Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Some notes and observations regarding the "Hobby Lobby" case


Hobby Lobby is a corporation not a citizen...

How can Hobby Lobby say they don't want to make health care decisions for their employees when the whole reason they are in court is that they want to deny them insurance coverage for contraception to which it has “religious objections”? 

Since when do corporations have religion?

The ACA (Obamacare to some of you) does not require employers to provide insurance. Repeat....the ACA does not require employers to provide insurance. It has an individual mandate, not an employer mandate. So the ACA is not requiring Hobby Lobby to provide insurance, ergo they are not forcing them to provide birth control.

The federal law does require virtually all group health-insurance plans to include coverage for various preventive services, including 18 forms of FDA-approved birth control. So if Hobby Lobby decides to provide health insurance coverage they are required to provide the same standard of coverage everyone else offers. If Hobby Lobby so badly doesn't want their employees to get birth control coverage they can let them get their own coverage through the ACA and/or choose to pay them a decent enough wage to buy their own insurance (crazy idea). If they don't offer health insurance, the ACA imposes a tax, and they can avoid that tax if they offer a health insurance plan to their employees. It is a circular situation, but they do have a choice. 

Back to my “since when do corporations have religion?” statement. This place is already nuts with granting free speech money rights to corporations.....I mean, PLEASE let there remain a significant difference in rights and recognition of citizens and corporations. This is another step in the direction of losing our voting power and our citizenship rights to corporations. There will be the fifty states and their electoral colleges completely outweighed by a state the size of Canada wanting the name of Corporanna. 

That disgusting statement by Hobby Lobby bemoaning that they don't want to make healthcare decisions for their employees is not only a lie, but shows their desire for a corporation’s rights be given preference over the concern for an employee’s rights. The employee's right to privacy, for instance.  And how about the idea that an employee should not have to follow the religion of their employer? Does that not even occur to them? We have hopefully established that our government does not have the right to dictate an individual’s religious beliefs. So, instead, are we going to allow them to be dictated by corporations? Where is this leading? Denying of service to gay couples because of a business’s “faith”? (yep). Denying employment to an unmarried pregnant woman? Remember 1983?  That is when the IRS had decided it would no longer give tax subsidies to racist schools and Bob Jones University argued to the Supreme Court that this could not constitutionally be applied when the racial discrimination was based on "sincerely held religious beliefs".  Thankfully the Supreme Court did not side with them. If the Supreme Court sides with Hobby Lobby on this one, they will be effectively siding with Bob Jones University.....just in its corporate persona.

I just had to vent. Thank you.

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