They conveniently ignore the fact that these hospitals are operated with huge amounts of taxpayer money. If the Church is running hospitals exclusively with its own money, and with the money of self-pay and privately insured patients, then it should not be subject to interference from government. As long as they run the hospitals with taxpayers' dollars, they have to follow the taxpayers' rules, just like any other institution that uses taxpayers' dollars.
Nonetheless, abortion is an elective surgery, and therefore they can recommend other hospitals rather than participate in a surgery that is a sin in the eyes of the Catholic Church, whose name is on the doors.
The state bumps aside private insurers to become the #1 insurer, and then you figure that makes it alright for the state to dictate to a religious organization, because the religious organization “operates with huge amounts federal funding”?
That’s a crock.
If the hospital were to take ear-marked grants, that’d be one thing, but just because the state provides the insurance for many of the hospital’s customers hardly makes the hospital a creature of the state, and therefore at the state’s mercy for making policy.
If McDonald’s sold hamburgers to state workers, would that make McDonald’s “a recipient of government funds”?
“This bill is a violation of the separation of Church and State,” wrote Bishops Henry Mansell of Hartford and William Lori”
If the Bishop is so concerned about the separation of church and state, these Catholic hospitals should not be involved with the state via their acceptance of government money.
“As long as they run the hospitals with taxpayers’ dollars, they have to follow the taxpayers’ rules, just like any other institution that uses taxpayers’ dollars.”
Bingo.
If the hospitals in question do not want to be subject to such government interference, they should cease accepting any government money. Period. Then they should be free to succeed or fail on their own merits and of their own policies and procedures.
“As long as they run the hospitals with taxpayers’ dollars, they have to follow the taxpayers’ rules, just like any other institution that uses taxpayers’ dollars.”
Yup. If you take gov’t $ you will be forced to follow their rules.
How do you figure that? As best I know Catholic hospitals do not take government monies, just like Catholic schools do not take government monies either.
BTW you seemed misnamed, sound more like an enabler then a shrinker.
What a load of codswallop.
No one runs a hospital with their own money. They run it with the revnue generated by patients. They could just refuse to treat some people - but would that not break other laws as well?
An alternative...replace the Catholic names of these hospitals with Allah’s House or Mohammad’s Place and no one from the government will dare tell them to do anything!