I've pissed off all my FB friends, but fact is, as a vegetarian I DO have ethics that are outside the mainstream, and I would not want to be forced to serve veal or something to my employees. And if the government said I had to, I'd be pissed off.

And sure, there are times I negotiate and compromise on these beliefs, I do have to live in the world after all, but it should be up to me to decide when to make compromises, it shouldn't be forced on me.

This will all be solved when insurances start offering supplemental "Reproductive Health" packages that people can sign up for. We have extras like that here (not reproductive health per so, which is covered, but things like alternative medicine or getting your own room if you need an operation, or travel insurance, you can pay an extra fee per month)

"This will all be solved when insurances start offering supplemental "Reproductive Health" packages that people can sign up for."

Why would anyone be dumb enough to do that when you can buy birth control pills at the Wal Mart pharmacy for five bucks a month?

I think you will find it more likely that a lot of people will just forgo insurance entirely and pay cash.

Since I'm a Christian Scientist, then if I ever own my own business, I won't have to cover anything.

"Since I'm a Christian Scientist, then if I ever own my own business, I won't have to cover anything."

Good.

What is INSANE is protesting the Federal government being limited in how they can mandate employee pay and benefits.

Not serving veal to your meat-eating employees is the same thing. You are forcing YOUR personal beliefs and ethics on others, while disregarding theirs. That's the principle people are objecting to.

You are forcing YOUR personal beliefs and ethics on others, while disregarding theirs. That's the principle people are objecting to.

So, they want to FORCE their beliefs on someone else, and to add insult to injury make them pay for the pleasure?

Irony: you haz it.

"Not serving veal to your meat-eating employees is the same thing. "

No no no. People who want veal are free to go get it somewhere else, at their own expense. Just because Nicole employs them doesn't mean that she is required to cater to their every whim. If Nicole fired them for eating veal, then she would be imposing her beliefs on them, but that's not what we're talking about. Hobby Lobby is not going to fire anyone for getting an abortion.

Now, getting down to brass tacks: The government has created a big mess here. I'm thinking that the Surpremes are starting to realize that they dug themselves into a huge hole with the original Obamacare decision (that the insurance mandate falls within Congress' taxing power). Ruling in favor of the government in this case would have been tantamount to saying that the Constitution imposes no limits whatsoever on the govenrment's power regarding health care, and they obviously didn't want to go there.

So they had to take a stand, even though this is a lousy place to do so. With certain exceptions, it's long been a feature of Amercan law that the practice of a particular religion does not carve out exceptions from the law; in other words, one does not get out of having to comply with a law that others have to comply with simply because one is a Methodist or whatever. But that's pretty much what the Hobby Lobby decision appears to do; by making a claim of religious practice, the Hobby Lobby owners get a pass on a law that at least some others have to comply with.

As the SCOTUS often does, they did try to tailor the decision to make its applicability narrow. But in doing so, I think the just made the mess worse. They limited the scope to "closely held" corporations, but that describes the vast majority of all incorporated entities; corporations that sell stock to the public are a small -- and shrinking -- percentage. Note what has happened here: yet another disincentive for a growing corporation to go public. Not only does this restrict availability of funding to expanding businesses, but it further entrenches the existing well-connected big corporations, the Exxons and McDonaldses of the world that the Obama administration routinely grants waivers to (and I'm not saying a future Republican administration would not do the same). And: public ownership -- the abiliity of the average Joe to buy stock in a corporation and have a voice, however small, in how that corporation is run -- has been a notable economic feature enabling the prosperity of the American middle class. And now it's disapppearing.

Make no mistake: all three branches of government have been complicit in making this mess. Congress created it, the executive branch ran with it, and SCOTUS has enabled it. Now at least one branch is starting to wake up to it, but their options are extremely limited at this point. So they did what little they could do, and thus the Hobby Lobby decision.

I will throw in, though (can you tell I've been thinking about this?) that Mitt Romney's point about this, although poorly stated ("corporations are persons", when they clearly aren't), is essentially correct: one does not forfeit one's Constitutional rights simply by creating or joining an organization. And that goes for any sort of organization, whether it be a labor union, a charity, a softball league, or a corporation.

