Publication date: 02/10/2012 by the National Catholic Register by Jimmy Akin
Attention, Catholics, Protestants, and everyone who cares about the causes of life, religious freedom, and freedom of conscience! Do not be suckered by the “accommodation” announced today by President Obama and spokeswoman Kathleen Sebelius! Under the guise of making room for religious conscience, the President has actually made the policy worse—far worse.
Here’s how . . .
The new policy mandates that insurance companies offer free sterilization, contraception, and abortion-causing drugs as part of their policies. According to President Obama himself:
Under the rule, women will still have access to free preventive care that includes contraceptive services — no matter where they work. So that core principle remains. But if a woman’s employer is a charity or a hospital that has a religious objection to providing contraceptive services as part of their health plan, the insurance company — not the hospital, not the charity — will be required to reach out and offer the woman contraceptive care free of charge, without co-pays and without hassles.
Got that? That’s worse than before. Under the previous evil policy if you worked for an exempt organization—say, a church—then your employer could offer you an insurance plan that did not include sterilization, contraception, and abortion drugs.
Now there will be no such plans. Remember that “If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it” promise? It was a lie then, but it’s even more of a lie now. Whether you like it or not, your healthcare plan must be modified to include sterilization, contraception, and abortion drugs.
So the policy is actually worse than before. It’s expanding evil services under the guise of accommodating religious freedom. That’s why abortion groups are cheering it. It’s also deceptive, and here’s why . . .
The idea that it will be insurance companies that pay for such services is just a shell game. Where are insurance companies going to get the money to pay for these services? They aren’t the Federal Reserve. They aren’t empowered to create money out of nothing the way the Federal Reserve is.
If they’re going to pay doctors, nurses, and pharmacists to provide these things then they are going to pay for them with money they got from someone else.
Who else? Why! The very same churches, church-related organizations, and individuals who are otherwise paying. That’s right. That means that now the churches are being asked to pay for the very same services that they were not paying for under the previous policy, because previously they could offer their employees insurance plans that did not include these services. Now the plans will include these services, and the churches are paying for the policies with the legal fiction that the insurance company rather than they are paying for the evil services—unless the insurance company offers the organization a lower rate on the policy, in which case the burden of paying for the abortion drugs and other services is just sloshed around through different parts of their internal spreadsheets but is ultimately still borne by those paying for the policies.
It’s just a shell game. And this is why this should be of concern not just to Catholics but to our Protestant brethren and our non-Christian friends who share a concern about the cause of life. What this means is that we all will be forced to pay for these services, but with the payment trail hidden.
In effect President Obama is insisting that the entire American people must pay for abortion drugs, sterilizations, and contraception, only he is having the insurance companies “launder” the money so that we don’t feel like we’re being forced to pay for them.
So, even if you’re not a Catholic, even if you don’t oppose contraception, but if you do care about not funding abortion—or even if you just care about religious liberty and freedom of conscience—then you need to oppose this plan. Do not be a sucker. Don’t fall for this. And don’t let it die over the weekend (notice it was part of the Friday news dump, so come Monday the Obama administration can try to dismiss it as “old news”).
Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/evil-obama-policy-now-even-more-evil?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NCRegisterDailyBlog+National+Catholic+Register#When:2012-02-10#ixzz1mBKfk0nV