What is Mitch McConnell's problem with contraception?
As far as the White House is concerned, Friday's compromise on contraception coverage effectively ends the matter. Religiously affiliated institutions won't be required to pay for birth control, but women who work for these employers will still have access to the same preventive care as everyone else. As Tricia noted earlier, the West Wing doesn't see anything else to talk about.
Congressional Republicans strongly disagree. Indeed, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) raised quite a few eyebrows yesterday when he endorsed a controversial proposal to allow all American employers to deny women contraception coverage altogether.
"You know if we end up having to try to overcome the President's opposition by legislation, of course, I'd be happy to support it and intend to support it. It would be difficult as long as the President is rigid in his view that he gets to decide what somebody else's religion is. I assume he would veto it. But yeah, we will be voting on that in the Senate. And you can anticipate that that would happen as soon as possible."
Even McConnell couldn't believe the president wants to "decide what somebody else's religion is." It's such a strikingly dumb comment, chances are, the senator just got carried away in the moment.
But the larger concern has nothing to do with rhetoric, and everything to do with the GOP's increasingly-aggressive war on contraception. McConnell told CBS's Bob Schieffer, "The fact that the White House thinks this is about contraception is the whole problem. This is about freedom of religion."
At this point in the debate, that's just absurd.
As of Friday, Sens. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) were pushing measures to allow all private-sector employers, including those completely unaffiliated with any religious institution, to start denying health services that businesses might find morally objectionable.
The proposals are aimed at blocking access to contraception, but as Igor Volsky noted, they're so expansive, "an insurer or an employer would be able to claim a moral or religious objection to covering HIV/AIDS screenings, Type 2 Diabetes treatments, cancer tests or anything else they deem inappropriate or the result of an 'unhealthy' or 'immoral' lifestyle. Similarly, a health plan could refuse to cover mental health care on the grounds that the plan believes that psychiatric problems should be treated with prayer."
The Obama administration's underlying goal is entirely straightforward: the law already makes preventive care free for all Americans, and officials believe access to contraception must be included as part of this coverage. If faith-based employers don't want to pay for this directly, the White House has already changed the policy to ensure they won't have to.
The Republicans' underlying goal, at least of yesterday, is equally clear: no American employer should have to cover contraception, ever.
As Jonathan Cohn explained, this is simply untenable.
The Bishops' position, which the Republicans have now adopted as their own, is that religious leaders have the right to override that decision, even though it will affect employees who have no moral or religious qualms about birth control. Writing in Newsweek, Andrew Sullivan captured the Bishops' thinking perfectly: "Catholic doctrine should, according to the bishops' spokesman, also apply to non-Catholics." [...]
[T]he principle seems pretty clear to me. The Bishops want a veto over public policy. And the Republicans want to give it to them.
The "it's about religious liberty" talking point effectively died on Friday. The longer the GOP keeps up this fight, the more obvious the party's war on contraception will be. Given the support contraception access enjoys with the American mainstream, it's a fight Republicans are very likely to lose.
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This right-wing trend against birth control is going to backfire on these guys. Yes, there are those waaaay far right religious folks who have 19 kids, but the vast majority of those even on the far right want only two or three children. Men and women both. I've never heard a man say, "You know, I really don't care how many children my wife has. Fifteen, twenty, what is it to me?" Heck no. Almost all people--men and women--want to limit the number of children the have. The right wing is appealing right now to a fringe element. If they ever get any real traction and start to infringe on access to contraception in a way that impacts the average person (who pays little attention to this issue on a daily basis), there will be an uprising like we have never seen before.
The Democrats need to beat them over the head with this. What they are arguing is that SHARIA LAW SHOULD OVERRIDE OUR LAWS! They are not saying only some religious beliefs right? Make them argue that Muslims should have special exemptions from our laws or make it clear that is whatr they are asking for and throw thier own "Slippery Slope" nonsense in thier face.
Sharia Law and/or Canon Law. Canon Law is the legal code of the Catholic Church.
Maybe in Texas they should allow criminals on death row to claim benefit of clergy if they can recite a phrase in Latin.
Should employers affiliated with the Jehovah's Witnesses be entitled to forbid their insurance providers from facilitating life-saving blood transfusions?
Insurance is about low probability but high impact events. We band together and pool these risks (and we can of course do this privately or as a society as a whole) and thus all pay a little bit to cover the risks that we might be the victim of that high cost event.
