designs - "US Supreme Court: Hobby Lobby wins, we lose"
AVP: Alien versus Predator
(whoever wins, we lose...)
US Supreme Court: Hobby Lobby wins we lose
by designs 89 Replies latest social current
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Vidiot
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BizzyBee
Even worse is the fact that we have an activist SCOTUS that continues to flesh out corporate personhood. Corporations now can "speak" through their money and hold religious beliefs that they can impose on their employees.
What next?
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JeffT
Here's another inconvenient post y'all can ignore.
The Illogic of Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance
JULY 1, 2014
Uwe E. Reinhardt
Imagine yourself in a bar where a pickpocket takes money out of your wallet and with it buys you a glass of chardonnay. Although you would have preferred a pinot noir, you decide not to look that gift horse in the mouth and thank the stranger profusely for the kindness, assuming he paid for it. You might feel differently, of course, if you knew that you actually had paid for it yourself.
Persuaded by both theory and empirical research, most economists believe that employer-based health insurance is an analogue of this bar scene.
The argument is that the premiums ostensibly paid by employers to buy health insurance coverage for their employees are actually part of the employee’s total pay package – the price of labor, in economic parlance – and that the cost of that fringe benefit is recovered from employees through commensurate reductions in take-home pay.
Score it 1-0 in “Supremes v. Economists.”
In the ruling, the owner of Hobby Lobby, a chain of craft stores, gained the right not to include certain contraceptive goods and services in the insurance bought for employees, because use of these services conflicts with the owner’s Christian beliefs. Although the justices argue that their ruling is narrowly confined to contraceptive services, one must wonder what other items other business owners in the future may seek to jettison from benefit packages on the basis of this or that professed religious belief.
The ruling raises the question of why, uniquely in the industrialized world, Americans have for so long favored an arrangement in health insurance that endows their employers with the quasi-parental power to choose the options that employees may be granted in the market for health insurance. For many smaller firms, that choice is narrowed to one or two alternatives – not much more choice than that afforded citizens under a single-payer health insurance system.
Furthermore, the arrangement induces employers to intervene in many other ways in their employees’ personal life – for example, in wellness programs that can range from the benign to annoyingly intrusive, depending upon the employers’ wishes.
And what kind of health “insurance” have Americans gotten under this strange arrangement? Once again, uniquely in the industrialized world, it has been ephemeral coverage that is lost with the job or changed at the employer’s whim. Citizens in any other industrialized country have permanent, portable insurance not tied to a particular job in a particular country.
Nor has this coverage been cheap by international standards. American employers can be said to have played a major role in driving up health spending per capita in the United States measured in internationally comparable purchasing power parity dollars, to roughly twice the level found in other industrialized populations. As a recent article in the health policy journal Health Affairs reported, a decade of health care cost growth wiped out real income gains for the average American family during the period from 1999 to 2009.
The Supreme Court’s ruling may prompt Americans to re-examine whether the traditional, employment-based health insurance that they have become accustomed to is really the ideal platform for health insurance coverage in the 21st century. The public health insurance exchanges established under the Affordable Care Act are likely to nibble away at this system for small and medium-size business firms, especially those with a mainly low-wage work force.
In the meantime, the case should help puncture the illusion that employer-provided health insurance is an unearned gift bestowed on them by the owners and paid with the owners’ money, giving those owners the moral right to dictate the nature of that gift.
Correction: July 1, 2014
A previous version of this article misspelled the last name of the Health and Human Services commissioner originally named in the case, and gave an outdated name for the case. It is Sebelius, not Sibelius, and the case is now known as Burwell v. Hobby Lobby.
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GrreatTeacher
Yes, bring on single payer. However, until that is politically feasible, the conservative creation of "Obamacare" will have to do for now.
Romney created it, Obama embraced it, and now the Right hates it. Go figure.
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UN informed
Hobby Lobby is a "closely held corporation", with just 5 owners. It is not "public".
Would most of you, if you owned a business really want to be told to provide a benefit to your employees that violated your conscience?
I personally would like to make decisions on matters like that in my business. We are living in an "entitlement" society, and at the least sign that we can't force someone to give "free stuff" to us, and we might actually have to pay ourselves for something that our employer objects to, we go nuts and start wanting to intrude on other's rights.
The five owners of Hobby Lobby have rights too.
I could care less if you want an abortion. Very likely you are only killing another future liberal. But pay for it yourself.
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Viviane
Hobby Lobby is a "closely held corporation", with just 5 owners. It is not "public".
So?
Would most of you, if you owned a business really want to be told to provide a benefit to your employees that violated your conscience?
Yes.
