The worst part about watching President Obama and Secretary Sebelius sell the HHS mandate “compromise” — assuring us that there are ways besides playing your gee-tar on the MTV to get money for nothing — was that it doubled as a concise reminder of everything that sucks about Obamacare.
Companies will be forced to provide coverage for certain “essential” care without copays, if they provide health insurance at all. If they don’t they’ll pay a hefty fine. What comprises “essential” care is determined by “experts” and decreed by the Executive. Those experts and that executive have in fact decreed that abortifacients count as essential. For now (and as a matter of policy, not law) religious objectors can opt out, at which point that executive and those experts will force insurance companies to step in and cover those services for “free”. Though those insurance companies can, and will, raise premiums to offset the added cost (provided they get another okay from those experts and that executive), they will not be in danger of shrinking their client pool by doing so. Because it will be illegal not to buy their product.
We live in a world where we’re fighting a gross violation of religious conscience that is basically incidental to the ACA’s awesome (in the bad way) sweep — iron filings from the point at which The Broadsword of Obamacare smashed The Shield of Any Coherent Notion of a Constitutionally Limited Government of Enumerated Powers.
Have a great weekend, everybody!