Michael Greve at the American Enterprise recently posted in a Liberty Fund blog a trenchant analysis of the recently announced HHS regulations that will compel all insurance policies to cover contraception, sterilization, and morning after pills
He provides a very lucid analysis of the way in which vague statutory language about preventive care for women turned into preventing pregnancy and then got written into regulations.
Follow the progression: first comes a statutory text of sufficient ambiguity to keep the Catholic Health Association, representing Catholic hospitals, on board in support of the ACA. (Now that it’s been had, one hopes the association has learned its lesson.) Then comes an administrative creep forward and a de facto delegation to a private organization of known disposition, whose perceived authority and expertise provide cover for the bureaucracy. Then comes the wholesale, underhanded adoption of the interim rule.
By Greve’s reckoning, this travesty is of a piece with the entire agenda of Obamacare. It can’t be implemented, because its a Rube Goldberg contraption, and because dysfunctional as written, what does get done will get done by regulatory fiat.
January 26th, 2012 | 8:22 am
Nancy Pelosi said, “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it.” Sleight of hand “legislating” by putting the real power in the hands of regulatory agencies and the courts has been standard operating procedure for liberals for generations.
January 26th, 2012 | 2:16 pm
The CHA hasn’t been “had” because this will not change the practice of most catholic hospitals. Contraception and abortion referals are commonplace, as are sterilizations, in catholic hospitals. To pretend that the CHA has been upholding the ethical directives is to be “had”. CHA knows the lesson already: keep the money coming in the doors, and in order to do this we need to provide IUD’s. When the CHA comes out and boldly stands up for catholic doctors and the unborn, I may be convinced otherwise.
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