To show that liberals don’t actually care about the cost of rising health insurance? To distract the American public from their political difficulties in an election year with the whole “War on Women” nonsense? To enable liberals to make whiplash inducing arguments that they just want to help insurance companies reduce their costs? To enable the demonization of an institution that the base of the Democratic Party despises? Really, what is the point of this whole charade?

For good reason, David. The people in this community are generally smart and enough to understand whatever safe sex benefits that contraception may have in theory is mitigated in the human trials as activity and risk level increase.

Unless a corporation writes its religious commitment into its Articles of Association. I can well imagine a corporation specifying that it will produce only Kosher or Halal products or include an ethical investment clause.

It seems to me the New York and California cases are significant because the state laws were actually tougher than it appears the federal mandate will be. I have seen very little written about the legal arguments that religious organizations will have to win in order to do away with the mandate. But it seems to me the key point is going to be whether the regulations “substantially burden” religious exercise. As I understand it, religious organizations now have to take no action at all and spend no money at all, and third parties will provide and pay for contraceptive coverage. I don’t understand how doing and paying nothing can be a substantial burden. And as for the Hobby Lobbies, it seems to me the government should be extremely wary of allowing for-profit companies to challenge laws as if they were religious organizations. The purpose of incorporating as a for-profit company is to make a clear distinction between the corporation and those who own and control it. To claim that a corporation exercises the religion of its owners blurs the separation of the corporation as a unique entity and the owners, who have limited liability for what the corporation does.

Also, if the contraceptive mandate is successful in preventing a significant number of unwanted pregnancies, there will be not only cost savings to the insurance companies, but a reduction in the number of abortions. It rarely gets mentioned in these discussions, but for those who are not adamantly opposed to contraception under any and all circumstances, there may be significant benefits as a result of the contraceptive mandate.

By the way, American tax dollars have been subsidizing contraception for 40 years under Title X, and contraception is also paid for by tax dollars through Medicaid.

As the fees are presumably designed to cover the running costs of the exchanges, any rebate in fees will have to be made good out of general taxation.

If the fees were intended to yield a surplus, then the revenues of the government are simply diminished and no one is actually paying anything at all

Michael PS,

This seems to be somewhat analogous to taxpayers getting tax credits for, say, contributing to the scholarship funds in Georgia, which we discussed recently. I think if we buy Joseph Knippenberg’s argument in that thread, we can’t say discounted rates offered by the exchanges for insurance companies to pay the cost of contraceptives are “borne out of general taxation.” I don’t buy his argument (or the argument of the Supreme Court), but I think anyone who does has to be inconsistent in arguing that tax credits don’t come out of general taxation and discounts to insurance companies’ fees to join exchanges do.

The proposal appears to be that the insurance companies will be compensated by a reduction in the fees charged to them by the federally-funded Insurance Exchanges. In that case, the cost will be borne out of general taxation.

Apologies for pontificating to a lawyer about the law!

I believe it is the case that news media frequently report that the Supreme Court has “upheld” a law when the a lower court has upheld it, there is an appeal, and the Supreme Court denies cert. But I can see why it is not helpful to put it that way.

Next time I will consult you rather than a lawyer in the elevator.

I wouldn’t necessarily use a California Supreme Court decision to predict anything about what the U.S. Supreme Court would do. Also, the California law is sufficiently different from the proposed regulations that it would probably be misleadng to assume that a decision for one leads necessarily to a decision for the other.

Finally, what’s at issue here is the interaction between state laws that might make providing prescription benefits optional and the Affordable Care Act, which not only requires providing prescription benefits, but (in the case of the contraceptives/abortifacients at issues) requires that they be provided with no co-pay.