Breaking: Obama Admin Offers Hobby Lobby Workaround On Birth Control

[DonViejo]

By SAHIL KAPUR Published AUGUST 22, 2014, 1:21 PM EDT

Updated: 2:00 PM

The Obama administration rolled out a plan on Friday to protect access to copay-free birth control for women in response to the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby ruling.

A new "proposed rule" by the Department of Health and Human Services lets female employees of for-profit businesses, like Hobby Lobby, obtain birth control directly from their insurer, at no extra cost, if their boss opts out of covering the service in the company's insurance plan for religious reasons.

The move extends an accommodation that already exists for non-profit organizations, which are allowed to refuse to cover for birth control. In short, the religious owners can pass the cost on to the insurer so that they're no longer complicit in what they view as sin.

"Women across the country deserve access to recommended preventive services that are important to their health, no matter where they work,” said HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell. "Today's announcement reinforces our commitment to providing women with access to coverage for contraception, while respecting religious considerations raised by non-profit organizations and closely held for-profit companies."

The Supreme Court ruled in June that owners of closely held for-profit corporations cannot be required, under Obamacare, to cover emergency contraception like Plan B, Ella and two types of IUDs if it violates their sincerely-held religious belief. The HHS move is a workaround to that ruling.

more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/obama-admin-hobby-lobby-workaround-birth-control

[unblock]

1. people think of religious principles as something on sacrifices for the sake of.

hobby lobby profits from their "religious" "principles".

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

2. It will be good that the women can get birth control, but I still think exempting corporations

for religious beliefs is BS.

[Yo_Mama]

4. Corporations weren't exempted for religious belief.

That decision is pretty narrow. It says that in cases where the owners are individual and share beliefs, it is they who are being burdened.

GE doesn't have a religious belief. Publicly held companies don't have religious belies - the owners will surely have diverse beliefs.

Small closely held corporations cannot be separated from their owners. If their owners have religious beliefs, the owners have the right to the same accommodation that a group of nuns gets.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

6. Oh please. It's the same damn thing. If the owners claim they subscibe to a religion that says

blacks and whites shouldn't mix, then can that closely held corporation refuse to allow blacks into the store? No? Why not?

If a closely held corporation's owners have a religious belief that homosexuality is sinful, may the corporation legally hire and fire based on sexual orientation?

[Yo_Mama]

7. No, religion doesn't justify something that's a crime - but this is a different matter.

Under ACA, no business has to provide insurance to their employees at all. If they CHOOSE to do so, the regulations (not the law) made it mandatory to provide coverage for contraceptive methods that millions of people in this country believe are murderous.

It doesn't matter that you don't agree with them.

And no, it's not the same thing. A corporation can be owned by one person.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

9. It doesn't matter that you disagree with me.

[Hippo_Tron]

15. So should Christian Scientists get to offer plans that doesn't cover blood transfusions?

Or do we only make accommodations for "sincerely held religious beliefs" that involve controlling women's sexuality.

[nomorenomore08]

17. ...

[politicat]

22. JWs are no blood. CS is no medicine at all.

But your point stands.

[theHandpuppet]

23. 90% of businesses qualify as "closely held"

Please don't make excuses for this oppressive crap by disseminating bogus information. "Closely held" corporations have been explained before, right here on DU. I can't believe we're still debating just how important and expansive these decisions are.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/11384177

The Wall Street Journal
Hobby Lobby Ruling Raises Question: What Does 'Closely Held' Mean?
By Stephanie Armour and Rachel Feintzeig
June 30, 2014

Their success may rest on the type of company they are and state corporate laws that can vary.

The three firms in the lawsuit—Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. and Mardel—all have the same business structure: they are owned and controlled by members of a single family.

But closely held firms can take other ownership forms. The Internal Revenue Service defines a closely held company as a corporation that has more than 50% of the value of its outstanding stock directly or indirectly owned by five or fewer individuals at any time during the last half of the tax year. It also cannot be a personal-service corporation.

Closely held companies are owned by a relatively small number of investors, typically including their founding families and management. Roughly 90% of all companies in the U.S. are closely held, according to a 2000 study by the Copenhagen Business School....

