A planned rollback of employer contraception coverage would impact countless females. But the Trump administration doesnt care
Bosses and companies control many aspects of peoples lives, from their freedom to travel to their self-expression on social media to if theyre unlucky when they can go to the bathroom. Female workers are specially burdened to meet onerous, often conflicting expectations. Now the Trump administration is about to hand bosses even more control over an intimate field of those workers lives: their ability to decide if and when to have children.
According to a rules and regulations obtained by Vox, the Trump administration is planning a broad-spectrum rollback of employer contraception coverage requirements administered by the Affordable Care Act( ACA ). While contraceptive coverage is already somewhat circumscribed, it could be about to get much worse. It will take effect as soon as the Office of Budget Management approves the rule change and adds it to the federal register.
Under the ACA, also known as Obamacare, virtually all employer-provided health plans were required to cover a wide range of FD-Aapproved contraceptive methods at no out-of-pocket cost to the insured as a legitimate part of preventive care. There were exemptions for religious universities like churches. While understandable in the context of passing the ACA, this was an imperfect compromise that left the door open to further eroding of reproductive rights.
And erode they did. In 2014, the supreme court ruled 5-4 that a private, for-profit firm such as Hobby Lobby was exempt from the birth control coverage requirement, provided the company was closely held by overlords with a sincere religious dissent. It did not establish a decent protocol for determining a corporations seriousnes, probably because that would involve employing psychic powers to peer into a CEOs soul.
In addition to upholding the same bad science believed by the already-exempt churches IUDs and Plan B do not, as some erroneously reckon, make abortions, although they can prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus, which is the same to some people this decision grossly misinterpreted the human rights of religious freedom. Which, last I checked, did not include the right to impose ones religious beliefs on others via financial coercion.
It also blurred the line between religious the organizations and private corporations the latter of which already enjoyed many of the same legal protections as human being. In her scathing disagreement, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that it was a decision of startling breadth that represented a revolutionary repurposing of the religious exemption that would make havoc and extend yet more rights to corporations that were signified for people simply.
She also mentioned a so-called conscience amendment to the ACA that had been proposed and voted down by the Senate, which, as Senator Barbara Mikulski find, would have put the personal belief of both employers and insurers over the practice of medicine.
Fortunately, the scope of the Hobby Lobby ruling was somewhat limited, and did not mean an end to contraceptive coverage for these companies employees. As Ginsburg wrote, the administration has pick up the tab, an imperfect accommodation of bratty CEOs that however saved coverage. Not so with the GOPs 2017 drafted regulation change.
Essentially a return of the long-dead conscience amendment, the rule change would render broad-spectrum exemptions to any company or university claiming a religious objection to birth control coverage.( There are no such exemptions for other religiously controversial things like blood transfusions and Viagra; this is purely a discriminatory attack on womens health .) It would also extend to those great bastions of religious morality: insurance companies.
Companies would no longer be required to notify the governmental forces of their dissents, and the government would no longer be required to find a workaround. What this entails is that any employer or insurance company could soon be able to deny females contraceptive coverage, should they claim a religious dissent, and the administration has no longer pick up the slack. Expect CEOs across the ground to experience conveniently period religious arouses.
Given that the majority of insured Americans still get their healthcare through their employers, this could affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of women , not to mention the family members who depend on them.
Contrary to what the health secretary, Tom Price, claims, its not easy for everyone to meet their costs of pocket. According to Planned Parenthood, a 2010 survey found that more than a third of female voters have struggled to afford prescription birth control at some phase in “peoples lives”, and as a result, employed birth control inconsistently.
A 2016 Reuters survey found that women whose employers heeded the coverage mandate increased their use of birth control, especially long term, effective techniques like IUDs. And more effective techniques mean fewer unplanned maternities. Which, in turn, entails less stress in women lives, more financial security, and more bodily autonomy. And hypothetically, fewer abortions although that will be a moot point if abortion is restricted out of existence.
Of course, the best workaround for this problem( and most healthcare troubles, for that matter) is to take healthcare out of employers and insurers greedy hands with a government-funded, Medicare-for-all system. But until that happens, employer coverage of basic preventive care must be protected.
Like so much of the Republican agenda, this rule change represents a dual attack on womens and workers rights by an unholy alliance of aspiring theocrats and exploitative bosses. The ACLU is already scheming a suit. Other avenues of resist include writing your representatives, fully participate in street actions and forming unions to demand adequate , non-sexist health benefits.
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