6/30/2014, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby the Supreme Court held that “as applied to closely held corporations, the HHS regulations imposing the contraceptive mandate violate RFRA.” (The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993).
I support the decision because generally I believe that the PPACA is a hodge-podge, a mess of provisions in an ill-crafted law that frequently result in or leave room for uneven consequences for different groups of people.
On March 26, 2014, in my post, “Obamacare: True Religion and Contraception,” http://conoutofconsumer.blogspot.com/search?q=obama+woman, I wrote, “I don’t believe that such a privately held, for-profit company with 50 or more employees should be eligible for a religious exemption BUT I believe that the Supreme Court will decide that such companies DO get such an exemption on religious grounds to the contraception mandate.”
My reasoning was as follows:
“While the PPACA offers an alternative to complying with its contraceptive mandate, under Section 1513 of the PPACA that amends Section 4980H of the Internal Revenue Code section 4980H, “Shared Responsibility for Employers Regarding Health Coverage,” talks about an “assessable payment” charged to employers who don’t provide Obamacare insurance (extended starting date of 2015). Under the IRC 4980H (c) Definitions and special rules, (2) applicable large employer, (D) application of employer size to assessable penalties, we find the magic word, PENALTIES.
This means that though there is an option available under the PPACA, to opt out of offering health insurance and then pay the ASSESSABLE PAYMENTS, that such payments as defined by the IRC are in fact PENALTIES which would penalize a company taking the OPTION of not offering an Obama plan based on religion eg penalizing religion.”
But for me, religious grounds arguably work against other Obamacare provisions as I noted in that post and therefore picking and choosing what’s objectionable on “religious” grounds was less persuasive to me than the sloppiness of the way the provision was written which clearly indicated the “assessable payment” as a “penalty” which pretty much says that religion is penalized under the Act.
But the Supreme Court’s decision brought up another point that I find typifies my objections to Obamacare in general, its provisions frequently result in uneven treatment for individuals because the law is sloppy.
The Supreme Court noted, “All told, the contraceptive mandate ‘presently’ does not apply to tens of millions of people…This is attributable in large part to grandfathered health plans…[also] the count for employees working for firms that do not have to provide insurance at all because they employ fewer than 50 employees is 34 million workers.” That’s right.
There are already many exemptions for many of the provisions of the law, so what’s one more? Denying one more makes such a denial suspect in a law that already provides many exemptions from an alleged “mandate.” Once exceptions become so common, it becomes more of a question of “Who’s mandated?” rather than “Who’s exempted?” which makes the law appear as if it’s trying to specifically target those who are left in the “mandated” group.
In my post I objected to other ‘free’ preventive services under Obamacare such as the ‘free’ contraceptive sterilization allowed for women but not for men which actually works against both genders since men don’t have the same free option as women and women are incentivized to undertake a more serious procedure than that of sterilizing their male partner because their procedure is provided for free.
For today, I like the Supreme Court’s narrow decision. It should also indicate to consumers that Obamacare is NOT a done deal, just a piece of legislation in desperate need of improvement.