Assurance is something very different. It’s essentially a way of paying for high likelihood events: it may well be tax privileged, may be deliberately set up to nudge us into doing it, but it’s really a method of saving for expenses, not a method of insurance.
Birth control is clearly assurance, not insurance.
But hey: don't let little things like FACTS get in the way of your argument
And prenatal, obstetric, and postnatal care are much more expensive than birth control. Why do you hate capitalism?
If insurance is about "low probability but high impact events" it should cover only things like injuries from auto accidents and strokes in young people. Health insurance as we know it covers all kinds of things that are VERY likely to happen--strep throat, the flu, issues that come with aging. It also covers preventative care like well-child visits, annual exams, dental check-ups and so on.
I think you misunderstand Mark's argument. His point is that birth control is necessary in order to avoid the highly likely event. Insurance, on the other hand, is to avoid low likely events, but events that will have a lot of cost associated to them should you incur them. He's saying you need insurance to ward against cancer: this is because while you are unlikely to be diagnosed w/ cancer, should you be diagnosed w/ it you will not be able to treat it because of the costs and therefore will fall victim to it. Insurance protects people from this highly risky likelihood. Birth control, on the other hand, is something that you know w/o the absence of will cause pregnancy. It's not something you "insure" against in the sense that you aren't trying to ward off a hypothetical that may happen. It's something you take in order to prevent the possibility of pregnancy, which will happen 99% of the time w/o it. Although I'll meet you half way and say I'm not sure whether Mark is advocating for or against health insurance policies covering birth control?
That's true of catastrophic insurance. Health insurance is simply not longer just catastrophic insurance. Health insurance is an investment in one of American business' strongest attributes: Productivity.
Pretty sure it's against. He is technically correct but the definition of "insurance" and how how health insurance works in this country aren't the same. I have to conclude he's playing semantics to suggest health insurance shouldn't be used to pay for preventative health care such as birth control.
Ah maybe you're right MT. I just don't know if it's always fair to jump to that conclusion...my secret hope in posting that, I'll be honest now, was that he'd clarify so we'd both know. You know...cause usually when I call the trolls out they can't help but defend themselves so I thought why not? ;-) Hope you can understand my friend
Of course. I do tend to be less willing to give the benefit of the doubt than you. |=)
This is an excellent example of why healthcare should not be left in the nosy private sector where it is subject to the individual beliefs and prejudices of employers. What healthcare people want and need is no one's business, especially employers who already feel they have the right to investigate your entire private life before hiring you for the lowliest of jobs.
This is all about finding new ways to NOT pay for healthcare - and it won't stop with contraception.
On Meet the Press on Sunday morning, Rich Santorum, after pressure from David Gregory, said he DID believe women should be able to get contraception as long as he and the Catholic church didn't have to pay for it. Since Catholics believe life begins at conception and therefore there is essentially no difference between birth control and abortion, does that mean he now believes women should have a right to an abortion as long as he and the Catholic church doesn't have to pay for it?
Personally, I think this is just a conservative strategy to keep the President on the defense instead of talking about the actual issues in this country, i.e., why is Mitt Romeny and his ilk only paying 13.7% taxes while the middle class is paying more than twice that!
So are they trying to get employers to discriminate against women, because if they can't have access to contraception, they might then get pregnant, and the employer wouldn't want THAT?
I hope and pray that we Dems get out in huge numbers and vote!! Vote for every democrat on the ballot...these far right wing idiot illogical crap that is spewing out of our Congress is amazing, and McConnell is the spewmaster general of the senate. Please replace all of the rightwingers coming up for reelection, and vote to keep the dems....we need to give Obama a real moral majority so he can get us back even faster than he is now with all the obstruction and wrong headedness going on now...just imagine the good that we can do when we focus on the issues instead of legislating women's bodies! The teaparty congress started in on that last January, and they haven't let up yet!!!!
The hypocracy of covering erectile dysfunction drugs for controlling old men and yet refusing a woman her right to protect herself??? Really??? I am outraged!!!
I generally respect the opinions of others but this is such a blatant effort to give more control to the Catholic church and to further fight against women's rights. As far as the NRA goes, I wish someone would propose a gun control law instead of giving guns to criminals. This seems to be a subject that the democrats do not want to tackle.
Allowing religious "law" to claim precedence over U.S. laws leaves the door wide open for Sharia law to also claim precedence. Republicans have been vociferous opponents of allowing Sharia law anywhere in the U.S. I think legislation should be introduced which allows Sharia to also take priority over U.S. laws in order to hear Republicans turn themselves into pretzels trying to argue against it after their furious support of Catholic religious waivers.