MORE at http://online.wsj.com/articles/hobby-lobby-ruling-begs-question-what-does-closely-held-mean-1404154577

[Proud Liberal Dem]

5. I agree

What country do we live in again? Sometimes I wonder. The line between Church and State has gotten so blurry that it doesn't exist. It's amazing that people can now make arguments that years ago would've been laughed out of court. Now, our current SCOTUS is putting its own seal of approval on it.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

8. And you have politicians opening claiming that the founders did not intend to seperate church

and state. I was going to link to some such claims, but I got to feeling like your smilie. .

[Proud Liberal Dem]

10. I feel like having studied the non-right-wing revised history growing up

having the church and state separate was sort of the whole point of our founders' vision for our democracy.....er.....Republic. If it was meant to be otherwise, our Constitution would probably look more like Iran's or Saudi Arabia's.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

14. I like this simple statement about it:

A whopping 67% of the American people agree that the First Amendment “requires a clear separation of church and state,” according to the 2011 State of the First Amendment survey released July 12 by the First Amendment Center.

This is somewhat surprising given the decades-old culture-war fight over the meaning and scope of separation.

For decades now, Christian-nation advocates have tried to convince Americans that “separation of church and state isn’t in the First Amendment.” They have peddled a revisionist account of a “Christian America” that should (at best) tolerate other faiths to reside here.

Apparently, the American people aren’t buying the propaganda.

It’s true that the actual words “separation of church and state” aren’t in the Constitution. But as the majority of Americans understand, the principle of separation clearly is.

The establishment clause of the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”) prohibits government entanglement with religion — a principle of religious freedom described by Roger Williams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison as “separation of church and state.”

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/surprising-support-for-separating-church-from-state

Though, 67% isn't as "whopping" as it ought to be, it's pretty good.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

18. That's a relief

Still, I feel like it has become accepted as common practice that lawmakers are able to routinely (and unquestioningly in most cases, esp. in Republican-dominated states) sponsor, vote on, and pass legislation clearly influenced by the personal religious beliefs of the lawmakers (i.e. same-sex marriage, abortion rights) and not based on non-religious secular reasons. To me, legislating on such areas- absent any evidence of secular reasoning- should be unconstituional to begin with but it has been challenged very little and not as often as it should IMHO be.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

21. Agreed. I mean, we wouldn't want those nasty atheists causing trouble by speaking out against

that sort of thing.

Or, running for office to eliminate it. Apparently, some members of that 67% of Americans who believe in the separation of Church and State wouldn't vote for an atheist.

While 35 percent of respondents said they would be less likely to support a presidential candidate who had an extramarital affair, 53 percent of Americans indicated that not believing in God -- the trait viewed most negatively of the 16 tested -- would make them unsupportive of a candidate.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/19/presidential-poll-atheists_n_5353524.html

[Yo_Mama]

3. That's pretty much what the SC suggested.

No big change at all.

[mythology]

24. Except the same Supreme Court issued a stay

for a college that said even telling the insurance company that they wouldn't be providing insurance for birth control would violate their rights. So the available evidence suggests that the Supreme Court in fact won't be satisfied with just making life more difficult for women trying to get health care.

[joeybee12]

11. Anyone wanna bet they sue again...

Fundies don't want women to have birth control AT ALL...they'll come up with some sh*t to oppose this.

[TlalocW]

12. Yeah, I'm wondering how they're going to move against this

Other than tying it to Obamacare and saying he's overstepping his authority again, some of the "religious" companies are going to be upset that even if they don't have to offer things they don't like, they're still going to be upset that their employees (FEMALE employees) are getting medications they don't approve of, and that's... just... not... RIGHT! *boohoohoo*

TlalocW

[joeybee12]

13. They might find out that some of their employees are using and therefore sinners

and they are being discriminated against...makes no sense, but the SCOTUS decision makes no sense to begin with.

[Cha]

16. Wow.. thanks Obama! What the heck you up to now making it easier for equal rights for Women!!?

http://theobamadiary.com/2014/08/22/access-to-birth-control-obamacare-guarantees-that/

Mahalo Don

[Heidi]

19. Kick!

[Zorra]

20. Religous conservatives will be enraged. This takes away the new weapon they use to control women.

Bwaaahaahaa! Pretty darn awesome clever move, Mr. President.

Bravo!