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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 134669
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| Posted: 05 July 2014 at 10:37am | IP Logged | 1
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Religions are a lot like current superhero movies. So much to like, and yet far too many "except for" moments. UNlike superhero movies, religions are not meant to be taken as fiction, and so just picking the parts we like is not an option. Which makes for some very lumpy wholes. Jesus tells us God is Love, but also gives us our first clear imagery of Hell. Can Hell exist side by side with a forgiving God?
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Joseph Gauthier
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 11 March 2009
Posts: 1431
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| Posted: 05 July 2014 at 11:10am | IP Logged | 2
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I subscribe to the notion that everyone has something to teach you.
If you truly believe this, I ask you to learn from me the profound difference between doing to, and not doing for. I promise you, it will serve you well (and it will help you to clear up some of the other misconceptions you revealed in your 7:17 AM post).
Here's another practical illustration of the point I've been driving, this time from Hobby Lobby attorney, Lori Windham:
CNN: We heard the demonstrators today saying, “Look, the employers should stay out of our business,” that this decision will now essentially bring the employer into what should be a very private decision-making process between a woman and her doctor, now that the justices ruled that Hobby Lobby no longer has to cover four types of contraception. What do you have to say to the other side? WINDHAM: Hobby Lobby would love to stay out of this, and leave this decision to a woman and her doctor. It’s the federal government that told them that they had to be involved and cover these things, even though they violated the Green family’s faith.
But if we've reached an impasse, I suppose we've reached an impasse. I will, however, ask you the same question I asked Michael Roberts (and this, of course, is an open question to anyone who cares to discuss the matter): How do you feel about the proposal to deregulate prescription birth control drugs to allow for over the counter availability? Would that alleviate your concerns?
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Michael Roberts
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 14911
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| Posted: 05 July 2014 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | 3
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How do you feel about the proposal to deregulate prescription birth control drugs to allow for over the counter availability? Would that alleviate your concerns?
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The proposal is just blowing smoke up people's asses and does nothing to address the issue. It's a disingenuous proposal so that Jindal can say he's for women's health without actually addressing the issue. OTC would still mean that women would be paying out of pocket for something that should be covered by health insurance. Plus it'll just encourage lower income women, who have to choose between a doctor's visit copay or birth control, to forego a doctor's supervision. And it still doesn't address other forms of birth control like IUDs.
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Michael Roberts
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 14911
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| Posted: 05 July 2014 at 1:00pm | IP Logged | 4
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WINDHAM: Hobby Lobby would love to stay out of this, and leave this decision to a woman and her doctor. It’s the federal government that told them that they had to be involved and cover these things, even though they violated the Green family’s faith.
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Please. Hobby Lobby is paying for their employee's health benefit. What it goes toward is only an issue if they make it an issue. Their faith is violated as much as it would be if one of their employees uses her paycheck to pay for an abortion. Which is to say, not at all.
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Brian Floyd
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 07 July 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 8863
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| Posted: 05 July 2014 at 1:16pm | IP Logged | 5
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More Supreme Court
douchebaggery
I honestly can't wait for Scalia and Thomas to retire.
Scalia is an asshole, and as far as Clarence Thomas is
concerned, I believed...and still believe....Anita Hill.
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Jeremy Simington
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 10 April 2011
Location: United States
Posts: 687
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| Posted: 05 July 2014 at 5:01pm | IP Logged | 6
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BRIAN FLOYD: I honestly can't wait for Scalia and Thomas to retire.
The oldest Justice ever was Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was 90, and the average Justice retires at 71 (source). However, I think that Scalia, who is 78, views himself as a holy crusader and will not retire unless he dies or becomes incapacitated. I don't think he has any major health issues. If Hillary Clinton wins in 2016 and serves 2 terms, there is an excellent chance that he will be gone while she's in office. [An even bigger concern is Ruth Ginsberg, who is 81 and has massive health issues.]
Clarence Thomas is 66 and I don't think he has any major health issues. He's a total cipher so who knows whether he'll retire or stay until death/incapacitation. Probably the latter. We're likely stuck with him until at least 2028 or so.
The take-home point is, if you didn't like the Hobby Lobby decision, you should start preparing to vote for Hillary.
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Craig Robinson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 November 2010
Location: United States
Posts: 1756
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| Posted: 06 July 2014 at 9:38am | IP Logged | 7
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How do you feel about the proposal to deregulate prescription birth control drugs to allow for over the counter availability? Would that alleviate your concerns?
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No. Many women have adverse reactions to hormonal birth control and must rely on the much more expensive IUD (which Hobby Lobby somehow conceives as an aborcient). An IUD is about as much an aborcient as my tube socks were from ages 13-18. I'd not see them have to pay for this completely out of pocket.
Hobby Lobby gets a tax break for the money they spend on employee benefits so I'm a little exhausted of the mentality that benefits are some huge favor HL performs under duress.
It's quite simply not an employer's business. As Michael put it better than I, it's no more an employee's business if one of their employees uses their own money to terminate a pregnancy.
The precedent is also unsettling. As RBG described in her dissenting opinion, where does this stop? Can a Jehovah's Witness company owner prevent an employee or employee's child from getting blood transfusions covered? It's patently absurd to me in that in 2014, we are religiousizing medicine and treating women like second class citizens... "no honey," pat pat, "let the men of God make your healthcare decisions for you." If men were denied coverage for vasectomies because of the religious objection of employers, the Supreme Court would be on fire right now.
And even though the Stock Market is doing swell, working class people are still struggling to get by. It's not like a working college student or elderly grandmother working at HL to make ends meet can just quit and easily find another job.
