religious employers must cover birth control

[MissCrabette]

I watched an interview with Kathleen Sebelius this morning (it might have been recorded on Friday) where she explained that the cost of the insurance plans would not be increasing when spread over a large population of insured members. She mentioned that there could be a decrease in costs by about 15%, but she said that she wasn't counting on that.

I admit that the possibility that there would be no cost increase hadn't crossed my mind. How do our Catholic members feel about this if there is truly no additional cost whatsoever to the Catholic Church?

[SoonerTexan]

If there truly was no additional cost, sure. I just cannot see an insurance company truly not raising it in some way here or there. There's also the problem of Catholic insurers and again what would be a qualifying institution. After looking at it more closely, it really seems I be the same setup with a different explanation with the intent of deflecting the onslaught. In that regard it may have worked.

[diggitydot]

My guess is that the insurers did this because the ACA adds millions of people to their customer base. Covering the co-pays of the women who are employed by religiously affiliated businesses and who would utilize this care is a far lower expense for them than losing the newly expanded client base.

[GrayMatterWife]

How do our Catholic members feel about this if there is truly no additional cost whatsoever to the Catholic Church?

Not RC, but I suspect the argument would be: whether the Church-affiliated institution is required to pay that portion of the insurance services is irrelevant. Cost does not determine moral acceptability. If an EE is able to procure BC or abortifacients or other proscribed medical service through the insurance that is provided as a benefit of the EE's with the Church-affiliated institution, then it is morally unacceptable to the Church. The Church would be providing the EE with a way to procure these services. And this would be an impermissible infringement on the First Amendment rights of the members of the Church-affiliated institutions.

The counterargument by the HHS might be: there is no cognizable First Amendment right to protect (the Church-affiliated institution has no First Amendment protections) because the First Amendment rights of the members (the controlling people at the employer) of a Church-affiliated employer are too remote. That is, because the employer is not a church--it is a "church-affliated" group--as such, the members of the employer are not exercising their First Amendment rights pursuant to their employment. This argument is strengthened by the reality that many employees of Catholic-affiliated employers are not practicing Catholics. There is even an argument that the church-affiliated institution has accepted this argument by knowingly employing non-Catholics or non-observant Catholics.

[OrionGrad]

I just cannot see an insurance company truly not raising it in some way here or there.

Just throwing this out there, but I read in a Seattle Times article that covering birth control has been shown to reduce costs for insurers because it's cheaper to give people birth control for free than pay for pregnancy/maternity care. So that might be how insurance companies can afford to give away BC without raising rates.