Please help me understand the co-called controversy around the birth control compromise

[zipplewrath]

12. Close, but not quite

The employer can't be forced to pay for it, but the insurance company is required to incluide it for "no charge". It's not really "side car", it is just part of the policy.

The assertion is that the insurance company doesn't have to charge for it because it actually saves them money (because pregnant mothers are more expensive). As someone pointed out, however, it is costing them money because a large portion of the women were paying for it on their own, and now the insurance company will bear the costs. As such, the cost does ultimately get back to the employer.

Truth is, many of the really large institutions are "self insured", which is to say that they pay the total health care bill for their employees on their own. The hire an insurance company to manage it for them (and set up "networks" of doctors and such) but they get billed for the actual services delivered. So they'll pay for it in the aggregate. Now, again, the assertion will be made that their costs will actually be lower because pregnant mothers are so expensive. One can make an argument about this.

The problem is both real, and not nearly as "religious" as the GOP would like you to believe. The school, or hospital, isn't a "church" and it isn't a "religion". It's a school that charges money and pays salaries. The churches could easily avoid this if alll of the "employees" were nuns or monks or something. (This is, by the way, how "church schools" started out. Somewhere along the line they started hiring teachers instead of ordaining them). But since in this modern age, no one has demonstrated a way to actually run a hospital with monks alone, the churches found themselves in the "hospital business". You want to run a business in this country, we can't be handing out advantages based upon religious affiliation or the next thing you know, GM will be taken over by the Scientologists.

The first amendment covers peoples abilities to worship as they please. It doesn't really create a separate economy where churches are somehow exempt from the laws of the land. It's not church contributions that are paying the bills at hospitals, and even at Notre Dame. It is the money they charge for the hospital services, or the tuition. They want to go totally "nonprofit" and operate completely off of the basket they pass around at church, they might have a leg to stand on. They want to run hospitals that charge insurance companies for services rendered, they have to be treated like any other business. Their nonprofit status will only cover their tax burden, it doesn't make them a religion.