"Not serving veal to your meat-eating employees is the same thing. You are forcing YOUR personal beliefs and ethics on others, while disregarding theirs."

No I'm not. They're free to go out and buy veal for themselves if they want to. What they aren't free to do is make me buy them veal.

People are confusing following your own beliefs with forcing others to enable you in following them.

The only way I've been able to get any to even slightly look at it differently. Was to say, "Darn in the next Republican administration, they were going to require all companies to buy guns for each employee."
Unlike health insurance, it is actually mentioned in the Constitution.

NicoleK:

But you don't HAVE to buy veal for them! You just check this box, and send $20 to Lenny, and Lenny goes to Guido, and Guido goes to Peter, and Peter goes to Velma, and magically, your employee gets $2 in veal with NO INVOLVEMENT ON YOUR PART!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Unix-Jedi for the thread win! (Is "thread win" a dead meme by now? I can't keep up.)

Here is the way I see it. The ACA was ruled a tax.

And as taxable income your employer should have no say in how you spend your money.

Will Hobby Lobby employees be getting a tax write of in exchange?

Can Hobby Lobby insist that none of the money they pay their employee thru the regular paycheck be spent on birth control?

Why is it Hobby Lobby still pays for vasectomies?

What is to stop an Orthodox Jew from firing every woman in his employ?

What is to stop a muslim from paying his non mulsim employees leds as a dhimmitude tax?

Can a business owner who belongs to a church that feel all taxes are immoral now refuse to pay payroll taxes?

Can anyone who belnogs to that church refuse to pay axes even if they dont own a business?

Do you have to own a business in order to use your religious freedom to demand an exemption from the law?

And what about the non religious? To borrow the vegetarian example. Suppose a business owner while non religious firmly holds beliefs about animal cruelty? Can they now refuse to underwrite bovine based insulin? Drugs that were tested on animals at any stage in their development?

Or do only religious people get exemptions?

And wouldn't that be a violation of the equal protections clause, to only allow exemptions from the law if your fervently held beliefs were based solely on relgion?

And back to the ACA being ruled as a tax, can those of us currently feeling the effects of it sue on equal protections grounds, given the way the government keep unilaterally exempting certain people and businesses from it?

lujip your logic fails on line 2, since you don't spend the money, they do. If they weren't involved or putting any money into it, then they should have no say. But since they are involved and are putting money in, then they have a say.

"Or do only religious people get exemptions?"

I told you it was a mess. I think the Court is realizing they blew it with the ACA tax decision and now feels like they need to lay down a marker somewhere that says "The federal government's authority ends here". And the Hobby Lobby hill was the hill they found themselves on, so that's where they put it. The question about who is now entitled to an exemption is a legitimate one. That said, you can label any set of views a religion. Is the government going to get into the business of deciding which religions are "legitimate"?

There's a further complication. From what I'm reading, much of the majority opinion seems to rely on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, rather than the First Amendment. The obvious problem is that the RFRA is only statute law, and at that, it's one with some sections of dubious constitutionality. What happens to the Hobby Lobby decision if the RFRA is subsequently found unconstitutional, or if a future Congress decides to repeal it?

I'm about to get over my head with my meager knowledge of law... hoping Isab will chime in here.

Hobby Lobby is owned and run by a religious family. The other party in the suit was Conestoga Wood Specialties. They are owned and run by a Mennonite family.

They both objected to having to pay for abortions and aborfacient drugs such as the Morning After pills. They don't object to contraceptive pills.

If their employees go out and spend the money they earned on the drugs or an abortion it is their choice. The just don't want to pay for it directly.

It is similar to NicoleK's example. The company is having a carry-in and everyone is expected to contribute food. But assigning Nicole (the vegetarian) a requirement to bring in Swedish meatballs is not acceptable. But if she can bring in pita's and hummus that is perfectly fine.

That is essentially what this ruling did. It exempt the company from paying for something that they object to.

Obamacare forces you to have reproductive coverage, whether you are reproductive or not.

But, but, but... Equality!

Make no mistake: all three branches of government have been complicit in making this mess. Congress created it, the executive branch ran with it, and SCOTUS has enabled it.

