Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Disappointing headline of the day

.

Even the Wall St. Journal got it completely wrong:


Obama Retreats on Contraception


From the article:


Some Catholics expressed relief but others were unmoved after President Barack Obama on Friday loosened a requirement that religious employers cover contraception in health plans, an issue that had turned into a political firestorm in recent weeks.

President Obama on Friday announced a new policy that no longer requires a broad swath of religious organizations to provide employees with contraception coverage in health-insurance plans.

Under the new policy, religious employers opposed to most forms of birth control wouldn't be required to directly pay for such coverage in their workers' insurance policies. Instead, insurance companies would be required to offer contraception without explicitly charging either the religious employer or worker.

That shift means the cost of providing the coverage to religious employers is likely to be spread across all policyholders by insurers.


There is no retreat here - if anything it is a retrenchment.



This "loosening" is the most shamelessly cynical thing we've seen in quite some time. We will hand it to Team O for this bit of politics, though: It allows the lap dog media and squishy Catholics eager to just get this whole thing over with, a hook on which to hang their hat. "See, they compromised" they can claim when effectively nothing has changed.

Merely changing the bucket of money for how this is paid does nothing to alter the fact that Catholic employers will still be required to provide, free of charge, contraceptives and abortificients even if it isn't expressly written into the policy - another "loosening" bit of shameless slickery worked out in this alleged "revision".

If they want to move on from this self-made controversy while effectively keeping in place their 1st amendment-violating agenda item, they may have accomplished that if they can bamboozle even the usually reliable Wall St. Journal.

We're not letting this go, however, and neither is our friend Leslie at Temple of Mut, who happens to be a newly-minted Catholic.

“The Obama Administration is denying to Catholics the fundamental freedom of religious liberty guaranteed by the First Amendment…”.When I heard Obama’s press conference regarding the vaunted “accommodation”, I was struck my the dictatorial tone (click HERE for a link that includes the video). How could Obama order insurance companies to pay for contraception? Where is the legislation? Where is the bill? What portion of the Constitution allows the President to dictate exactly what kinds of goods and services one set of Americans had to give to another?



Bill? Legislation? Constitution..?

Our dear Leslie, as per Pete Stark, there really is not anything the federal government cannot compel you to do.





Doesn't sound like freedom to us. Does it to you?



H/T: Hot Air

9 comments:

Road Dawg said...

Catholics, Jews, Blacks (and more) ... it is unimaginable how these blocks of voters continually vote for those against the guiding sense of the requirements and obligations of proper conduct found in their belief.

Mutnodjmet said...

Road Dawg: Obama only got 54% of the Catholic vote last time. Hardly a vast block, by any means. And I do believe he will get substantially less next time -- especially with me there reminding my fellow Catholics of these antics.

Thanks so much for the link BwD.

K T Cat said...

Why do we need to cover contraception in the first place?

Dean said...

Why should any employer or insurance company be forced to cover contraception?

This is the problem.

My health care policy should read like a Chinese menu or, at the very least, a tiered TV cable programming package.

I should be able to choose, line item by line item, what I want coverage for exclusive to that for which I choose to pay out of pocket.

K T Cat said...

OK, now I have more time to comment.

A $600 item, no matter what it is, is a rounding error in an insurance policy, no matter what that policy covers. Who cares what happens with something so small? It's like mandating bumper coverage on your car or forcing you to buy that extended warranty for your iPad. That we've decided it needs to be forced on health insurance policies where the payouts are on the order of tens of thousands isn't just a moral issue, it's plain crazy on the face of it.

Road Dawg said...

Mut,
Good to hear about the Catholics and the voting record, still disappointed to see 54% voting against their own conscience.
'Dawg

Doo Doo Econ said...

This is 100% a ploy to reword the "abortion" issue into the "contraception" issue. Dick Morris nailed this before anyone else. The left will paint conservatives as "anti contraceptives" starting with Rick Santorum who blew it in the "setup" question by left wing operative George Stephanopolis(?) during the Republican debate he moderated.

I have to hand it to Mitt Romney for having the savy to dodge the issue during that debate. It underlines the difference between a professional politician and a honest ideological conservative. I prefer the honest guy but in politics honesty is a vulnerability.

K T Cat said...

I'm unimpressed with the danger posed by the contraceptives issue when it comes to the presidential campaign. $1.3T deficits and 9% unemployment will dominate the debate.

Road Dawg said...

Cat,
Spin, gotcha moments, & gaffs.
will dominate the presidential campaign.

Elections are determined by the "highlight" films.

Sad, but true.