“Who’s Paying The Premiums?”: Health Insurance Is Not A Favor Your Boss Does For You
The debate over the Hobby Lobby case has been plagued by many problematic presumptions, but there’s one that even many people who disliked the decision seem to sign on to without thinking about it. It’s the idea that the health insurance you get through your employer is something that they do for you—not just administratively, but in a complete sense. But this is utterly wrong. You work, and in exchange for that labor you are given a compensation package that includes salary and certain benefits like a retirement account and health coverage. Like the other forms of compensation, the details of that insurance are subject to negotiation between you and your employer, and the government’s involvement is to set some minimums—just as it mandates a minimum wage, it mandates certain components health insurance must include.
Those who support Hobby Lobby are now talking as though mandating that insurance include preventive care is tantamount to them forcing you to make a contribution to your local food bank when you’d rather give to the pet shelter. You can see it, for instance, in this piece by Megan McArdle in which she tries to look at the clash of rights involved in this dispute, but running through the whole piece is the idea that an employee’s health insurance isn’t compensation for her labor but a piece of charity her boss has bestowed upon her for no reason other than the goodness of his heart. Referring to the question of whether the religious beliefs of Hobby Lobby’s owners are being imposed on its employees, she writes: “How is not buying you something equivalent to ‘imposing’ on you?” Then later she refers to “a positive right to have birth control purchased for me.”
But when your insurance coverage includes birth control, your employer isn’t “buying you” anything. Your employer is basically acting as an administrative middleman between you and the insurance company. Your employer isn’t the one whose money is paying the premiums, you are. It’s compensation for the work you’ve done, just as much as your salary is.
This goes all the way back to to the roots of our employer-based insurance system. During World War II, the government imposed wage and price controls, meaning employers couldn’t give raises. So they began to offer health insurance as an alternate form of compensation, and when the IRS decided in 1943 that insurance could be paid with pre-tax dollars, it made it all the more attractive as a form of compensation. And keep in mind that the preferential tax treatment of health insurance (which the self-employed don’t get) is a tax benefit to the employee, not the employer. If you eliminated it, employers’ balance sheets would stay the same (it would still be counted as an expense), but employees would have to pay taxes on the benefit.
You might or might not think that remembering the true nature of the insurance benefit should change the calculation in the Hobby Lobby case. I’m guessing that for the plaintiffs, it wouldn’t; they’d probably argue that even having to think about what sinful harlots their employees are imposes a “substantial burden” on their religious freedom. And as I’ve argued before, we should get rid of the employer-based insurance system entirely. That may happen eventually, but in the meantime, it’s good to remember just whose health insurance it is. It’s not your boss’. It’s yours.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, July 9, 2014
“In A Partisan League Of His Own”: Alito, Doing Everything He Can To Be ‘A Corporation’s Best Friend’
On Monday morning, around 10 a.m. ET, much of the nation’s political and legal world turned to Scotusblog to learn the outcome of two of the year’s biggest Supreme Court cases. Moments later, the blog told us that Justice Samuel Alito was delivering both rulings.
And it was at this point that everyone immediately knew that conservatives had won both cases.
What about the possibility of a surprise? How could everyone be absolutely certain that Alito would side with the right? Was it really so inconceivable that Alito would honor precedent and play against type?
Actually, yes, it was inconceivable.
Ian Millhiser made a compelling case today that Alito is “the most partisan” justice on the bench, making it pretty clear what to expect when he’s written a ruling.
According to data by Washington University Professor Lee Epstein, Alito is more likely to cast a conservative vote than anyone else on the Court.
To be fully precise, that does not make Alito the Court’s most conservative member. That honor belongs to Justice Clarence Thomas, who is the only member of the Court who openly pines for the days when federal child labor laws were considered unconstitutional. Yet, while Alito can’t match Thomas’s radicalism, he is far and away the most partisan member of the Court.
To explain this distinction, Thomas is not a partisan. He is an ideologue. His decisions are driven by a fairly coherent judicial philosophy which would often read the Constitution in much the same way that it was understood in 1918. While this methodology typically leads him to conservative results, it does occasionally align him with the Court’s liberals…. What makes Alito a partisan is that there is no similar case where his judicial philosophy drove him to a result that put him at odds with his fellow conservatives.
To put this in perspective, note that Millhiser highlighted a striking detail: Alito is the only sitting justice who has never crossed over – in effect, breaking ranks with the usual ideological allies – in a closely divided case.
Nine years ago, you’ll recall that Alito was not George W. Bush’s first choice. Rather, the Republican president initially nominated Harriet Miers, the White House counsel at the time, for the lifetime appointment on the high court.
It was among the more foolish decisions Bush made, which ended in an embarrassing withdrawal.
Miers was obviously unqualified, but Bush’s second choice, Sam Alito, is in many ways worse.
