More accurately, the Hobby Lobby “debate” has exposed flaws in government-mandated health insurance.
Every HL story makes me want to scream “If you don’t like what an employer offers, go somewhere else.”
The vast majority of those who have bought health insurance individually through ObamaCare will still have to pay out of their own pockets for medical exams that cost $1,100, since most individual ObamaCare policies have deductibles that are well above $1,100. And the premiums are very expensive, too.
The only reason the vast majority of working Americans aren’t in the predicament of having to buy individual ObamaCare policies is because Obama postponed the Employer Mandate for a year.
That means companies are still paying for their employees’ health insurance. However, if Obama does not postpone the Employer Mandate for another year, many companies will stop covering their workers, and they’ll have to buy their own individual, expensive, high-deductible policies.
Sometime between now and October, Obama will have to decide what to do about the Employer Mandate. If he doesn’t postpone it again, businesses and workers will suffer and be angry right before the November elections.
However, if he DOES postpone it, the people who should be angry — Democrats, especially feminists who were driven hysterical over the Hobby Lobby decision, since another postponement will mean that NO companies at all will have to cover employee contraceptives for another year — will not be angry, at least not in public.
The Democrats didn’t get publicly angry at Obama when he made the first Employer Mandate postponement last year, so they’re not likely to get angry this year either.
Which means that the Employer Mandate will probably never go into effect, and the Hobby Lobby decision will be rendered meaningless.
This all started when UNIONS were able to bargain for “health care” benefits to circumvent WW2 wage controls.
After “health care” became tied to employment, and severed the link between user and payer, health costs skyrocketed.
Somehow we have to sever this linkage, come up with an income tax system that treats all “health care” payments equally, and force more personal responsibility.
I actually agree that employer-based insurance does limit a person’s choices. On the other hand, we were mostly happy with our employer-based insurance until the government tried to “fix” it.