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Will Company's Owned By Jehovahs Witnesses Have To Include Blood Transfusions In EBP's? (Hobby Lobby
7/10/2014 | Laissez-Faire Capitalist

Posted on 07/10/2014 3:58:44 PM PDT by Laissez-faire capitalist

Will they have to cover something like this under the Employee Benefit Program if that employee wasn't a JW, or could they say that they now have a religious exemption, too?

I wonder what other can of worms the recent SCOTUS ruling will open up...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat
KEYWORDS: abortion; contraception; hobbylobby; jehovahswitnesses; moralabsolutes; prolife; scotus
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To: x

“If owners of the closely-held company refused to pay for all forms of birth control would the court have reached the same decision?”

Apparently so because the Hobby Lobby decision did just that by saying that all, I believe the number was 20, forms of birth control fall under this ruling, not just the 4 originally objected to in the suit.


41 posted on 07/11/2014 2:46:26 PM PDT by Fuzz
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To: Laissez-faire capitalist

Yes I do. I don’t think all religions are the same. Jim Jones had a religion too. This belief that blood transfusions are bad is extreme and downright nutty. Blood transfusions save lives. Not like the concern over killing babies. so it is quite different. Supremes won’t mess with it but if they did they would devise a simple remedy that would have little effect on ObamaCare

I do get your argument. slippery slope — lets keep demonstrating how this law tramples rights etc I get it. However I think it borders on pathetic to harp on how owners now have to fund health care plans for employees that allow awful blood transfusions. A special plan without transfusions would cost no different.

I just think / hope more effective cases can be made than this. This is pretty far down on my give-a-damn list. I want the whole law repealed.


42 posted on 07/11/2014 3:13:21 PM PDT by plain talk
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To: Laissez-faire capitalist

The Hobby Lobby decision specifically said it did NOT apply to blood transfusions. This is in part because you cannot buy a month’s worth of blood transfusions at Walmart for $9...


43 posted on 07/11/2014 3:15:58 PM PDT by Mr Rogers
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To: Laissez-faire capitalist; Fuzz
I fully agree with this post #35 of yours until we get to the last paragraph.

Obozocare or any other mandatory governmental scheme forcing private employers to fund government priorities in medical insurance is an abomination. Hacking chunks off the monster is certainly not objectionable from an actual laissez-faire POV. If an employer morally objects to paying for the murder of innocent babies, let SCOTUS interfere and put a stop to it. IUDs, morning after pills, or any other abortifacient or artificial birth control or sterilizations of any sort, or viagra, or "gender reassignment surgeries," or most psychiatric nonsense, or any other similar allegedly medical hobby scheme: megadittoes. Heart, lung, liver transplants and the like, likewise. Those are easy since defunding those would conform to my morality. I normally have no objection to blood transfusions in the absence of the upcoming college-based "gay" national blood drive day. Jehovah Witnesses do. They should not have to pay for what they regard as an abomination (with some Scriptural foundation). Christian Science devotees have far wider moral objections to medicine. As employers, they ought not to be coerced into paying for what they regard as morally abhorrent.

Eventually, we may be left with agnostic or atheist employers of a libertarian bent who, based upon the questionable "virtue of selfishness" creed of serial adulteress and social anarchist Ayn Rand, "morally" object to being taxed at all or required to provide anything for others, much less Obozocare. I would gladly relieve them of the entire burden of Obozocare by having it repealed altogether for them and for everyone else, at least as a mandatory program and not privately negotiated benefits.

One other probably unintentional problem with your post is that you say: "if you don't like that a company will not provide birth control options...." I think it more accurate to say that a company may not PAY for an employee's birth control or babykilling or sex change operation or whatever. The employer is normally not the medical provider. If Sandra Fluke has a problem with this in her dwindling career in fertility, she can pay for her own birth control, abortions or whatever she may deem necessary even if she feels an inner need to become Alexander by surgical means.

If liberals were not forever piling idiotic liberal agendas onto every breath we take, life would be a LOT less expensive. Long before Obozocare, I suffered the shame of having Rosa DeLauro as my Congressthing. She was hot as a summer day in hell to make psychiatric nonsense a mandatory part of each and every medical policy in the land. Given time, rank idiots like DeLauro (the Demonrat Assistant Whip and Marxist jackass extraordinaire) would probably want to make plastic surgery, facial makeovers and whole body transplants mandatory in each policy. In her case, of course, that would be special interest legislation but we are expected to be gentlemen and not notice that.

The simple answer is an honest disclosure by the employer of just what the employer is voluntarily willing to provide or of what has been negotiated between employer and employee(s) followed by decision by the employee as to whether to work for the employer or move on.

Without making anything mandatory, it might be better to construct medical insurance policies from the ground up. Include the normal run of maladies to which we, as humans, are likely to be subject if we live long enough: cardiovascular disease, cancer, stroke, kidney failure, and the like. Want an AIDS rider in case one's social habits may place one at a higher than normal risk? Want coverage for lung cancer just in case your five pack a day habit was a physical as well as fiscal disaster? Abortion coverage, sterilization coverage, cirrhosis of the liver coverage arising from alcohol abuse, new medical frontiers where no man or woman has gone before (guinea pig coverage), etc. If your employer objects to providing such coverage, you are on your own!