An even better compromise: since Hobby Lobby's mortal soul is so clearly in danger by completely legal activities of free-thinking adult women, they should divert the millions and millions of dollars they make by investing in Plan-B to cover "Jesus Proof" medicines.
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Donald Miller
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 03 February 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 3601
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| Posted: 07 July 2014 at 7:43am | IP Logged | 8
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In response to:
Businesses are not individuals.
Joseph said:
...individuals can not be burdened to forfeit their individual rights simply because they have chosen to organize with other individuals.
However, both SCOTUS decisions (Citizen's United, and Hobby Lobby) remove the individuals right. not every person that makes up a business will or even can have the same stand on religion, or all want to say the same thing. What the are really doing is giving the richest person in the room, a louder voice than the individuals making up the business. That is exactly counter to what you are saying they are defending.
A business is not an individual, nor should it be treated as such.
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Joseph Gauthier
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 11 March 2009
Posts: 1431
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| Posted: 07 July 2014 at 11:05am | IP Logged | 9
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OTC would still mean that women would be paying out of pocket for something that should be covered by health insurance.
I gather from the context of your comments that you're either not aware, or simply forgot to consider that a product's over the counter availability has little bearing on its availability through the prescription market; you can, depending upon your insurance policy, receive insurance coverage for any number of over the counter products from claritin, to prilocec, to the morning after pill. The net affect of this proposal would be to drive down the price of already widely available products, and to offer options to the very narrow group of women who's access to these products is limited. In fact, Jindal is further calling for Congress to adjust legislation in regard to HCAs to allow those accounts to include over the counter products, further expanding the aforementioned options for those women shut out from their policies.
Plus it'll just encourage lower income women, who have to choose between a doctor's visit copay or birth control, to forego a doctor's supervision.
By lower income women, do you mean women on medicaid who receive coverage for their birth control? Or do you mean the slightly less lower income women who receive coverage through obamacare exchange policies which also offer coverage for birth control?
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Joseph Gauthier
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 11 March 2009
Posts: 1431
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| Posted: 07 July 2014 at 11:16am | IP Logged | 10
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However, both SCOTUS decisions (Citizen's United, and Hobby Lobby) remove the individuals right.
You are mistaken. Both decisions address the limits placed upon the state's ability to regulate the individual's rights. Your misguided attempt to conflate government and organizations fails to take into account fact that organizations are voluntary associations.
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Joseph Gauthier
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 11 March 2009
Posts: 1431
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| Posted: 07 July 2014 at 1:04pm | IP Logged | 11
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Can a Jehovah's Witness company owner prevent an employee or employee's child from getting blood transfusions covered?
Who knows? And I mean that sincerely. This is just one of the things the fascists of the 111th Congress and the current executive branch should have considered before forcing this unpopular monstrosity upon an unwilling nation; and I stress unpopular and unwilling not to make a political point, but because it is precisely that the law is those things that ensured the inevitability of legal challenges that could have far reaching consequences. We have, as a statement of fact, gone so far down the rabbit hole of extra-constitutionality in government that any number of laws and regulations that affect our daily life, both positively and negatively, do not carry with them the power of constitutional legality-- but we ignore that fact because we either like those laws, or because we don't dislike them so much so that we're willing to challenge them (we've pretended, for example, for over a hundred years, that the Tenth Amendment doesn't exist). But this particular unpopular law that was forced upon an unwilling nation, despite a year of ubiquitous high profile, passionate and clear protestation, has placed the sweater of extra-constitutional government in the hands countless individuals (the majority of Americans, in fact-- again, not to make a political point) as well as monied interests with standing, who, it should have been foreseen, would begin pulling hard at the threads. Certainly the threads dealing with something as fundamental to the faithful as their religious beliefs should have been foreseen.
But returning to your question, no one knows. Because those threads haven't yet been pulled. But they will be. As Michael pointed out earlier in this discussion, for the purposes of the Hobby Lobby case, the Supreme Court assumed that the government might have a compelling interest in enforcing the birth control mandate. Might. They only assumed that it did for the purposes of this one case, but this question is sure to be litigated in separate cases-- and who knows how long those coattails will be.
Their faith is violated as much as it would be if one of their employees uses her paycheck to pay for an abortion. Which is to say, not at all.
That is not for you to decide. Like the very private decisions that are between a woman and her doctor, this is a very private matter that is between an individual and his faith.
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Michael Roberts
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 14911
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| Posted: 07 July 2014 at 1:06pm | IP Logged | 12
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QUOTE:
| I gather from the context of your comments that you're either not aware, or simply forgot to consider that a product's over the counter availability has little bearing on its availability through the prescription market; you can, depending upon your insurance policy, receive insurance coverage for any number of over the counter products from claritin, to prilocec, to the morning after pill. |
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Nice try. Key words are "depending upon your insurance policy". Insurers /can/ cover OTC products. In reality, most plans don't or make the allowance so small, it's not useful. It's good you bring up allergy medications. When they went OTC, the out of pocket costs became prohibitive for many allergy sufferers, and they had to rely on the prescription versions. OTC might work if there were some mandate requiring insurers to cover OTC, but then we'd be back to "restricting religious freedom" and such.
QUOTE:
| By lower income women, do you mean women on medicaid who receive coverage for their birth control? Or do you mean the slightly less lower income women who receive coverage through obamacare exchange policies which also offer coverage for birth control? |
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I mean women who are currently seeing a doctor and paying $0 copay for birth control, but who would have to choose between one or the other if the drugs go OTC.
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Topic Closed)