They both objected to having to pay for abortions and aborfacient drugs such as the Morning After pills. They don't object to contraceptive pills.

Yup. There are two types of contraceptives that Hobby Lobby and Conestoga don't cover: 1) "Morning-after" pills and 2) IUDs, because both either potentially or definitely interfere with the implantation of fertilized eggs and/or cause any embryos that have implanted to un-implant. They cover essentially every other form of birth control approved by the FDA, including birth control pills.

Now, this means they don't cover the Mirena, supposed to be one of the most effective reversible contraceptives out there, but pretending that these companies refuse to cover anything that prevents women from getting pregnant is erroneous. (Not to mention the fact that nothing prevents people from paying for these items out of their own pockets. To be fair, an IUD typically costs several hundred dollars up front if paid out of pocket, but Plan B et al is about $35-$60.)

If you don't like the corporation arguement there are still sole owners - I deal with a local one here. One lady owns the store and then has 6-7 employees. Would a business owner like that lose their rights simple for owning a business? If not, would a partnership? At what point?

The mistake was allowing the program to begin with... now we are seeing the problems. Why can the government force the business to do something unrelated to the business? That was the major break from the past...which caused this one.

Joe j, health care is salary. Its value is remuneration for the work the employee provides. The employer should have no say in how the employee chooses to use it

lujlp nope it is not salary, it is benefits, which employers always have some say over. Just like 401k, vacation time, sick leave, disability ins. and other benefits.

Joe j, health care is salary. Its value is remuneration for the work the employee provides. The employer should have no say in how the employee chooses to use it

You mean that my employer should have been required to cover my IVF? After all, that was how I chose to use my health-care dollars a few years ago. Hot damn! I'll go tell my husband. That's about $40,000 we're due back! And I thought I only got some babies out of the deal. Sweet!

Lets say my employer is a Scientologist and doesn't believe in anti-psychotics.

I need my crazy pills, and if I skip one dose I'm sent to the ER hallucinating within 24 to 48 hours, any longer without them and my stay is permanent for a month.

I can't buy these outta pocket (they cost like $1200 a month).

I can't afford private insurance and before Obamacare when it was affordable I was denied (being crazy and all).

I can't get them for free from the manufacturer because I earn too much.

Can my employer deny me my crazy pills?

"Can my employer deny me my crazy pills?"

In a limited reading of this ruling, which is that it only applies to denying access to certain birth control measures that women can use that are opposed by some radical Christians (despite science saying they are wrong about these birth control measures being abortifacient), the answer is no.

In the spirit of this reading, which is that a corporation may deny people any health care coverage that its leadership feels icky about (the majority was weak about the whole closely-held bit) regardless of what science says, I'd strongly discourage you for working for Scientologists. Though I'd do that anyway. They suck.

lujlp nope it is not salary, it is benefits, which employers always have some say over. Just like 401k, vacation time, sick leave, disability ins. and other benefits."

But health insurance is government enforced benefits. No employer is required to offer vacation time or disability. And they can't legally tell me I can't go on a gay cruise during vacation or what constitutes a disability (only my doc can).

Plus they take money out of my paycheck every month for my health insurance too! Why do they get more of a say than me?

Look I would agree with this decision IF I had a free market option for healthcare. But I don't, so fuck them and their religion.

[Cousin Dave:] … one does not forfeit one's Constitutional rights simply by creating or joining an organization. And that goes for any sort of organization, whether it be a labor union, a charity, a softball league, or a corporation.

Which is pretty much exactly the reasoning behind Citizens United.

Lefties love to invert the actual reasoning of the decision, and are blind to their own "reasoning".

Okay, fine. Corporations do not have any fundamental rights; after all, corporations are merely legal entities. That means all that government has to do to extinguish inalienable rights is to sufficiently broaden the definition of a corporation.

To lefties, that is a feature, not a bug.

despite science saying they are wrong about these birth control measures being abortifacient

IUDs most certainly prevent newly formed embryos from implanting into the uterus. That's well-established. Now, you may not consider this equal to an abortion per se, and that's not the only way that an IUD acts to prevent pregnancy, but I don't think it's a shocking leap to equate "prevents embryo with the potential to grow into an independent human being from continuing its existence" with "abortion." I will grant you your point on the morning-after pill/Plan B/etc., though I will point out that that is a relatively recent conclusion.

