OBAMA BLINKS! Government to Revise Its HHS Contraception Rule

OBAMA BLINKS! Government to Revise Its HHS Contraception Rule July 23, 2014


The Obama Administration,
slapped down by the recent Supreme Court ruling in favor of Wheaton College, has taken a step back from its intractable stance on contraception coverage as part of the Affordable Care Act.

The Justice Department, perhaps seeing the handwriting on the wall after the Court rulings in the cases of Wheaton College and Hobby Lobby, announced Tuesday, July 22, that they will issue new regulations within the next month.  The new regulations will apply to all nonprofit institutions that say the faith with which they are affiliated is opposed to the use of most forms of contraception.

Thanks to Deacon Greg Kandra, who spotted the  story on the pages of the Wall Street Journal.  Deacon Greg quoted from the WSJ article:

The Obama administration said Tuesday it will revise a compromise arrangement for religiously affiliated universities and charities that object to providing contraception in workers’ health insurance plans, in response to a Supreme Court order earlier this month.A majority of Supreme Court justices granted Wheaton College, an Illinois Christian school, a temporary reprieve from contraception coverage requirements in the Affordable Care Act on July 3. That was days after the high court ruled that closely held for-profit companies such as arts-and-crafts chain Hobby Lobby should be allowed to opt out of the provision if their owners have religious objections to certain forms of birth control.

The Obama administration had offered nonprofit institutions such as Wheaton a specific alternative to the health law requirements in which they could file a form with the federal government that would result in contraceptive coverage being provided by an insurance company instead. That move had been an effort to defuse resistance with the Catholic Church and other faith groups to the original requirement. Wheaton, along with other high-profile challengers such as the University of Notre Dame, filed lawsuits saying the arrangement was inadequate because they would still be complicit in the provision of birth control by submitting the form.

The Supreme Court’s Wheaton order said that the federal government should allow the college to simply state its objections to the Department of Health and Human Services, rather than filing forms that authorize its insurance company to take on responsibility for coverage.

Justice Department lawyers said in a brief filed Tuesday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit that the federal government would issue new regulations in the next month that will apply to all nonprofit institutions that say the faith with which they are affiliated is opposed to the use of most forms of contraception.

“The Wheaton College injunction does not reflect a final Supreme Court determination,” the brief said. “Nevertheless, the Departments responsible for implementing the accommodations have informed us that they have determined to augment the regulatory accommodation process in light of the Wheaton College injunction and that they plan to issue interim final rules within a month. We will inform the Court when the rules are issued.”

We’ll have to wait and see whether the revised-revised regulations address the problem of insurance companies providing contraceptives and abortifacients, to the satisfaction of Catholics and other pro-life persons.

I’m sure you remember the first “amendment”, announced by then-Secretary of HHS Kathleen Sebelius:  In that revision, which was intended to placate religious institutions, the government proposed a sleight of hand “compromise” which shifted the responsibility for payment from the religious institution to the insurance company.  Religious groups immediately recognized the move for what it was; they understood that they still bore the cost of contraceptive coverage, since it would be factored into their premiums.   That revision also drew too narrow a line around “qualified” religious institutions–failing to recognize the rights of Catholic hospitals and schools and faith-based nonprofits and social service organizations.

Need a refresher on the issues?  The Becket Fund published a handy “fact check” on the White House’s many false claims about the HHS Mandate.  And the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops set up a comprehensive website which explains the issues in detail.

My hope is that this time, Obama and his minions will seek advice–not from their own inner circle of policy analysts, who have amply demonstrated their blindness to the concerns raised by people of faith, but from the religious institutions themselves.  One more insufficient revision would only solidify Obama’s reputation as caring little for the religious liberties enshrined in our Constitution.

Will the regulations currently being crafted adequately protect the freedom of people who oppose contraception on moral grounds?

We wait.  We hope.  We pray.

 


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