Some religions don't believe in blood transfusions. If you need one, will your employer's religious beliefs determine if your health insurance will cover a necessary transfusion?
If your employer were a Christian Scientist, could s/he decide you don't need to have any health coverage at all?
Shouldn't all medical options be covered ---and then if an individual chooses not to use birth control or have a transfusion, the individual could refuse to use that benefit, not that person's boss?
I'm a senior citizen who will never need to use birth control again. I'm willing to have it in my health plan if it means that those people who want it or need it will have the option of using it or refusing to use it themselves.
Religious freedom should be an individual choice, not mandated by anyone else, not an employer, not anyone.
Medical decisions should be made by a patient with input from a doctor, not an employer.
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3 comments:
I think business owners shouldn't have to sacrifice religious values in forced compliance with a law that - were it not there - wouldn't make life prohibitively expensive. Also here are the results from the debates today http://www.pressreader.com/profile/Media_Mentions/bookmarks/birth_control
Tutrik,
The problem lies in that there are so many different religions and different sects in each of them, that the healthcare system would become a nightmare of individual objections. (There are thousands of Christian sects alone.)
If one employer can decide who gets what kind of health care, s/he may be stepping on the religious, philosophical, or ethical beliefs of many of his/her workers, thus preventing their free-exercise of their own beliefs, let alone stepping on workers' personal health care needs and/or decisions.
There are religions that don't believe in borrowing or lending money. Should an employer be able to prevent a worker from borrowing to buy a home because of his/her own religious take? (An employer could actually do that by refusing to verify a worker's employment status.) That employee's personal financial decision is no business of an employer. So why should an employer be permitted to make medical decisions for employees?
Think of all the things you pay for that you don't necessarily want, need or even approve of? That could be anything from unnecessary packaging to your tax dollars paying for the war in Iraq. Yet you know that there are crazy people who tamper with medications and that you want children to be protected with hard-to-open pill bottles and you know that tax dollars also go to educate our youth and repair roads, so most of us pay our taxes because it's the right thing to do. This is not that much different. So an employer is paying a little for some of its workers to have access to birth control, but also is getting a healthier workforce that keeps the business running.
As the sign says, many women use birth control pills to alleviate other health problems, not just for contraception.
One of my coworkers had terrible menstrual periods. She was nauseous and in so much pain for about a week of each month, that she could barely function. The doctor prescribed birth control pills to alleviate her symptoms, even though she was not having sex with anyone. Our employer benefitted because she was a more-productive worker.
If individuals don't want coverage for birth control (or any other medical procedure) based on their religious views, they can decide not to use that option. Then the money paid for birth control coverage will actually be used for something else, such as cancer treatment or maternity care.
Funny that only 70% favor employer insurance coverage of birth control when so many more women than that use it.
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