Yesterday's new adventure in damage control and bureaucratic improvisation makes the compliance problem much worse. There is simply no precedent for the government ordering private companies to offer a product for free, even if they recoup the costs indirectly. Why not do that with all health benefits and "bend the cost curve" to zero? The shape of the final rule when the details land in the Federal Register is anyone's guess, including the HHS gnomes who are throwing it together on the fly to meet a political deadline.
Ahh, but a wiser man would notice that down the road, that's the point of the exercise. That might give heart attacks to the WSJ's corporate readers, but for the 99% it's what the plan was all along.
Consider that the Catholic bishops have moved the goalposts again: now their objection is that the government is violating the First Amendment rights of any employer or employee who is Catholic with birth control coverage.
The statement released by the Catholic Bishops conference said the proposal requires "careful moral analysis," saying it did not appear to offer clear protection for self-insured religious employers or religious and secular for-profit and non-profit employers.
That's the real thrust of the game here. The Catholic Church is now saying that the only part of the Constitution that matters is "freedom of religious expression". And let's keep in mind if it were up to the church, birth control wouldn't exist at all.
If we apply the same WSJ logic to the Bishops' argument, we'd of course get "Why have secular government at all if anyone who is Catholic might object on religious and moral grounds to what the government does? That violates their religious liberties!"
And there are plenty of folks out there who wouldn't mind that lunatic outcome at all.
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