The LuLac Edition #2466, July 7h, 2013
FORCE FEEDING BIRTH CONTROL?
Just when I thought it was going to be a lazy, hazy summer Sunday morning, popping the top and having a quick breakfast with Mrs. LuLac, then taking nap, I open up my friend Joe Valenti’s Pittston Politics.com. It might have been the puke rebuke by that classy Pittston Area babe, Mrs. Bob Linskey (I do indeed hope she found a bucket by the way) or just his not accepting the fact that two Republicans of good quality lost their bid to Mr. Obama, Joe decides to pen an open letter to our Congressman Matt Cartwright about the health care bill. Here’s what he wrote:
With Obama care being implemented, I have a concern as a small business owner who employees about 15 people. With that, I have a decision to make. Our company provides a good wage to 15 employees who in turn support their families. We also provide health insurance. I requested that our company opt out of the contraceptive and morning after pill coverage. Here is the response: “I talked to XX who is our sales/service rep for the insurance company. With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, unfortunately Women’s Wellness is mandated within the law and oral contraceptives are part of that. As a small employer , you have no option to opt-out of that part. One suggestion is to write letters to your State and Congressional reps and tell them what you think. Sorry to get political, but this is all the Obama Care hoodwinking from Day 1.”
Keeping that in mind, I clearly see I have only two choices: 1. Violate my religious conscious. 2. No longer provide coverage for my employees. As you know, an employer who employs less than 50 is not required to provide health insurance. So, I have no choice to opt out of providing contraceptives, but I have a choice to opt out of providing health care to my employees.
First off, two things. Since this is an open letter, I am speaking for me, not the addressee. Second, a mandate is something put in an act to give people a opportunity to use a service that hitherto the insurance companies did not deem necessary to provide. I understand that you might have a religious objection to the morning after portion of the mandate. I get that. But I’m going to tell you that the small part of the Women’s Wellness mandate (which by the way is only an option,) your staff is not going to be force fed the morning after pill if they happen to come in on a Monday with an “afterglow” of bliss! And are you going to tell me that you may not offer health care because of this part and gut the rest of the other services mandated in the bill which are:
Breast-feeding support, supplies, and counseling, including costs for renting or purchasing specified breast-feeding equipment from a network provider or national durable medical equipment supplier.
Domestic violence screening and counseling.
Gestational diabetes screening for all pregnant women.
HIV counseling and screening for all sexually active women.
Human papillomavirus DNA testing for all women 30 years and older.
Sexually transmitted infection counseling for all sexually active women annually.
Well-woman visits including preconception counseling and routine, low-risk prenatal care.
Mandate does not mean blanket imposition. It is an option.
Are your religious convictions going to trump all the other good services available to your employees?
The Affordable Health Care Act offers many options as well as mandates. But you don’t have to throw the baby out with the bath water when it comes to following your religious principles. I’m sure if you decide to not offer health insurance to your employees (which if I read correctly you didn’t mention you would or wouldn’t, but if you didn't) the last thing they’d be respecting you for would be your religious convictions as they are going without basic health care.
posted by David Yonki @ 12:00 PM
29 comments
29 Comments:
Yonk - why is it that I am not mandated to provide vision, dental, detectables, co-pays, or even insurance itself...but when it comes to mandating something the Catholic Church says "violates our religious conscious" its OK? This is not about women's health, its about the war on the Catholic Church.
Your friend
Joe V
BTW - when are my health insurance costs going to come down?
Dave, I heard an old saying that might sum this health care dilemma up.
" You can take them all to Disney World and there will be some who would complain about the long lines".
Ya can't have you cake and eat it all the time.
If it be right for some and wrong for others just give it a try and work it out. Until another program comes about, we deal with what we got.
I agree with Joe V. He is not alone morally or entrepreneurially (is that a word?).
Living through the things we did and learning to stand up for what we believe at some point people of moral substance simply say "enough". I question why we are having this "all or nothing program that includes a fine" if we do not submit and join in.
The fact that it was allowed to develop into this shows a complete disregard or plain ignorance of a huge part of our citizenry.
