortifacients from their plan, and have you and every other taxpayer pay for it instead?

Should religious family-owned companies be required to cover contraceptives under their insurance plans? The high court says no.

I'm curious how you nurses feel about this? Please take a second to vote in our quick poll.

This is a highly political topic, I'd rather not turn this into a hot argumentative subject, so please keep your comments civil :) But please feel free to comment. Thanks

Here is an article on the topic:

Hobby Lobby Ruling Cuts Into Contraceptive Mandate

2014-07-01_10-15-32.png

Hobby Lobby covers 16/20 of the mandated forms of birth control. Of the 4 they don't cover 2 are available OTC for around $50. A woman's method of birth control isn't an employers business, that is precisely why you shouldn't ask them to pay for it.

Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
Your example is an "error" or a "miscommunication". There is no scientific method for proving ensoulment or personhood. It is a matter of faith, and the Court has ruled that those who hold this belief, REGARDLESS of your opinion, may not be forced to facilitate a potential human death.

And yet some conservatives are very convinced that the IUD is an abortifacient which should be exempted from the health insurance plans of people who work for a devoutly "Christian" but secular corporate master which might be offended by the thought that IUDs MIGHT be abortive.

You are free to charactarize a fertilized egg as a human which can be murdered. However, your desire to believe such a thing does not make it true or scientifically correct. It is a fertilized egg (potentially) which is not equivalent to a pregnancy.

Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
Hobby Lobby covers 16/20 of the mandated forms of birth control. Of the 4 they don't cover 2 are available OTC for around $50. A woman's method of birth control isn't an employers business, that is precisely why you shouldn't ask them to pay for it.

Currently, in the USA, health insurance benefits are attached to employment as a portion of our compensation, but of course you knew that already. No one is demanding any extra ordinary thing from an employer other than to continue to allow the policy to cover the things it covered before the corporation had a come to Jesus moment. No person is asking HL to pay for contraceptives, they are asking HL to butt out of their choices that are traditionally part of a comprehensive insurance package. It is none of HLs business what sort of contraception their female employees might want to purchase using their health insurance. They are being intrusive and overbearing.

Please let me know where poor working women can get an IUD for around $50.

Specializes in Critical Care.
Hobby Lobby covers 16/20 of the mandated forms of birth control. Of the 4 they don't cover 2 are available OTC for around $50. A woman's method of birth control isn't an employers business, that is precisely why you shouldn't ask them to pay for it.

Aside from the fact that the ruling isn't limited to these four forms of birth control, what's confusing about that is if an employee goes out and buys the OTC with money, didn't the employer give them that money, so isn't the employee asking the employer to pay for it?

How is the employer less connected to that transaction if the employee buys it with money the employer gave them compared to if they buy it with the insurance the employer gave them. It would seem they are just different forms of things that can be used to obtain goods and services, which seems like an awfully trivial difference on which to claim a substantial moral difference.

Specializes in Pediatrics, Emergency, Trauma.
What right to choose? The religious right is making it too difficult for family planning clinics or OB/GYN practices who want to provide abortions to stay open. As a result, some women have no access to abortion without traveling to another state -- something which is particularly difficult for low income women to do. And now they're trying to take away our right to choose our own birth control?!

If men could get pregnant both abortion and birth control would be sacrements.

I WISH I could like this MORE. :yes:

To answer the question; the SCOTUS got it wrong; and Muno and toomuchbaloney is hitting it on the nail; these services will be siphoned to the government because they don't want to pay, and they are using religion as a "convient excuse".

Specializes in LTC, Psych, M/S.

Please let me know where poor working women can get an IUD for around $50.

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_contraceptive_serv.html

Poor women have access to free/low cost birth control thru county health clinics, planned parenthood ect. According to this article there millions of dollars in govt grants given for BC for poor women. Medicaid also covers it.

I wonder how many HL employees are eligible for, or are using medicaid/county health programs ect which makes the whole debate kindve pointless, IMO.

Specializes in Short Term/Skilled.

Y'all know babies cost more than birth control, right? The last thing this argument should be about, its money.

I admit, at first I was like "what's the big deal?", and I still think it's important to have all the facts, because the fact is, HL doesn't disallow ALL birth control, just IUD's and plan B. Honestly, I'm not all that irritated over this choice, because I actually had my IUD removed when it was brought to my attention that I could have an egg fertilized.

HOWEVER, when I thought about the idea that the law basically says and employer has the right to deny ALL birth control if it's against their religious beliefs, I started to get upset, because that is not MY belief. I don't believe there is anything wrong with birth control.

Then I started to think, well, the people who want the IUD don't believe that it is wrong, and the literature really doesn't support it being an "abortion device", who am I, who is anyone, to say they can't have one? It should be about the belief of the person who is getting it.

I agree, that this law is a bunch of crap, and although I can totally see and understand where Hobby Lobby is coming from, I don't think they have the right to dictate what kind of birth control a woman gets.

With that mentality, they should probably object to giving these women paychecks also, since that is how they will now have to pay for the IUD.

Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
Facts on Publicly Funded Contraceptive Services in the United States

Poor women have access to free/low cost birth control thru county health clinics, planned parenthood ect. According to this article there millions of dollars in govt grants given for BC for poor women. Medicaid also covers it.

I wonder how many HL employees are eligible for, or are using medicaid/county health programs ect which makes the whole debate kindve pointless, IMO.

So working poor women in republican states which have not expanded medicaid and which have reduced the number of women's health clinics in total have good access to publicly funded contraceptives? Do you know that these services are actually available in the communities where these working poor women live/work?

For instance, in Texas many women have lost their local access to reproductive health clinics secondary to the "conservative" legislative agenda of the men in charge of the state. One Year Later, Cuts to Women's Health Have Hurt More Than Just Planned Parenthood | The Texas Observer

There are over 90 HL stores just in Texas alone.

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