I personally would like to make decisions on matters like that in my business. We are living in an "entitlement" society, and at the least sign that we can't force someone to give "free stuff" to us, and we might actually have to pay ourselves for something that our employer objects to, we go nuts and start wanting to intrude on other's rights.
That's got nothing to do with it. It's about equal treatment under the law, respecting others, rights to medical care and private access to a doctor. Would you be OK with a business that refused to offer benefits to only mixed-race couple, gay people or non-Christians?
The five owners of Hobby Lobby have rights too.
Indeed. Unfortunately, exercising control over access to medical care specfically for women because Jesus appears to be one of them, despite their extreme hypocrisy in doing business where child labor and slavery is normal and profiting from it. They aren't even sincere Christians, they are pick and choose faux Christians using Jesus and the law when it suits them and shrugging at child labor when it profits them. Absolutely disgusting.
I could care less if you want an abortion. Very likely you are only killing another future liberal. But pay for it yourself.
Fortunately, the government is invested in providing family planning care for women. And none of the drugs involved had anything to do with abortion. Interesting that you didn't understand that incredibly basic fact. But then, you are supporting disgusting faux Christians, so I guess not that surprising.
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UN informed
I am not supporting "faux" christians.
I don't believe in any religion.
The WT broke me of that.
I just don't believe that society should become so crippled that everybody expects free stuff all the time, and the people required to provide it dont have the right to the exercise of their own conscience.
I am old fashioned, I think freedom is a two way street.
With regard to to the government getting involved in health care, I see how the government handles everything else and I don't feel that they will do a good job. Our government is 17 Trillion dollars in debt. 45% of the people in this country are on some kind of welfare. Perfectly healthy people are on various forms of Social Security and welfare disability. Millions of illegal entrants to this country are taking advantage of "gimme" programs that cost billions of dollars. Monsanto and other companies are ruining the health value of previously good food by genetically modifying the food. People eating this crap, me included, get diabetes, heart disease and other life threatening illnesses, then we go to the government to get free pills. We have abdicated PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.
We have become a nation of takers, and our politicians are giving free stuff to get votes.
Trouble is, free stuff is not free. Those of us working have to pay for it. I am 68 and still working.I know there is no solution to this stuff, but when you liberals run out of other people's money, you will realize that there is no free lunch.
Buy your own damn birth control. Pay for your own abortion. Put your hands in your own pocket, get it out of everyone elses pockets.
I don't meanto be offensive,although I know most will think I am, but this gravy train will come to a halt someday, and the more dependent that you are on other peoples stuff, the more difficult life will be.
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designs
Look at the better progressive countries and see how and why they are succeeding the US in all areas including health care. Laizze Faire capitalism breaks people and societies. You want civilization then the populace has to pull together and support common interests and services.
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Viviane
I am not supporting "faux" christians.
Yes, you are.
I don't believe in any religion.
So?
I just don't believe that society should become so crippled that everybody expects free stuff all the time, and the people required to provide it dont have the right to the exercise of their own conscience.
People are paying for their insurance there and paying a co-pay. Where is this "free" stuff you mention?
I am old fashioned, I think freedom is a two way street.
It is. Why do you support corporation getting involved in medical care? Do you think "whites only" signs on businesses are OK? Would you support a company that offered adoption assistance refusing to help a mixed race couple or a white couple that was adopting a Hispanic or Asian child? Would you support a company that refused to provide health insurance to gay people or refused to hire people over 45? At which point do you think freedoms have limits?
We have abdicated PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.
None of that is relavant to the issue. People who are holding down a job and paying for their medical simply want to be able to make their own choices about that medical care. It's got nothing to do with "free" stuff. These are the people taking the personal responsibility you are complaining about. When they aren't responsible you complain. When they are responsible you complain. What would make you happy?
I know there is no solution to this stuff, but when you liberals run out of other people's money, you will realize that there is no free lunch.
Buy your own damn birth control. Pay for your own abortion. Put your hands in your own pocket, get it out of everyone elses pockets.
Again, the people involved already ARE paying for their insurance. The people you like, the one's taking personal responsibility. If they are ALREADY paying for it and it's no additional cost to Hobby Lobby, why don't you respect these people's freedom to choose what birth control they are actually paying for?
Or is it just birth control you have an issue with? Why aren't you complaining about Viagra and Cialis coverage? Why is it the complaint only comes up when it's women's issues?
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GrreatTeacher
"45% of the people in this country are on some kind of welfare" -UN informed
Would you like to back up this claim?
I certainly hope you are not talking about the elderly on Social Security and Medicare, since they obviously paid into these systems?