At the heart of the left's vision of the world is the implicit assumption that high-minded third parties like themselves can make better decisions for other people than those people can make for themselves.
That arbitrary and unsubstantiated assumption underlies a wide spectrum of laws and policies over the years, ranging from urban renewal to ObamaCare.
One of the many international crusades by busybodies on the left is the drive to limit the hours of work by people in other countries -- especially poorer countries -- in businesses operated by multinational corporations. One international monitoring group has taken on the task of making sure that people in China do not work more than the legally prescribed 49 hours per week.
Why international monitoring groups, led by affluent Americans or Europeans, would imagine that they know what is best for people who are far poorer than they are, and with far fewer options, is one of the many mysteries of the busybody elite.
I know someone who left home at the age of 17, with no high school diploma, no job experience and no skills, he spent several years learning the hard way what poverty is like. One of the happier times during those years was a brief period when he worked 60 hours a week -- 40 hours delivering telegrams during the day and 20 hours working part-time in a machine shop at night.
Why was he happy? Because, before finding these jobs, he had spent weeks desperately looking for any job, while his meager savings dwindled down to literally his last dollar, before finally finding the part-time job at night in a machine shop.
He had to walk several miles from the rooming house where he lived to the machine shop in order to save that last dollar to buy food until he got a payday.
When he then found a full-time job delivering telegrams during the day, the money from the two jobs combined was more than he had ever made before. He could pay the back rent owed on his room and both eat and ride buses back and forth to work.
He could even put aside some money for a rainy day. It was the closest thing to nirvana for him.
Thank heaven there were no busybodies to prevent him from working more hours than they thought he should.
-more
There was a minimum wage law, but this was 1949 and the wages set by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 had been rendered meaningless by years of inflation. In the absence of an effective minimum wage law, unemployment among teenagers in the recession year of 1949 was a fraction of what it would be in even the most prosperous years of the 1960s and beyond.
As the morally anointed busybodies raised the minimum wage rate, beginning in the 1950s, teenage unemployment skyrocketed, especially black teenage unemployment. We have now become so used to tragically high rates of unemployment among this group that many people have no idea that things were not always like that, much less that policies of the busybody left had such catastrophic consequences.
I don't know what he would have done if such busybody policies had been in effect back in 1949, and prevented him from finding a job before his last dollar ran out.
This is just one small example of what it is like when your options are very limited. The "prosperous" busybodies of the left are constantly promoting policies which reduce the existing options of poor people even more.
It would never occur to the busybodies that multinational corporations are expanding the options of the poor in third world countries, while busybody policies are contracting their options.
Wages paid by multinational corporations in poor countries are typically much higher than wages paid by local employers. Moreover, the experience that employees get working in modern companies make them more valuable workers and have led in China, for example, to wages rising by double-digit percentages annually.
Nothing is easier for people with degrees to imagine that they know better than the poor and uneducated. But, as someone once said, "A fool can put on his coat better than a wise man can put it on for him."
I wonder how Mr. and Mrs. Obama will feel when their daughter comes home and tells them the were given the "morning after" pill by the school nurse?
President Obama promised perfection when it came to the Affordable Care Act. More insurance coverage, better health outcomes, cheaper premiums, and you can keep your health care plan. That last one was particularly key when it came to selling the whole package. "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it" was repeated time and again in the President's PR campaign for the health legislation.
Mr. V you are doing exactly what the Administration wants you to do.
The employer mandate is an incredibly important part of this. Obamacare's structure is set up to incentivize employers to dump health coverage and force their employees onto health exchanges, where American taxpayers, instead of individual companies, will bear the burden of subsidized insurance. The mandate would (fairly heavily) penalize companies with more than fifty employees for pulling a stunt like this. As it stands right now, there will already be a lot of Americans who won't be able to keep their health care plan under Obamacare. Without the employer mandate, however, that would skyrocket.
It could certainly be, on a policy level, the right thing to do! Having health insurance tied up with employment status is the legacy of half a century of regulation and tax carve-outs that have made insurance a valuable carrot for employers to offer employees, but it's resulted in a very dysfunctional health system. John McCain's 2008 health care platform was geared toward unraveling the employer-based insurance system. Back then, however, progressive journalists weren't taking a politician's word at face value. McCain's plan would have seen millions of Americans leaving - voluntarily or not - the employer-insurance system for the individual market, just as Obamacare is going to. An Obamacare without an employer mandate will do much the same.