I also think we need to come up with some legal case in which men have been forced into unwanted medical procedures, just to hear them argue how that violates men's right to personal agency. I'd love to get some of that argument on tape.
I think the devil is waiting for Mitch to show up for their date. You don't have a vagina Mitch!
This has nothing to do with women or religion. From the GOP view it is about keeping poor poor. If the poor can't get BC, then they will have babies they can't pay for. Their lack of self discipline will cause finger wagging and cutting of other support. The rich or well to do will never have a problem getting BC. From the Catholic view, more Catholic babies means more Catholics. This was important in the past as a way to keep the religion alive and now is a hanger-on. The only biblical reference is God killing Onan for "spilling his seed" instead of getting his sister-in-law pregnant. According to this logic, "person-hood" starts in the scrotum.
I wonder this too sometimes, although it's so conspiratorial. I'd rather be fair to the GOP and acknowledge that it's about life in their view point. Then I'd rather walk their hand through it and explain to them why this is contradictory to their other views and why it's better for society to have birth control and legal access to abortions than the alternative. But sometimes I do wonder if they just don't want poor people to remain poor which will make more people stay on welfare which will further increase the debt and deficit which will further support their belief that we must end welfare.
They got their rope with the Catholic anti-contraception stance now they'll hang themselves with it with this 'employers should be able to choose what to cover' psychobabble.
Is it not a contradiction in terms by saying: "...the law already makes preventive care FREE for all Americans" and "...faith-based employers don't want to PAY for this directly...???" It is a small matter, but it changes the entire argument.
Let's all be honest here: some faith-based employers may not want to PROVIDE a contraception benefit. The Obama Compromise says that they don't have to, but that the insurance company cannot charge an individual if they decide that they want the benefit added to their policy, as per the law.
Every political pundit from Rachel Maddow to Sean Hannity has discussed the financial effect on the insurance company, yet there should not be any effect whatsoever if the law already makes preventative care free, right?
Maybe more emphasis needs to be placed on the past discriminatory practices of the insurance industry concerning women's rights to family planning (the reason contraception was placed in the "free preventative care" slot in the first place) rather than putting a dollar amount on what it "might" cost to let an individual opt into a benefit that is considered to be free in any other plan.
Nothing is "free." If preventive care is free to the individual, that means someone else is paying for it. If we have employer provided health insurance, the employer pays the insurance company to pay for it. If we have national health insurance, the tax payers pay for it. If there is no public or private health insurance, the individual has to pay for it. If the insurance company has to pay for a service whether contraception of anything else, the company has to get the money from some other policyholders or from its stockholders. If none of the above pays for health services of any sort, the service will not be available or the providers will have to offer it as a charity. In the end someone has to pay.
"Nothing is "free.""
Agreed, but the contraception benefit is encapsulated in a preventative care package. How do you parse out the "cost" of this benefit in a premium when it is outlined in law? The President said nothing about insurance companies having to discount faith-based employers for not providing the benefit; he merely said that the individual will not have to pay a higher premium if the individual chooses to add that benefit to a preventative care package. Additionally, providing contraception under a wellness package is- at minimum- a revenue neutral, or, in most cases, a revenue positive benefit compared to providing healthcare for pregnancy. The cost is a moot point, but it's a wonderful rhetorical talking point for conservative grandstanding.
and why are they so adiment about this ,just something to create a fuss about and make some think Obama is fighting a religious war? hell hes the only person in DC who is trying to keep the Constitution sacred,,,,maby he should create a big stink and demand the Insurance companies not pay for VIAGRA bet Mcconnel the other cry baby wouyld get his dander up then
I realized something this morning. This isn't about Republican opposition to birth control. They know that if the Republican Party seriously came out and said, "we want to ban birth control", they'd instantly rival the Whigs for political relevance. Most American Catholics are in favor of birth control, and conservative generally don't object to it (as long as it's between a married man and woman.)
What this really about is creating a perception that Obama hates Christians (or at least "real" Christians, by the Right's definition of "real") and is waging a war on religious liberty. Fears of "Sharia Law", a "War on Christmas", it's all the same thing -- an attempt to portray the Left in general, and Obama in particular, as coming for good right-thinking Bible-believing Christians.
Brilliant and perceptive comment. Thanks for that insight.
Ding ding ding! Obama is secretly a Kenyan Muslim and therefore foreign and not really our POTUS. The black helicopters are coming!