That way, the US is a more free country than it otherwise would be and medical insurance will be a lot MORE affordable for responsible folks and a bit more expensive for those determined to be among the rest.

Also, medical savings accounts, anyone? Make deposits tax free and medical expenditures including preventative care, likewise. If you die before you spend it, it pass tax free to your designate heirs or those who are heirs at law if you have no last will and testament.

I have known the scheme of liberty all along but it certainly embraces the Hobby Lobby decision until we can get rid of Obozocare altogether. (And not replace it with the also despicable tyranny of Romneycare or Christiecare or Jebbiecare or Fauxcahontascare or Hildebeastcare or anyone else care).

44 posted on 07/11/2014 4:23:02 PM PDT by BlackElk (Dean of Discipline, Tomas de Torquemada Gentlemen's Society: Rack 'em Danno!)
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To: x
The morality in question is that of the employer whom Obozo was coercing to PAY for what the employer deems to be immoral behavior. No one, by virtue of the Hobby Lobby decision, is telling the employee that the employee cannot use birth control or abortifacient birth control or even have his/her baby surgically dismembered in utero as inconvenient. If you wanted to do any of those things and I, a total stranger, refuse to pay for your desired procedure because I deem that procedure immoral, just how am I denying you any asserted right to birth control, abortifacient birth control or to have your baby surgically dismembered in utero???? I am not! And, if I were your employer and likewise refused to pay for the cost of your doing any of those things, that would not make any difference whatsoever as to whether you are allowed to do any of those things.

I believe verrrry strongly in your right to keep and bear arms. In fact, it is the law. If I were convinced that you were somewhat less responsible than my comfort level would require, I have every right NOT to go to the local gun shop and buy a Beretta for you, much less pay for it with my own funds. That way, if you stick up a liquor store and shoot the clerk, at least I am not responsible for your behavior. I don't have to lend you my car much less buy one for you, especially if I know you to be a heavy drinker even when driving. And, in a free society, I don't think I need SCOTUS to approve my decision to say no but, during the dictatorship of Obozo, it is a comfort to have the Hobby Lobby decision nonetheless.

45 posted on 07/11/2014 5:23:53 PM PDT by BlackElk (Dean of Discipline, Tomas de Torquemada Gentlemen's Society: Rack 'em Danno!)
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To: Laissez-faire capitalist
Sometimes it may be hard to remember that SCOTUS is no more our national council of philosophers than it is supposed to be our continuing constitutional convention without need of ratification by the states. The SCOTUS is limited in its jurisdiction to real cases and controversies between real litigants and not faculty lounge speculations on perfect philosophical answers to general questions.

Litigation is a messy but usually necessary way to resolve precise narrow questions. Can Hobby Lobby's Evangelical Christian owners and the closely held corporation that is their business entity be required against the morality of the owners to fund four abortifacient forms of birth control? Not can anyone anywhere ever be forced to pay for whatever?

So, there may be future cases involving vasectomies, infertility treatments, blood tranfusions or many other less controversial procedures. So be it.

46 posted on 07/11/2014 5:36:16 PM PDT by BlackElk (Dean of Discipline, Tomas de Torquemada Gentlemen's Society: Rack 'em Danno!)
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To: Laissez-faire capitalist
Sometimes it may be hard to remember that SCOTUS is no more our national council of philosophers than it is supposed to be our continuing constitutional convention without need of ratification by the states. The SCOTUS is limited in its jurisdiction to real cases and controversies between real litigants and not faculty lounge speculations on perfect philosophical answers to general questions.

Litigation is a messy but usually necessary way to resolve precise narrow questions. Can Hobby Lobby's Evangelical Christian owners and the closely held corporation that is their business entity be required against the morality of the owners to fund four abortifacient forms of birth control? Not can anyone anywhere ever be forced to pay for whatever?

So, there may be future cases involving vasectomies, infertility treatments, blood tranfusions or many other less controversial procedures. So be it.

47 posted on 07/11/2014 5:36:27 PM PDT by BlackElk (Dean of Discipline, Tomas de Torquemada Gentlemen's Society: Rack 'em Danno!)
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To: tophat9000
As I previously said, I personally believe that if you don't like your place of employment, or their EBP/insurance plans, etc, then go work somewhere else.

That said, SCOTUS could have said just that. They should have said that their ruling will allow any closely held company to offer whatever they choose, and if you don't like it, get on Obamacare (although I have opposed Obamacare from its beginning). Roberts upheld Obamacare. Talk to him about it. Additionally, they also could have said that the marketplace will decide: those who are outraged by Hobby Lobby's health care benefits package can stop buying there, boycott them, and take their money elsewhere.

48 posted on 07/12/2014 9:02:41 AM PDT by Laissez-faire capitalist
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To: Fuzz
The Hobby Lobby ruling made no mention of whether or not birth control kills a human being, only that the personal beliefs of the owners of a closely held company were enough to deny insurance coverage for those prescriptions.

not true...Hobby Lobby still covers 16 birth control pills/methods....they objected to the 4 that cause a fertilized egg (child) to be aborted.

49 posted on 07/12/2014 8:10:29 PM PDT by terycarl
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