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Freedom of Employers to Decide Your Religion by John Myste
02/15/12
Freedom of Employers to Decide Your Religion by John Myste
In response to Burr Deming's Religious Freedom and Contraceptives
For conservative legislators, freedom of religion means freedom for financial providers of salaries and benefits. They should control the extent of group benefits. If you want to violate the private beliefs of your employer you ought to pay for it yourself, without the benefit of group membership.
- Burr Deming, February 14, 2012
The question of what health insurance covers should be determined, first and foremost, by its effect on one’s health.
If I belong to a religious sect that teaches that we should not use medicine, but that we should let God treat our children, and then my child falls off a house and dies because I did not call an ambulance, should this be allowed in the name of religious freedom? If so, who else should we kill in the name of religion?
Should any religious fanaticism be a factor when deciding a health matter?
Catholic companies are free to deny their patrons coverage via religious authority. They should not be free to opt out of coverage based on religious doctrine. Their religious authority means they can forbid the use of birth control. Any employee that agrees with the backward concept, will obey, and will not use birth control. Any employee that disagrees with the notion will use her health insurance and will use birth control. She was not bound to Catholicism because she works for company X, so there is no conflict of interest.
Backward Company X did not buy her birth control by providing part of her insurance that provided birth control any more than they would have if they had paid her salary directly and she used her earnings to purchase birth control. There is no difference. Either way Company X provided funds for her birth control.
This entire debate is complete political hypocrisy. The Catholic Church learned a long time ago that the masses that follow it are easily duped, easily told what to think, and easily convinced what not to think. This is what they label “Freedom of Religion.”
What’s next? Should we start drowning witches again?
John Myste also writes for his own site, where religious freedom is more than a label.
Please visit John Myste Responds
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3 comments
For me the more important point is why we allow government to dictate any of this? Contraceptives are freely accessible, so why do they have to be part of a health insurance plan?
For that matter, health insurance plans are also freely available, so why do businesses have to offer them to employees (ObamaCare aside)? And why then does the government get to define what an insurance carrier covers and at what cost?
Seems like in a free country with free markets and freedom of religion, we could just let drug stores sell contraceptives to anyone, insurance companies cover what they want and compete for customers, and churches can preach whatever they want. What happened?
I almost agree with you:
For me the more important point is why we allow government to dictate any of this?
I agree that this is a paramount question, but it is in no way tied to the first question, which does not speak to whether we should have government mandated healthcare. As you know, I think we should and you think we should not, but that is irrelevant to this question.
The question was about the bogus reasoning of the Catholic Church and the GOP in trying to resist the law.
Contraceptives are freely accessible, so why do they have to be part of a health insurance plan?
Because some people don’t use them citing the cost. There is cost. They are not free. The most effective one, by far, are not the ones where you take a pill every day. They are ones where you get an injection. If health insurance does not cover contraceptives, we will have more unwanted babies.
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