Regulators spawned by “Obamacare” have mandated that employer-provided medical insurance plans provide contraception as a benefit.
The problem, as currently reported and debated, is that only churches are exempted — church-run or ‑affiliated hospitals, for example, are not. And so Catholic hospitals, along with other religious-based charitable endeavors, must conform, despite their commitment to age-old ideas about the sanctity of life, which they say contraception and abortifacients, especially (some contraceptive methods are de facto abortion-inducing), abridge.
Many conservatives argue that the mandate thus runs afoul of the First Amendment. But it turns out that many Republican politicians have supported similar mandates in several states.
Mike Huckabee signed one such mandate into law in Arkansas.
No big news that GOP politicians are often just as bad as Democrats, of course. But forget, if you can, the First Amendment angle. The mandate runs afoul of something even more fundamental: common sense.
Adding an umpteenth mandate to the list of regulations government places on contracts amongst employers, employees, and insurance companies hardly passes the smell test. The more benefits that government insists you contract for, the higher your insurance rates. The higher the rates, fewer are those who would willingly buy, thus scuttling the whole point of “health care reform.”
We ostensibly want more people to purchase major medical insurance. Not fewer.
It’s possible that some reformers seek precisely that, to put insurance companies out of business, leaving only government to take up the slack, as a “single payer.”
In the case of Republican reformers, however, is there a hidden agenda or just mere foolishness?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.