GOP War on Women Goes Nookyular
Yesterday, President Obama handed the Republicans their asses — again:
After two solid weeks of Republicans rapidly escalating attacks on contraception access under the banner of “religous freedom,” Obama finally announced what the White House is proposing an accomodation of religiously affiliated employers who don’t want to offer birth control coverage as part of their insurance plans. In those situations, the insurance companies will have to reach out directly to employees and offer contraception coverage for free, without going through the employer.
Instead of re-evaluating its attempt to turn contraception into a wedge issue — after all, Fox News (yes that Fox News) published a poll that found 61% of Americans approve of “requiring employer health plans to cover birth control for women.” — the GOP, led by Missouri Senator Roy Blunt (R-Crazytown) has decided to double-down on the War on Women.
Blunt has introduced an amendment to the PPACA which would allow employers to deny any preventive health services (including breast cancer screening, depression screening, and diabetes screening), under the guise of religious freedom and respecting the right of conscience of insurers, plan sponsors and healthcare providers, among others. Apparently, that’s the new meme: Insurance companies are now having their religious freedom infringed. Somebody save them! (I wrote about that nonsense yesterday.)
From Think Progress:
Despite Obama’s decision to shield nonprofit religious institutions from offering birth control benefits, next week Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) is expected to offer an amendment that would permit any employer or insurance plan to exclude any health service, no matter how essential, from coverage if they morally object to it:
(6) RESPECTING RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE WITH REGARD TO SPECIFIC ITEMS OR SERVICES —
“(A) FOR HEALTH PLANS. — A health plan shall not be considered to have failed to provide the essential health benefits package described in subsection (a) (or preventive health services described in section 2713 of the Public Health Services Act), to fail to be a qualified health plan, or to fail to fulfill any other requirement under this title on the basis that it declines to provide coverage of specific items or services because —
“(i) providing coverage (or, in the case of a sponsor of a group health plan, paying for coverage) of such specific items or services is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the sponsor, issuer, or other entity offering the plan; or
“(ii) such coverage (in the case of individual coverage) is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the purchaser or beneficiary of the coverage.
Under the measure, an insurer or an employer would be able to claim a moral or religious objection to covering HIV/AIDS screenings, Type 2 Diabetes treatments, cancer tests or anything else they deem inappropriate or the result of an “unhealthy” or “immoral” lifestyle. Similarly, a health plan could refuse to cover mental health care on the grounds that the plan believes that psychiatric problems should be treated with prayer.
The amendment would also permit individual purchasers of insurance to opt-out of coverage if their tiny mental Jesus tells them to, thus undermining the point of insurance which is to pool risk.
I poked around the intertrons to find what sorts of treament fall under the rubric of preventive health services and found a list:
- Abdominal aortic aneurysm screening: men
- Alcohol misuse counseling
- Anemia screening: pregnant women
- Aspirin to prevent cardiovascular disease: men
- Aspirin to prevent cardiovascular disease: women
- Bacteriuria screening: pregnant women
- Blood pressure screening in adults
- BRCA screening, counseling about
- Breast cancer preventive medication
- Breast cancer screening
- Breastfeeding counseling
- Cervical cancer screening
- Chlamydial infection screening: non-pregnant women
- Chlamydial infection screening: pregnant women
- Cholesterol abnormalities screening: men 35 and older
- Cholesterol abnormalities screening: men younger than 35
- Cholesterol abnormalities screening: women 45 and older
- Cholesterol abnormalities screening: women younger than 45
- Colorectal cancer screening
- Dental caries chemoprevention: preschool children
- Depression screening: adolescents
- Depression screening: adults
- Diabetes screening
- Folic acid supplementation
- Gonorrhea prophylactic medication: newborns
- Gonorrhea screening: women
- Healthy diet counseling
- Hearing loss screening: newborns
- Hemoglobinopathies screening: newborns
- Hepatitis B screening: pregnant women
- HIV screening
- Hypothyrodism screening: newborns
- Iron supplementation in children
- Obesity screening and counseling: adults
- Obesity screening and counseling: children
- Osteoporosis screening: women
- PKU screening: newborns
- Rh incompatibility screening: first pregnancy visit
- Rh incompatibility screening: 24-28 weeks gestation
- STIs counseling
- Tobacco use counseling and interventions: non-pregnant adults
- Tobacco use counseling: pregnant women
- Syphilis screening: non-pregnant persons
- Syphilis screening: pregnant women
- Visual acuity screening in children
As you can see, much of the preventive health care services affect women exclusively. Any of these preventive services could be denied for whatever cockamamie religious reason can be contrived.
It would be easier of the Republicans just drowned every third woman in a lake.
***Read the full amendment here. You can read more about preventive health services here.
[via Think Progress]
[cross-posted at ABLC]
Trentrunner
True. But before we all start suckin’ each others’ dicks over Obama’s brilliant political maneuvering (and I agree it was), let’s hear from the incomparable Digby:
“
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[Both paragraphs are Digby. FYWP]
shortstop
They know the PPACA won’t be overturned and they are turning their efforts to chipping away at it and bleeding it to death. This is going to be their MO from now on. The women-bashing and poor people-baiting is just a way to get the base to buy in and be distracted from the fact that by supporting this, they’re badly compromising their own healthcare.
Mark S.
I was wondering the other day: If Tom Cruise is your boss, could he claim that psychiatry offends his religious beliefs and insist that insurance plans not cover that for his employees? I guess the goopers have answered that a resounding yes.
Trentrunner
And this all began with that awful Hyde Amendment that “No abortions shall be paid for with federal dollars.”