Hysteria meet your GOP representative >.<
Er referring to McConnell as the hysteria representative, not you MarylandBear
And isn't the Pope a foreign born head of a foreign state? He was born in Germany under Hitler. Maybe he is a closet Nazi.
The Pope was a Hitler Youth, but there is no evidence that he showed any enthusiasm for Nazism. He later served in the military of Nazi Germany, but again there is no evidence that he was in any way supportive of the Nazi regime. Even-handed appraisals of Ratzinger peg him as not distinguished in either way, not as a Nazi supporter, nor as someone who exhibited any great resistance to Nazism either.
If you want to throw what mean people consider a nasty word at the Pope, like that, then call him a Marxist. That cuts much closer to the bone.
Let’s take a look at the president’s semantics of late. In no accidental turn of phrase, he called his change regarding contraception “an accommodation” for those who have moral objections. Why didn’t he call it “a compromise,” which is what it supposedly is? I suspect the reason has to do with the president’s great-pyramid-of-Giza-sized ego. An accommodation is something handed out beneficently to those who have a problem. We accommodate people in wheelchairs on public transportation, we accommodate people with food allergies or religious needs by providing alternative meals.
Turdbusta
Per the dictionary in my Mac
Accommodation
2) A convenient arrangement; a settlement or compromise: management was seeking an accommodation with labor.
Their logic: "Corporations are people" and therefore they should have "religious freedom." But the premise isn't true, corporations are not people and they are not entitled to practice their religion, especially by forcing their religious practices on people.
Athens is ablaze; the Euro a fragile disaster; HAARP is burning holes in the Ionosphere; Chemtrails are poisoning our lands, waters, and precious soil; we are still engaged in one war and are preparing to engage in another ... but THIS is what our nation's congress thinks is important: BIRTH CONTROL.
What the HELL is wrong with our nation? We have some SERIOUS work to do and our nation is dealing with conservative religious (or so they say, if not pander to) republicans who seem to think the most important topic of the day is what a woman does with her reproductive organs.
Not unemployment, not our ever failing infrastructure, not rising costs of education for our children, not health care, not safe food or safe water ... not anything that would appear to be of real importance.
The argument is couched in religious ethos and terms by our politicians, even when those who actually PRACTICE their religion want, use, and depend on birth control to give them a measure of control over their lives.
In the material presented here, what stuck in my mind the most was this quote relating to why religious institutions (in this case the Catholic Church) have the right to enforce policy even on non-believers who may work for them as secretaries, janitors, office personnel, whatever ...
Writing in Newsweek, Andrew Sullivan captured the Bishops' thinking perfectly: "Catholic doctrine should, according to the bishops' spokesman, also apply to non-Catholics."
Nice ...
Perhaps we should have the church and the pope reapportion the world again among the reigning powers to see who gets what?
With so much going on, do we really have time for a discussion on contraception?
People overseas must be baffled by the insane behavior of Americans. What must it be like to hear about a country bristling with nuclear weapons that has an ascendant far-right hyper-religious fringe with apocalyptic visions?
I suspect that the world will eventually have to form an international agency whose sole purpose is to "confront, contain, and control" the dangerous rogue nation of America. Then it really will be "us" against "them".
please don't confuse the American people with the Republican party- they are the ones talking about this nonsense. If you read just the comments here it is quite clear most Americans find this to be a huge distraction.
I think we should look to the Ancient Greeks to make our point. Lets apply the lesson of Lysistrata and instead of ending a war, we use it to end the war on womens health.
No.
For republican and independent men - when it comes to what these republicans are wanting to do, having to do with birth control, I'd say to the men - do you want a lot of children, or do you want a lot less sex, or do you want to be spending a lot more on birth control for your wife? Without insurance it is NOT cheap. (unmarrieds, you're stuck with the first 2 options).
Wow! And I thought the Republican's version of Sharia Law would start creeping into our courts over time. Wrong. It's being fast-tracked and already upon us. What's next, manditory chasity-belts for women who display their nude ankles in public? Be careful who you vote for this November. Be very careful.
It sounds as if republicans are against the very idea of laws that everyone has to follow. How can this lead to a better society?
There has been discussion of no birth control in the southern states for quite a while--the same amount of time that the male Republican members of Congress have been fretting over the numbers that show Caucasians will be in the minority in a few years. So, it is also shown that Caucasians are having less babies than Hispanics and Afro-Americans so the answer is to have more Caucasians have more babies--hence a no birth control law--Senator McConnell thinks we can't figure this out??