Submitted by: Suzanne
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obamacare-regulation-effectively-bars-catholics-owning-health-insurance-companies
Obamacare Regulation Effectively Bars Catholics from Owning Health Insurance Companies
July 2, 2013 - 4:39 AM
Pope
John Paul II reiterated the Catholic teaching that abortion is murder
and Catholics cannot cooperate in it in his 1995 encyclical letter
Evangelium Vitae. (AP Photo/Plinio Lepri)
(CNSNews.com) - The final version of Obamacare’s “preventive
services” regulation that the Department of Health and Human Services published on Friday
discriminates against faithful members of the Roman Catholic Church by
effectively barring them from owning and operating health-insurance
companies.
This is because the regulation orders health insurance companies to
provide sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs to
all female beneficiaries except those insured by “religious
employers”--which, according to the regulation, includes only actual
“houses of worship” (n.b. parish churches), their immediate auxiliaries,
associations of houses of worship and the “exclusively religious
activities of any religious order.”
The Catholic Church teaches that sterilization, artificial
contraception, and abortion are intrinsically immoral. The church also
teaches that Catholics are not allowed to cooperate in evil acts such as
abortion--which the church says is a form of murder.
Under the final regulation, even Catholic organizations such as
Catholic hospitals, universities and charities are not counted as
“religious employers.”
Thus, if a Catholic university wanted to seek out and do business
with a health-insurance company whose owners ran their company wholly in
keeping with Catholic teachings, the university would not be allowed to
do so because all insurance companies providing health insurance to
Catholic universities will now be required to pay for sterilizations,
contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs for the employees of those
universities.
When the final version of the regulation was proposed earlier this year, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) presented comments
to the Department of Health and Human Services pointing out that the
regulation would require insurers who had conscientious objections to
the mandated services to nonetheless provide them.
Pope Benedict XVI (L'Osservatore Romano)
“Those without an exemption or accommodation include
conscientiously-opposed individuals, for-profit employers (whether
secular or religious), nonprofit employers that are not explicitly
religious organizations (even in cases where their objection is
religious in nature), insurers, and third-party administrators,” the
USCCB said in comments dated March 20, 2013. “Respect for their
consciences demands some adequate legal protection, but under the
current proposed regulation they have none.”
“In addition,” said the USCCB in its March 20 comments, “the proposed
regulation fails to recognize the religious and moral objection of
insurers and third-party administrators (TPAs). All insurers and
third-party administrators will be required to provide, or administer
and arrange for, respectively, a plan with contraceptive coverage, with
the narrow exception of insurers and TPAs that serve only exempt
‘religious employers.'”
The regulation defines as “religious employers” only those that fall
under Section 6033(a)(3)(A)(i) and (iii) of the Internal Revenue
Code—the aforementioned houses of worship, their immediate auxiliaries,
associations of houses of worship, and religious orders.
In the final regulation that HHS issued Friday, a non-profit
organization that “holds itself out as a religious organization”—such as
a Catholic hospital, university or charity--can “certify” that it
objects to providing sterilizations, contraceptives and
abortion-inducing drugs in its health-care plan. But that does not
exempt that Catholic organization from facilitating coverage for these
things for its employees—nor does it exempt the Catholic organization’s
insurance provider from paying for these things.
In fact, under the regulation, if a Catholic hospital, university or
charity refuses to buy coverage for the objectionable services, the
regulation affirmatively commands that the health insurance company
providing coverage to the organization must provide the organization's
employees and their dependents with free sterilizations, contraceptives
and abortion-inducing drugs. If the “religious organization”
self-insures, the regulation requires that the third-party administrator
for the self-insurance plan must either pay directly for the
objectionable services or “arrange” for an insurance company to do
so—also free of charge to the employees and their dependents.
The regulation says the government will give insurance companies
discounts from the fees they pay to participate in the
government-sponsored insurance exchanges to compensate them for the
direct payments they make to cover sterilizations, contraceptives and
abortion-inducing drugs for the employees of religious non-profits such
as Catholic hospitals, universities and charities.