"Plus they take money out of my paycheck every month for my health insurance too! Why do they get more of a say than me?"

Well, good question. Insurance is different because the cost is not really predictable -- it depends on how much care, and what type, the person uses. It's not like vacation pay, where you get a fixed amount each year. And insurance has to be renewed each year; the insurer can demand renegotiatoin of the terms, or just drop the company. So it changes anyway. The insurance where I work has gotten much worse over the past two years -- deductables and out-of-pocket limits went way up, and many prescription drugs were dropped from coverage. (I'm now paying $400/month for a prescription that was $75/month two years ago. Plus the paperwork hassle has gone way up, so I'm also having to pay the doctor's office extra fees for that.)

Tha answer, as we've often stated here, is that health insurance needs to be uncoupled from employment. This was starting to happen a few years ago, buying co-ops were forming to give people an alternative. But the ACA banned those.

Perusing Facebook last night was interesting. Several female acquaintances who are normally pretty rational have completely lost their shit over this Hobby Lobby thing. One wrote last night that she was "terrified", "women are being sent back to the Stone Age", and "I don't know if it's safe for me to go to work tomorrow". There's also the widespread incorrect report that Hobby Lobby bans its female employees from using any form of birth control.

Look, here's the main thing:

Hobby Lobby isn't denying ANYone contraceptives, it just doesn't want to pay for the "morning after" pill. Which, technically, it should, because, prescription? Covered by health insurance. Because they don't want to cover that for "religious reason" is what the bru-ha-ha is all about.

But think about it. Health insurance as a benefit started during WWII because the government limited what employers could pay (an interference which benefited neither employers nor employees, but that's a different conversation). Health insurance benefits were in lieu of that extra pay that was meant to attract the best and brightest.

But how about employers stop with the insurance and just pay more? Which is what Amy has been advocating all along.

But how about employers stop with the insurance and just pay more? Which is what Amy has been advocating all along.

Posted by: Flynne at July 2, 2014 6:13 AM

Because the tax laws are structured so that business can write off the costs of providing health insurance, and employees can exclude those benefits from their taxable income?

If the government really wanted to disconnect insurance from employment, they would have started with the tax laws, but the lobbyists to for the status quo were out in full force in this one.

So what we got was a bigger mess, a system with all the problems of the one five years ago, plus several more.

Obamacare is in a death spiral, as is medicare, and medicaid.

"Plus they take money out of my paycheck every month for my health insurance too! Why do they get more of a say than me?"

They get some say, because they pay too. If you want to work there those are their terms.
Don't like them: don't work there.

The converse is why does the gov't get more of a say since they don't pay any.

If you don't like the plan you are perfectly free to quit. Just as you are if they decided to cut salary, or vacation time, which they are allowed to do.

I loathe that argument "if you don't like it quit."

I can quit and have because I'm a single woman who has no children, but there are more than enough people in this world who can't leave their jobs. Even when their salaries are slashed, sick pay removed they can't quit.

And I need to make a disclaimer because I know how people twist my words. I don't believe the government should force any employer to fix salaries and pay. But don't tell people they can just quit because chances are in this economy they can't.

(Also the government gets a say because they are resolving a dispute between two parties)

"e are more than enough people in this world who can't leave their jobs. "
I loath that argument.
Because it denotes slavery, both of the employee, since they have "no choice" and of the employer, since they have no choice, cant fire, change wages/benifits, effective slavery. Which is not happening.
And it places full responsibility for other peoples lives fully on an employer, where it should never rest. They agreed freely to work there for X pay, they can leave or be fired.

Since when is the right to dictate the terms of another person's healthcare insurance one that any individual can claim they are being forced to "leave at the office door" by forming a corporation?

"Can my employer deny me my crazy pills?"

Your government sure as hell can.

And that's the reason it is INSANE to clamor for government mandates in pay and benefits!

If you do not pay, you are not a customer. You are a commodity.