First Amendment freedoms don't place churches above the law
When the contraception issue first made headlines a week or two ago, the American Catholic Bishops went over the top to vigorously complain about their loss of religious freedom and liberty, and that the administration had “cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution.” The rule they were complaining about required all employers to provide various forms of preventive health care, such as vaccinations for children, wellness exams for seniors, and contraception for women of child-bearing age. Statistics show that insurance companies save money when they provide these preventive services.
While religious orders and churches were specifically made exempt from the contraception rule, independent church-related entities, such as universities and health care institutions, were not exempt. Those entities employ people of all religions or no religion and serve the general public without regard to religious affiliation, thus taking them outside of the exemption for purely religious organizations.
Because of these concerns, the rule was relaxed by the administration to expand the church exemption to religiously affiliated institutions. The employees will get contraception services without charge directly from health insurance companies. Thus, Catholic and Catholic-related institutions will not be required to pay for contraceptive services.
In continuing their complaints about religious freedom and the First Amendment, the bishops are not on firm ground. Their First Amendment rights are not absolute. The freedom of religion is subject to a balancing test among competing interests in any particular situation. A person or a church may have the right to preach about their doctrine that contraception is immoral, but they don’t have the same right to enforce that doctrine on unwilling individuals or non-believers. That is civil law, and the church should keep out of civil law. That’s called separation of church and state.
The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic bishops recently stated that the “nationwide mandate of insurance coverage ... is both unsupported in the law and remains a grave moral concern.” Since 1968, Catholic theologians from around the world have questioned the status of the church teaching on contraception. The threat here is not to the religious freedom of the church, but to the personal freedom and conscience of women who are entitled by law to have access to these benefits and the right to receive the highest quality of health care, including contraception, no matter who they work for. It is hoped the final details of this controversy can be resolved on that basis – women’s’ health.
Statistics On Employer Covered Health Insurance - News
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Health Insurance For Women – Points and Insights | Women's ...
Women face a lot of issues when seeking the right medical insurance policy. Most times, they are under insured or left totally uninsured for reasons of work effectiveness and home upkeep. Below are some of the gender issues with the United States health cover system as reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
As stated by the Kaiser Family Foundation’s (KFF) report on Women’s Health Insurance policy, it becomes clear that women are less likely to qualify when participating in their employer’s health program. This is due to the fact that women are more likely to engage themselves as part time workers; they receive smaller salaries and depend more on spousal coverage.
It is true to note that men are 51% more likely to be protected under their employer’s group health plan than women estimated at 38%. Going by this report, it means that women can easily loose the health insurance when there’s an increase in premium or when her employer drops the contribution provision on family coverage.
A few points to note about women and health insurance:
It is a fact that most women participate in some form of private health insurance; it is also true to note that coverage is not always stable or guaranteed.
Statistics show that one out of every ten women who work full time is without medical coverage. Even with medical insurance, there are frequent disparities in benefits and bonuses covered by her plan, the amount she spends out-of-pocket and connection to the services she needs. It is true that about sixteen percent of medically insured women have been denied approval or payment for a medical care service. Statistics show that about seventeen million women above the age of eighteen in the U.S are without health insurance.
Learn to work with reliable medical insurance companies and their agents online for faster replies to your health coverage questions.
They will provide you the tools you need to establish a confidential connection with them and most likely give you access to free professional medical insurance consultation services.