In a underhanded slap neoliberal journalist Josh Barro called Obama's keep-your-insurance promise "Obamacare's original sin":
The latter pledge forced Obama to try to do two things at once: keep employer-based coverage for the 45 percent of Americans who have it, while getting coverage to the 17 percent of Americans who don't have any at all... The main stick is the employer mandate: Large employers who don't offer coverage will have to pay a penalty of $2,000 per uncovered full-time employee. This will discourage hiring, encourage employers to limit employees to part-time work, and give small firms an advantage over large ones.
If the employer mandate is weakened, Obamacare would become more expensive to taxpayers but less damaging to the economy and job creation. The health care exchanges would become the increasingly dominant venue through which Americans get insurance.
Barro concludes saying that the American health system would be "better off" if more Americans, voluntarily or involuntarily, became disentangled from employer-based insurance. He's right - but it's unlikely that a system that encourages employers to dump insurance for their employees and push those costs along to the taxpayers is the best mechanism to do so.
Beutler writes that he's puzzled about the following sentiment of Obamacare critics:
Republicans are still committed to the far-fetched objective of repealing Obamacare, and as such have effectively vowed not to work with the administration to fix any of its dysfunctional provisions. To the contrary, the GOP is committed to creating implementation problems where they can, and to making sure existing problems are never fixed, to make the whole program a liability for Democrats.
#2
Even though the policy is fixable, Republicans think it should be implemented as is, on schedule, so that the White House either pays a political price for it, or agrees to full repeal.
Well, yes. This also points to the blame-the-GOP critique. Republicans, supposedly, should be co-equal partners in fixing the law's myriad problems, so that the basic mandate-community rating-guaranteed issue structure of the law can function properly - which completely ignores how the law was crafted. Democrats didn't need Republican help with the law. They had a supermajority in the Senate and an outright majority in the House. And that's exactly what happened: the White House and Sen. Baucus cut Republicans out of the legislative process, crafted the thing in conjunction with much of the health care industry, and passed it without any GOP support in the Senate. (Rep. Joseph Cao of Louisiana was the sole Republican legislator to vote for PPACA in either legislative chamber.) Democrats gave the American people Obamacare, and Republicans think Democrats should *fix* Obamacare. Uncooperative? Yes, but cooperation was never a priority for Democrats when it came to crafting and passing the legislation.
Republicans would certainly like the President to pay a political price for the mess of implementation when it comes to something that even Obamacare supporters say is bad policy. "Fixing" the policy would see Republicans helping President Obama break the promise that Americans can keep insurance that they like. It's unlikely they're going to be willing partners in that.
IN RESPONSE
BTW - when are my health insurance costs going to come down?
AFTER YOUR INSURANCE COMPANY STOPS GAUGING YOU WHEN THE AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE ACT TAKES EFFECT.
AFTER YOUR INSURANCE COMPANY STOPS GAUGING YOU WHEN THE AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE ACT TAKES EFFECT
Apologies to The Who: "meet the new cost...same as the old cost"
Except you won't have the option to shop elsewhere. You're current health care provider will cease to be and the feds (those same guys who brought you sequester) will step in to "take care" of you.
Dave,
I never got the Saint thing back when I was a Catholic and I get it less now! Two Popes are fast tracked by really questionable miracles attributed to them. I am not too hot on the miracles thing either. Meanwhile the church has been "investigating" the possible sainthood of Army Chaplain Emil Kapuan since the Korean War. Read up on him. He is deserving of sainthood for real actions which ultimately cost him his life. Last year the President presented a long overdue Congressional Medal of Honor to a man most deserving who's family should never have had to wait 60 years! Let me know when the church gets around to recognizing Capt Chaplain Kapaun!
Pete Cassidy
So let me get this straight.
You support the right of a woman to have a vacuum tube shoved into her womb and suck an unborn baby through a series of knifes and collected in a container.
