{"id":21747,"date":"2014-11-03T17:09:08","date_gmt":"2014-11-03T22:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=21747"},"modified":"2014-11-03T17:09:08","modified_gmt":"2014-11-03T22:09:08","slug":"fed-court-blocks-contraception-mandate-reporting-requirements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/21747\/fed-court-blocks-contraception-mandate-reporting-requirements\/","title":{"rendered":"Fed Court Blocks Contraception Mandate Reporting Requirements"},"content":{"rendered":"

With its newest batch of regulations, the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) essentially is telling non-profit religious employers that they can claim an exemption from ObamaCare\u2019s contraception mandate, so long as they provide all the information necessary to violate the deeply held beliefs that justify the exemption.<\/p>\n

As Lyle Denniston of SCOTUS Blog <\/a>explains, the rules \u201calso required the organization to tell the government what its health coverage plan for its employees was by name and type, and to provide contact information to the insurer operating the plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe added information was designed to enable HHS to then take the initiative to arrange for the religious organization\u2019s female employees to have contraceptive coverage at no cost, and with no cost to the organization itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

The controversial HHS rules came to light because of a legal challenge filed by a Catholic university in Florida. A federal judge blocked enforcement of the rules pending the outcome of the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

A couple of observations immediately come to mind. First, there is no such thing as free contraception. If the insurance company must provide it \u201cfree\u201d to some customers, it will then pass on the cost to others (e.g. higher premiums). Even the manpower at HHS spent on coordinating this run-around the First Amendment costs taxpayers money.<\/p>\n

This brings up another point. How can it be that the federal agency charged with implementing ObamaCare has the resources and personnel available to investigate, negotiate and procure \u201cfree\u201d contraception to the thousands (and more) employees working at exempt religious employers?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not like there\u2019s a public health crisis over lack of access to contraception. If HHS has so many extra people and dollars laying around, it should funnel them to real priorities like fighting Ebola, or perhaps, finishing ObamaCare\u2019s main insurance portal<\/a> before the second enrollment period begins in a matter of days.<\/p>\n

Instead we get demands for information in order to make religious objectors participate in the very activity they cannot abide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With its newest batch of regulations, the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) essentially is telling non-profit religious employers that they can claim an exemption from ObamaCare\u2019s contraception mandate, so long as they provide all the information necessary to violate the deeply held beliefs that justify the exemption. As Lyle Denniston of SCOTUS […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4603,4226,4599,4426,3308,186,1829,1009,35],"class_list":["post-21747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-contraception","tag-court","tag-ebola","tag-exemption","tag-health","tag-hhs","tag-insurance","tag-mandate","tag-obamacare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21747"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21751,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21747\/revisions\/21751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}