Politics, Religion and Health Care: Let’s Count The Intelligent People

The contraceptive coverage for health insurance mandate the Health and Human Services department of the Obama Administration, has raised the hackles of numerous groups. Not surprisingly the politicians and many religious groups have seized upon this decision to sound the alarm about this being a direct and deliberate attach on religion and religious groups in America. Evoking the “attacking religion” card makes for good political theater, provides a sure-fire fund raising issue, and manages to avoid the real issue itself. It’s not often that politicians and their parties can engage with a topic that is so exemplary of a complete and absolute misunderstanding of our Constitutional freedoms.

The requirement for faith-based organizations and businesses to provide a health insurance plan that includes coverage of contraceptives and birth-control is a three or more party issue, and not a government versus religion two-party issue. The mischaracterization of this issue as between the government and religion ignores the more salient and precise legal, ethical and democratic principles that our Constitution would direct us to attend to. So let us count the people so are turning their blind mind’s eye to the political equivalent of entertainment television.

Politicians, the keepers of America’s moral compass, are rapidly seeking their way to the low points usually sought out by their fluid ethical principles. Just like rain on a road, the politicians are running to the left or right gutter carrying with them the pollution and waste littering society. The politicians are either insisting that requiring a religious-sponsored or founded business or organization to provide health insurance coverage that includes contraceptive treatment is a violation of a persons’ right to freely practice their religion, or that the government must protect women’s rights to choose. None of the politicians have seen the Constitutional light, the flame of freedom embodied in our highest laws. So our politicians get a thumbs down. They fail again. The politicians demonstrate yet again they don’t have the wisdom to fathom the basic intentions of the Founding Fathers to protect our individual freedoms.

Religions, the pillars of our society, are letting us all down by actively inserting the primacy of their judgment on acceptable public policy and our legal principles. The proud pharisees of the religious communities are presenting their views and beliefs as above the highest laws of the land, including the one that protects their right to hold and practice their particular faith. Their right to freely exercise their religious beliefs apparently includes their right to dictate what they allow another person’s freedoms and right to entail. If they follow their faith in serving the social good, they also get to restrict what anyone working with them is permitted to think, do or believe. Nope, religious groups are allowed to limit what their members are to believe and even do; but they cannot impose that judgment onto the rights of another, particularly outside the practice of their religion. Your freedom does not diminish mine, and for many of the Christian faiths I know that is a tenet of their faith.

Religious organizations beyond the direct practice of their faith such as charities, hospitals, schools and such are allowed to offer services to the public and demonstrate the values and morality of their beliefs through their good works. However, they cannot claim a level of authority over or jurisdiction over the rights or actions of their employees outside the work environment. Health insurance and coverage for the employees of such organizations is a benefit of the individual, of the person who that insurance protects and provides for. It is not the domain or realm of the religious organization or business that provides it to their employees. Since it doesn’t belong to them, and they are not responsible for health care treatments that the individual determines is in their own best interest; the faith-based organizations or businesses do not have the right to express their religion at the expense of an independent, free and private individual.

The media is quickly dispensed with. They only contribute to the noise, the misunderstanding, and the misdirection. If they can’t provide a sound analysis of the issue then we must dismiss their efforts to stoke the fires just to see the moths get attracted to the flames.

The answer is to address the issue. Does the government have the right to require that employees have a right of access to contraceptive coverage under their employer provided health care, it they desire it? Do not jump to the ‘freedom of religious expression’ question. Should an individual have the right to choose health care coverage that conforms to their views? If you think they do not, then be careful of going down the religious freedom argument road. The answer has to relate to the employee’s right, there is no religious question, issue or conflict here. If you think employees have no right to choose the nature of their coverage then religious freedom doesn’t come into play. So take the argument away and stop bothering people, focus on your real point. Employees don’t have these rights period.

If you think employees have the right to choose their coverage, but that it cannot abridge the rights of other persons’ religious beliefs then the problem is not with the law or the government’s rule. If your religious organization or business does not want to provide contraceptive coverage then don’t. You don’t have to pay for this type of coverage. All you need to do is give the employee a voucher to purchase a health care insurance coverage that they want on the open market. This approach does not require the religious entity from funding any activity of which they do not approve.

Keep the government out of your faith, and keep your faith out of someone else’s as the Constitution and the Bible teach us.