Actually, this whole thing started with the govt protecting individuals from the rampant abuses of insurance companies by placing minimum standards on the levels of insurance that they offer. What they are saying is that if you are an insurance company and collect premiums from customers, then you have to provide a product (insurance) that is actually worth something. One of those minimum standards is that basic preventative health care (which actually saves insurance companies money, by the way) must be provided in all policies without copay. And there are a whole host of medical services that are lumped into this category. The controversy started when prescription oral contraception was placed in the category of preventative health care...and the republicans saw something they thought they could make an issue of.
You say that like it's a good thing. Forcing companies to provide a product based on government mandates not public demand.
And the bottom line is if the church is forced to violate their beliefs they will drop coverage entirely. And you will feel like you have won?
If the goal is to get religions to stop providing services out of their faith, this will help a lot.
Having minimum standards to keep American Citizens from being ripped off, harmed, injured, etc. by corporations is a good thing. Its like the whole loud pipes arguement. Bikers with loud pipes result in municipalities passing noise ordinances. Well, rampant abuse by insurance companies has resulted in minimum insurance standards. And there has been public demand for doing something about our broken health care sytem since Nixon and before.
You are acting like this is a new thing. We have govt mandated minimum standards for nearly every product sold in this country from safetey standards for kids toys and furniture, fuel mileage and crash standards for cars, lead paint standards for homes and toys, construction standards, education standards, etc. You might not agree with the standard, but every regulation, policy, law, department, whatever was created to address a real problem usually created by the industry selling the goods.
As far as the Catholic Church goes, I guess maybe I'd have a little more sympathy for them if they weren't so full of hypocrisy on the issue. More than 70% of Catholic Universities, charities, and hospitals already provide this coverage. 28 states already have the mandate including 7 or 8 that don't even provide an exception for actual churches...many (if not most) of which were enacted under Republican governors including Romney and even Huckabee...and until now, there hasn't been a peep of objection. If they had such a moral objection to this mandate, why have they acted as they have up until now? They are objecting to something they already do. Gimme a break!