Millhiser’s indictment on Alito’s partisanship, his activism, his reliance on a raw political perspective, his desire to be “a corporation’s best friend,” makes a persuasive case and is worth checking out.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 2, 2014
“Hobby Lobby Decision Is Not About Religious Freedom”: One More Battleground In The Never-Ending Culture War
Why are we still arguing over contraception?
Of all the mind-blowing medical advances of the last 50 years — in-utero surgery, genetic testing, face transplants — why is it that the sale and use of convenient, reliable birth control pills and devices still sparks such controversy?
The Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision — in which the court’s conservative wing gave religious rights to corporations — is just one more battleground in the never-ending culture war. The high court ruled that the Affordable Care Act violates the religious rights of two family-held corporations whose owners objected to a requirement that they provide employees with health insurance policies that pay for a variety of contraceptives. Hobby Lobby, a crafts chain owned by Southern Baptists, and Conestoga Wood, owned by Mennonites, objected to four contraceptives that they mistakenly consider abortifacients.
If abortion were the animating issue, then liberals, conservatives and moderates would have joined forces long ago to promote more effective family planning. That would be the best way to limit abortions, which are usually the result of unintended pregnancies. Instead, the religious right continues to stand in the way of birth control.
The high court’s ruling, issued last week, hardly seems calamitous since it was limited to those four family planning methods. But the decision, by five male justices, still points to a curious sexism that pervades much of the political discussion around contraception. It’s no wonder that conservatives are accused of waging a “war on women.”
As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted in her dissent, “The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.” In other words, the remarkable cultural transformation that has allowed women to assume leadership roles in corporations, in the military and in politics was assisted by the revolution in reliable contraception, starting with the introduction of “the pill” in 1960.
History reminds us, though, that family planning has long been political. In 1879, the state of Connecticut passed a law prohibiting the use of “any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception.” Remarkably, the Supreme Court didn’t strike down that intrusive law until 1965, nearly a hundred years later.
In the decades since, women — and men — have largely taken for granted the right to convenient and reliable birth control. That’s true even among Roman Catholics, although papal doctrine still forbids it. According to the Pew Research Center, only 15 percent of Catholics view contraceptive use as “morally wrong.”
Yet, the backlash among ultraconservatives has become more evident in recent years, especially since the mandate on contraception coverage in Obamacare. In 2012, a young Georgetown law student named Sandra Fluke incited the ire of conservatives when she insisted that her university should offer contraceptives in its health insurance policies, despite its church affiliation. Among the more memorable comments that have been directed her way, Rush Limbaugh labeled her a “slut” and a “prostitute.”
Several months ago, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a Fox News commentator still popular on the ultraconservative lecture circuit, was explicitly sexist as he blasted Democrats’ support for contraceptive coverage in the ACA, claiming they want women to think “they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido …”
Indeed, Republican politicians and their allies have showered invective on women who believe that health insurance plans should pay for a full range of reproductive services, including birth control devices and medications. Their rhetoric is full of offensive references to women’s sexuality, which tells you all you need to know about where they’re coming from.
Of course, Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, was much more circumspect in his language. Still, the majority’s outdated ideology shines through — partly because they made clear that their reasoning applies only to contraceptives and not to other medical care. There is no religious exemption for, say, a company owned by Jehovah’s Witnesses that doesn’t want its health insurance policies to pay for blood transfusions.
This ruling had little to do with religious liberty and much to do with women’s reproductive freedom.
By: Cynthia Tucker, Visiting Professor at The University of Georgia; The National Memo, July 5, 2014
“Supreme Anointment Court”: Sheltered From Sun And Light In Our Nation’s Holiest Building
True Blood, the magic, devilish, vampire TV world of shape-shifters where blood is a bottled commodity to drink in a bar and extreme graphic violence and sex is recklessly paired will finally have the stake driven into its heart and exit at the conclusion of this seventh season.
I remember the show’s big surprise lesson from season one that no matter how scary and powerful, vampires cannot enter your home without being invited. However, there is no end in site of the bad true bloody struggles between the five conservative and four liberal justices of our Supreme Court, and no matter how societal changing a Court decision is, the public mostly never gets invited in, never gets to be witness to these omnipotent secret cultish figures dressed in robes sitting elevated and fortressed behind sacred wood protected in their house from uninvited intruders while drinking their own ideological dogmatic “blood.” We never get to see their clever shape-shifting after taking up the bar forever in residence chambered and sheltered from sun and light in our nation’s holiest building. We never get to experience these high priests of the constitution experiencing the life we live that they interpret for us. We never get to see whose influential blood and money they drink that becomes the magic elixir of their last words that toss the ingredients of our melting pot. We never get to see their expressions as indicators of how bad the blood between them might really be as they depart company after each session to take solace and recharge in their secluded coffined off chamber.
