Obama's Catholic hospital decision

[greenforest32]

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Theocrats are disgusting. They want exemptions from everything with the justification that their mythological stone-aged beliefs shouldn't be subject to reality and consistent application of the law. Churches first and hospitals/universities second. Pathetic.

[greenforest32]

It's not just  those who oppose birth control that are upset about this of course.

Imagine, once was a time respecting people's rights of conscience was considered the liberal position.

*yawn*

The theocrats are asking for very specific things:

1. To collect government funds and discriminate (see Catholic Charities losing their government-funded adoption contract(s) when they refuse to assist same-sex parents seeking to adopt in states with legal adoption for same-sex couples & anti-discrimination laws)

2. To be hired as a pharmacist and refuse to dispense birth control/contraceptives because it "violates their conscience"

3. To run a large medical/educational organization (such as a hospital or a university) and request exemptions from anti-discrimination laws or legal mandates that every other hospital and university must adhere to with the justification that it's a religious hospital/university and therefore should be exempt.

Should these "conscience" exemptions be granted?

[greenforest32]

The problem the Obama people have coming out and defending this isn't the contraception angle, but that this issue highlights the absurdities of our current system of tax-loophole-subsidized employer-provided health insurance, a system that Obamacare makes even more central to out health care system, when we need to make it less central, or even better do away with, altho there are too many vested interests to make that likely to happen.

Obamacare sets us on the path to doing away with the employer-provided insurance system, through the establishment of regulated health insurance exchanges. Once they are up and running for the self-employed and other groups, they can be opened up to the employees of larger businesses as well.

Believe that if you will.  The exchanges look to be set up to fail from the get go.

Of course the whole private health insurance system is already failing. Prices have nearly doubled in the last 10 years and look on track to double again in the next 10 and less and less people are covered by employer-provided care: http://www.gallup.com/poll/150692/Employer-Based-Health-Insurance-Continues-Trend-Down.aspx



The ideal plan is Medicare for all and the compromise was supposed to be a federal insurance exchange with a federal public option, but both those federal "compromises" were axed in favor of state exchanges. I don't expect them to go very far, but I suppose it's better than the status quo. Our governor here is talking about maybe implementing a state-level public option (buy-in to the state medicaid program) but we'll see where that ends up. The private health insurance market is going to die eventually. I just wish it would happen sooner.