An insurance company that refuses on moral and religious grounds to
pay for abortion-inducing drugs is barred by the regulation from taking
as customers individual private citizens, for-profit corporations and
their employees, non-religious non-profits and their employees, and
religious non-profits and their employees.
The Catholic Church has always taught that abortion takes the life of
an innocent human being, and that Catholics cannot cooperate in it. In
modern times, the church has made clear that this extends to abortions
carried out by pharmaceutical, rather than surgical, means.
“But no word has the power to change the reality of things: procured
abortion is the deliberate and direct killing, by whatever means it is
carried out, of a human being in the initial phase of his or her
existence, extending from conception to birth,” Pope John Paul II wrote
in the 1995 encyclical letter Evangelium Vitae.
“The moral gravity of procured abortion is apparent in all its truth
if we recognize that we are dealing with murder,” the pope said.
Pope Francis (AP Photo)
“The deliberate decision to deprive an innocent human being of his
life is always morally evil and can never be licit either as an end in
itself or as a means to a good end,” declared the pope. “It is in fact a
grave act of disobedience to the moral law, and indeed to God himself,
the author and guarantor of that law; it contradicts the fundamental
virtues of justice and charity. ‘Nothing and no one can in any way
permit the killing of an innocent human being, whether a fetus or an
embryo, an infant or an adult, an old person, or one suffering from an
incurable disease, or a person who is dying. Furthermore, no one is
permitted to ask for this act of killing, either for himself or herself
or for another person entrusted to his or her care, nor can he or she
consent to it, either explicitly or implicitly. Nor can any authority
legitimately recommend or permit such an action.’”
The pope said that all human beings have both a duty and a right to
refrain from cooperating with evil acts like the taking of an innocent
life.
“Christians, like all people of good will, are called upon under
grave obligation of conscience not to cooperate formally in practices
which, even if permitted by civil legislation, are contrary to God's
law,” he wrote. “Indeed, from the moral standpoint, it is never licit to
cooperate formally in evil. Such cooperation occurs when an action,
either by its very nature or by the form it takes in a concrete
situation, can be defined as a direct participation in an act against
innocent human life or a sharing in the immoral intention of the person
committing it.
“This cooperation can never be justified either by invoking respect
for the freedom of others or by appealing to the fact that civil law
permits it or requires it,” said the pope.
“Each individual in fact has moral responsibility for the acts which
he personally performs; no one can be exempted from this responsibility,
and on the basis of it everyone will be judged by God himself.
“To refuse to take part in committing an injustice is not only a
moral duty; it is also a basic human right,” he said. “Were this not so,
the human person would be forced to perform an action intrinsically
incompatible with human dignity, and in this way human freedom itself,
the authentic meaning and purpose of which are found in its orientation
to the true and the good, would be radically compromised. What is at
stake therefore is an essential right which, precisely as such, should
be acknowledged and protected by civil law. In this sense, the
opportunity to refuse to take part in the phases of consultation,
preparation and execution of these acts against life should be
guaranteed to physicians, health-care personnel, and directors of
hospitals, clinics and convalescent facilities. Those who have recourse
to conscientious objection must be protected not only from legal
penalties but also from any negative effects on the legal, disciplinary,
financial and professional plane.”
In June 2012, the Catholic bishops of the United States unanimously
approved a statement declaring Obamacare’s
sterilization-contraception-abortifacient regulation a “violation of the
personal civil rights” of health insurers.
“The HHS mandate creates still a third class, those with no
conscience protection at all: individuals who, in their daily lives,
strive constantly to act in accordance with their faith and moral
values,” said the unanimous bishops.
“They, too, face a government mandate to aid in providing ‘services’
contrary to those values—whether in their sponsoring of, and payment
for, insurance as employers; their payment of insurance premiums as
employees; or as insurers themselves—without even the semblance of an
exemption.”
In their comments on the regulation in March, the bishops said that
the proposal continued to be “an unjust and unlawful mandate.”
Under this regulation, the only people who will be able to own and
operate health insurance companies in the general American marketplace
will be people willing to follow the Obama administration’s regulatory
command that they facilitate and pay for abortion.
Catholics cannot do that.
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