Throughout much of our history, we have mostly accepted, obeyed, revered and patiently waited with undying respect for the Court’s directives. We knew they knew better what was better for our society. For Americans, this was the place where evil, malice, patronage, cronyism, politics, and the compromising inducements of avarice and greed humans are so easily soiled by held to a higher standard that truly defined how great a system ours was. We hardly ever get to see this side of the court any more. Just as divided and unpredictable as the world depicted in True Blood, the Supremes on the Court dominated by extremist conservatives are driving the stake into the disunited states of America.
Recent polling supports the perception of a society absolutely at odds with all forms of government. The Supreme Court has lost the confidence of Americans. We are now adrift without a moral compass, without checks and balances, without a credible mandate voice in any of our three plus media equals four branches of government. A majority of voters elected President Obama twice with such a mandate. But increasingly, we are witnessing a court that has anointed itself as representative to its secreted world to drive The Stake to drain the blood of Obama-ism. What after-world can and will emerge in such a divided state and in what state of health and personhood will each of us be in at that time? As we do get to witness many hot spots around the globe descend into horror, can we save America and ourselves?
By: Allen Schmertzler, The Huffington Post Blog, July 3, 2014
“Ayatollah Alito”: Still Not Sure That Elections Have Consequences?
Ayotallah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, say hello to your new comrade, Ayotallah Samuel Alito. Supreme Leader meet Supreme Court Justice.
And, no, regrettably, this is not hyperbole.
With his pronouncement in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, Supreme Court Justice Alito signaled to the world that America has joined the world’s theocracies.
This extraordinary nation, borne of the Enlightenment 238 years ago to the day, will now cloak power, policy and even what qualifies as facts in the vestments of religious belief.
Because, as Justice Ginsburg noted in her dissent (p. 65ff), religious beliefs cannot be questioned either for substance or sincerity. If one, for example, asserts scientifically that IUDs prevent implantation of fertilized embryos, the scientific response would be to explain that their mechanism of action is to prevent fertilization (the sperm cannot ‘swim in a dry lake’ to reach the ovum to fertilize it).
But, if one makes the same claim religiously, then that is the end of it, even if it determines the application of public policy. The Court cannot question the assertion nor whether you believe it, and now, post Hobby Lobby, if you are empowered to act upon it, your religious beliefs determines secular policy for other people.
The Koch Boys, for example, can now claim a religious belief that carbon dioxide is not a heat-trapping gas. So, they can now violate EPA regulations so that their “religious freedom” is not burdened. Post Hobby Lobby, the Ayatollah Alito may declare that, e.g., a carbon tax is a “less restrictive” way to “impose” a science-driven public policy upon the Kochs’ religious beliefs about carbon. Will Congress, under the influence of the Koch Boys, pass such a tax? Of course not. Game… set… match… and planet.
God probably reminded Art Pope this morning that the minimum wage is a sin. Is there a “less restrictive” way to establish adequate wages for his employees, so we do not “burden” the poor sot’s religion? The Ayatollah Alito could choose between the Earned Income Tax Credit and workers’ “freedom” to bargain in the free market to establish wages. (I kid you not… listen to JFK’s rally for Medicare, especially 14:36-16:50.)
As previously described, right-wing politics is not just pro-business, it is itself a big business. The more vitriol, the more money the right-wing groups can raise, and it is protected as political speech. By contrast, when a commercial enterprise raises money from investors, or makes claims about its products, it is subject to fines and/or imprisonment for false and misleading claims.
But, that is just speech. Now, post Hobby Lobby, a simple claim of religious belief, blessed by Alito, can be used to thwart public policy so long as there is any “less restrictive alternative,” real or imagined, that can be referenced. It is a full-employment ruling for the Right Wing Belief Tanks, such as Heritage, to concoct the alternatives.
What does this mean for America? Whatever semblance of democratic government has survived its purchase as a result of the Citizens United ruling is now snuffed out by the counter-majoritarian (see, e.g., Bickel, The Least Dangerous Branch) Supreme Court. Does it, should it, matter if the “less restrictive alternative” is even viable? Who decides these matter of public policy? Our new Supreme Leaders.
It means that “closely-held” corporations will have competitive advantages against all the others as they will not have to comply with federal or state law because they are now deemed to be capable of holding religious beliefs about public policy and, if those beliefs conflict with public policy, the beliefs win.
But, it may also have consequences Alito did not consider. For example, if religious beliefs can now stay the application of public policy, will they remain forever free from scrutiny? This is quite different from advocating a public policy position grounded in religious belief. Hobby Lobby allows corporations to thwart enforcement of public policy based upon unchallengeable religious belief.
Moreover, since corporations can now, apparently, hold religious beliefs, as creations of the State, does their very existence not now violate the First Amendment’s Establishment clause? The State, after all, provides corporations with special benefits such as limitations on personal liability, licenses to operate, and so forth. If such entities can themselves have religious beliefs of any kind, has the State not helped establish these religions?
Such considerations will, of course, require the return of some enlightenment to the Supreme Court.
One can almost hear the Founders weeping.
Still not sure that elections have consequences?
By: Paul Abrams, The Huffington Post Blog, July 3, 2014
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 