Hobby Lobby thoughts

[marta_bee]

The gang over at Facebook got me talking about the recent "Hobby Lobby" case, and I promised an explanation of why I disagreed with the decision. Not necessarily as a lawyer; I'm not one, though I play one on TV hang around quite a few and try to listen to what they say. Still, this is less about what the law allows and more about how I think

Comments

[azalaisdep]

There are all sorts of specific points I have seen raised all over the place - including that some of the contraceptives in question are not only prescribed as contraceptives, but for other medical reasons (IUDs, for example, can apparently be prescribed to lighten periods in women whose heavy periods are making them dangerously anaemic, and who might for whatever reason be unsuitable for hormonal treatment for that issue) and that it is entirely inappropriate for an employer to, effectively, seek to interfere in the clinical decision-making of a medical professional with regard to their patient

[marta_bee]

Please understand that I'm saying this as an American-who-understands-how-(some)-Americans-think, not someone who agrees with it. :-) I agree with you, the current system is messed up. (I could use stronger language.) It is inefficient and frustrating and inhumane

[azalaisdep]

Playing Devil's Advocate for a moment, I think that people in favor of Hobby Lobby et al would point out that they aren't saying those employees don't have a right to birth control; what they are denying is that they, the insurance-providers, have an obligation to fund it.And I do, bizarrely, have some sympathy with how it might feel to directly be funding something which you actively believe is harmful. Which goes right back to why healthcare for employees shouldn't be the direct financial responsibility of employers but should be universally funded through taxation. Let's face it, we all pay for things via taxation that we'd rather not (I imagine plenty of American taxpayers would rather not be funding military adventurism in Afghanistan and Iraq, for starters...) but there's a distance to it because we don't actually have the choice to opt out

[fractalwolf]

These days I often find myself wishing that employer-provided insurance no longer existed. That everyone went through the marketplace. Not only would it avoid this sort of issue, it would also improve individual coverage, IMO.

N's a state employee, and so gets state-negotiated insurance. If the state added the cost of the insurance to her paycheck, rather than paying the insurance company directly, she could get vastly better insurance. (This information is based on what COBRA charged me to get the same plan after I got laid off, and on what I have now, for less $$.) So now that ACA is a reality, the state is literally spending more for less than employees could get on their own.

[marta_bee]

I definitely hear you on that one. I can't speak to the economics, but from a freedom perspective I've often thought everyone would be better off if the patient had as few people as possible tied up in paying for their health care - gives the patient the most choice possible, obviously, but also doesn't make third parties like the employers feel like they're subsidizing something they disapprove of. And of course you don't have people tied down to jobs because of a need for healthcare insurance, which I read a study a while back saying that would be good for the economy because it would make entrepreneurship more viable

[ithilwen]

1. We'd all be better off if we ditched our current system in favor of either a government-run single payer system, or a system like Germany's where people purchase their health insurance directly from highly-regulated insurance companies (and the government helps with the costs if you're poor). Alas, I don't see that happening any time soon - but this case shows why it should