Or
It is okay for someone who is 8 or 9 months through a pregenancy to have the baby delivered part way, have an ice pick jammed in the baby's soft spot, scramble the brains and through it in a container.
But
It isn't okay for someone to decide if they want to purchase health insurance?
Wow. For someone who is still worked up over the closing of a Catholic Church and school, you really didn't appear to pay much attention when you went there.
Right is right, wrong is wrong. You can argue in the secular world what you should do, but as far as the Church goes, the teaching is that this is wrong. Period.
If you don't like the Church's teaching, fine. But for folks who do follow the teaching, you can't force them to violate their religious convictions just because some other good things are in there.
Why doesn't the ACA force employers to offer vision or dental coverage? That's also necessary, and would benefit 100% of the population, not just 50%. I guess the lady-parts lobby is stronger than the dental lobby.
10:55 who are you???? norman mailer???
The problem is that there are some Catholics who put the democrat party and teachers unions before God and serving the church. That's why its ok for doctors to perform abortions and some Catholics are perfectly fine and have a "thats ok" attitude - something I am not cool at all with!!
IN RESPONSE
You're current health care provider will cease to be and the feds (those same guys who brought you sequester) will step in to "take care" of you.
YEAH, LIKE BLUE CROSS WENT OUT OF BUSINESS WHEN MEDICARE BECAME A REALITY. PLUS MORE COMPANIES LIKE CIGNA AND GWISINGER JUMPED INTO THE FRAY. WHAT A SCARE TACTIC.
IN RESPONSE
You support the right of a woman to have a vacuum tube shoved into her womb and suck an unborn baby through a series of knifes and collected in a container.
Or
It is okay for someone who is 8 or 9 months through a pregenancy to have the baby delivered part way, have an ice pick jammed in the baby's soft spot, scramble the brains and through it in a container.
NEVER ONCE SAID THAT IN THE SEVEN YEARS I WAS WRITING THIS BLOG. ABORTIONS SHOULD BE INFREQUENT. I SUPPORT CHOICE. NOT WHAT YOU AND THE ABORTION CRAZIES ARE ADVOCATING.
Wow. For someone who is still worked up over the closing of a Catholic Church and school, you really didn't appear to pay much attention when you went there.
I LEARNED TO REASON.
Why doesn't the ACA force employers to offer vision or dental coverage? That's also necessary, and would benefit 100% of the population, not just 50%. I guess the lady-parts lobby is stronger than the dental lobby.
BECAUSE THIS PRESIDENT CAVED. AFTER PUTTING IN 10 CONCESSIONS TO THE "MODERATE" GOP SENATOR SNOW AND THEN GETTING SCREWED, IMAGINE IF HE TRIED TO ADD THAT. THE SAME GOP WHO ARE YELLING ABOUT ACCESS CARDS WOULD BE CRAZY OVER DENTAL CARE FOR ALL AMERICANS.
AND THE LADY PART LOBBY CONSISTS OF PEOPLE SITTING IN YOUR OWN CHURCH WHO MIGHT BELIEVE IN GOD, BUT DON'T WANT THE CHURCH TELLING THEM HOW TO HAVE SEX. THAT'S THE REASON WHY THE GOP LOST GROUND WITH WOMEN.
David, why do you allow this far right individual to write, submit and get published his tirades? Obviously he thinks that the people employed as slave labor and working 70+ hours per week are doing it willingly. He goes on and on and as knowledgeable as he tries to portray himself, to me he only comes off as a brainwashed Rush Limbaugh blind follower. The truth is that he or she or it, whichever is correct, will be the first one in line for Medicare when eligible. I really do dislike these hypocrites.
By the way, when did Valenti start a company that currently employs 15 people? I sure would like to know more about that. I remember when he made a big splash on Broad St Pittston when he started some form of computer comopany that ws going to hire a multitude of people. Didn't happen and I was one who was seeking employement at the time and the hope he built was pie in the sky but his ego got the press he wanted and needed.
Whats wrong with a war on the Catholic Church? They deserve it. Joe V is full of ****. most of the time but worse this time out. Thought I’d lay off Lulac, but wanted to state my case to the esteemed editor. War on the Catholic Church my ass!
Right On 4:55! Couldn't have said it better. What does the Catholic Church do that is in the interest of the people? Seriously. They are currently low on the decency meter
in so many ways. I wonder what Jesus would think of the organization.
The Catholic Church did nothing and said nothing when 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis. Just like the Catholic Church today saying nothing and doing nothing with the murder of innocent babies by the democrats.
Catholics who are pro-choice are not true Christians or Catholics.
Amen Pete- I was stationed @ Kapuan Barracks in Kaiserslautern, FRG in the 70's......
Thats how abortions are done. So you sure only for choice every now and then.?
IN RESPONSE
The Catholic Church did nothing and said nothing when 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis.
POPE PIUS XII DID MORE TO SAVE THE JEWISH PEOPLE THAN MOST IN EUROPE. HE WAS SMEARED BY A PLAY RELEASED IN THE MID 60s THAT WAS TOTALLY FALSE.
IN RESPONSE
Thats how abortions are done. So you sure only for choice every now and then.?
PERSONALLY I AM AGAINST ABORTION. I AM AGAINST TEEN AGE GIRLS SHACKING UP AND CALLING THEIR SLACKER LOVERS BABY DADDIES.
I AM FOR CHOICE USED WISELY AND INFREQUENTLY.
I AM FOR ADOPTION.
YEAH, LIKE BLUE CROSS WENT OUT OF BUSINESS WHEN MEDICARE BECAME A REALITY.
Oh, I didn't know Blue Cross still covered seniors 65 and older. How'd I miss that?
We may be getting closer to scientifically pinpointing critical fetal developments for those that don't recognize the "miracle" or "magic" of life.
A newly-published research study shows unborn children are capable of feeling pain in the womb, as evidenced by the grimaces they show in their facial expressions.
The study will soon be published in the academic journal PLOS ONE.
Researchers from Durham and Lancaster Universities in England say unborn babies learn to show pain in their facial expressions as part of the process of fetal development. They took 15 scans of healthy unborn children and found that, when responding to painful stimuli, the babies were capable of one-dimensional expressions of pain in their faces at 24 weeks — such as moving their lips in a negative fashion.
At the 36th week of pregnancy, the researchers found unborn children can perform complex multi-dimensional facial expressions similar to what children make after birth.
Lead researcher Dr Nadja Reissland, of Durham University’s Department of Psychology wrote, “It is vital for infants to be able to show pain as soon as they are born so that they can communicate any distress or pain they might feel to their carers.”
Personally when I was in my late teens and twenties I was ambivalent about the whole abortion thing. Growing up, seeing family and friends get married give birth and raise children then compare that experience to other family and friend who had aborted their pregnancy changed my opinion and belief.
I noticed too, (and this caught me off guard) that abortions change the woman for ever.
I am firmly against it and totally support Joe V's decision.
Mr Yonki,
You are correct. The Pope and the Catholic Church did much more than was ever publicized in support of the Jewish people.
I am curious, what play are you referring to?
Not a Catholic or a Member of Any Organized Religion. Just a Truth seeker.
Imagine if Social Security AND Medicare go bankrupt.
Would Blue Cross be there to pick up the slack? For a price of course.
Just speculating.
Why is it than when one uses the desciption instead of the term abortion, pro choicers start with all their modifiers?
IN RESPONSE
You are correct. The Pope and the Catholic Church did much more than was ever publicized in support of the Jewish people.
I am curious, what play are you referring to?
FIFTY YEARS AGO THIS SUMMER A PLAY BY ROLF HOCHHUTH WAS RELEASED IN GERMANY. IT WAS CALLED "THE DEPUTY". ALSO KNOWN IN SOME CIRCLES AS "THE REPRESENTATIVE'. THIS PLAY ALLEGED PIUS XXII DID NOT DO ENOUGH TO SAVE THE JEWS IN NAZI GERMANY. PIUS WAS ON THE FAST TRACK FOR SAINTHOOD BUT IT WAS DERAILED. POPE BENEDICT TRIED TO RESTART THE PROCESS BUT IT IS CURRENTLY UNDER ADVISEMENT.
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