That was the foot in the door to these “conscience” exceptions, and we’ll keep paying the price in a culture where “religious” values and positions overrule individual liberty.
geg6
You have got to be kidding me. No, I know you aren’t but I don’t even have words for this.
Wait, yes I do. Fuck Roy Blunt. Fuck the Catholic Church. Fuck religion, of all kinds. Fuck the GOP. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
It’s war on these bastards. Serious, real war. They want to kill us and we are sitting around and letting them. I’m ready to take it to them. If they think liberals don’t have guns, they’ve got a real surprise coming.
Seanly
@Trentrunner:
Digby rocks. I should read her more often.
And FWIW, I am just getting sicker & sicker of Republican politicians and all these “moral” hardline Catholic-dominated conservopundits.
KS Boy
This is a little OT but what about lets say, a 7th Day Adventist, backed org decides they won’t pay for blood transfusions,or maybe some other bunch doesn’t want to pay unless there is a “prayer vigil”? Do we then pay as a group for those doing the praying? It seems like as soon as we inject ANY religious rules, beliefs, practices into ANYBODIES insurance coverage or copay allowances etc then where do we stop?
martha
Just wondering, can men get vasectomies paid for via their Catholic-institution funded insurance policies? Do Catholic hospitals perform vasectomies? Enquiring minds want to know.
boss bitch
What part of “Corporations are people, my friends” do you not understand ABL? It totally makes sense.
Mnemosyne
@Trentrunner:
You know, I keep seeing people who say that this somehow empowered the Church even more, and I just don’t see it. They’ve been getting their way on this crap for at least 15 years (probably longer) and this is the very first time that anyone in the government has said “no” to them.
And I thought it was pretty clever to take the decision away from the employer that claimed to have a “conscience” and give it instead to the insurance companies, who everyone knows don’t have a conscience at all, so they’re not going to be able to come up with any objection.
Lurker
Fuck it. I just set up a $15/month recurring donation to Planned Parenthood. It’s not much, but it’s a start. Women need health care.
MattF
I could come up with snark, outrage, even concern trolling about all this– but I’m really just baffled. Who, in winger-land, actually thinks this is a good idea? What the fuckety-fuck is going on here?
Redshift
@Trentrunner: Much as I respect Digby, I have to disagree. All of her counterexamples involve taxes, and for all the cries about “fungibility,” no one is ever going to make much headway trying to stop something because their tax money goes to it indirectly. (Yes, there’s the Hyde Amendment, but that’s been largely static for thirty-five years, not the beginning of a trend.)
I actually find it encouraging that they had to frame this issue as government “forcing” them to “spend their own money” to get any traction at all. That left a relatively easy out for the administration to address what they claimed they were concerned about, while not giving in on what they actually wanted.
boss bitch
@Trentrunner:
The churches didn’t gain anything here. Women still have access to birth control. Free birth control or with no co-pay.
Jay C
I think efg @ #1 is right: this looks mainly like the sort of base-pandering grandstanding GOP Reps and Senators seem to specialize in these days. There’s not much of a downside for creatures like Sen. Blount to push for all the “conscience exemption” crap: it makes him look all pious and principled and stuff to the Jump-for-Jesus crowd back home; lets him rail against the Evil Godless Obama Administration on the RWNM; and even if his bill gets shot down in committee, lets him tsk-tsk over it in his next fundraising letter.
The real danger is that these medievalish cretins might take control of the Senate after the next election cycle, thus leaving an Obama veto the only shield between having these backward proposals actually become law/regulations.
Redshift
@efgoldman: Nah, that was Dan Burton.
Judas Escargot
They tried this, but the ones guilty of witchcraft tend to float.
feebog
You know, I used to read and comment on Digby’s blog all the time. I finally just got tired of her emphasizing the black cloud rather than the silver lining:
I think the whole flap will blow over in about a week and most voters will never give it a second thought. Instead of fretting over whether this issue has given the Red Beanie Brigade additional moral authority, we should be pointing out that the Catholic clergy has no credibility on this issue. When 98% of catholic women are ignoring the church doctrine and using contraception, why should anyone else give a damn? I have yet to hear anyone on the left make this argument, even though they have pointed out the 98% statistic on a number of ocassions.
jonas
You know, all this goes back to allowing women to have the vote in the first place. Any bets on when we’ll start seeing some GOP loon raise the question of whether or not the 19th Amendment should be reconsidered?
(On a side note, the debate over the 19th Amendment also contained a number of striking parallels to the current debate over same-sex marriage.)
Judas Escargot
@jonas:
This joke has been going around all week, but there really is a grain of truth in it. Keep upping that ante, and this is where they have to end up eventually.
IMO the general public’s Overton window hit the stops sometime last year. But the GOP, apparently unaware of this, keeps on pushing.
Brachiator
Corporations are people. And they clearly have religious consciousnesses. Corporations are also, apparently, inherently male, and do not have vajayjays.
pseudonymous in nc
I take Digby’s point — though yes, she is now able to find the cloud in every silver lining — but the reality is that the Catholic medical-industrial complex is large and expanding, and they’re going to be a big part of the delivery side of healthcare reform.
The nuns who lead the actual administration seem comfortable with Obama’s proposal, and they matter more in practical terms than the Red Beanie Brigade, even if they technically have to heed the bishops’ bloviating.
Karmakin
Like it or not directly attacking the privilege of religious institutions directly is a horrible political move. It’s something that needs to be more subtly undermined, basically allowing them to be seen as the bad guys.
Giving them enough rope to hang themselves on, in other words.
JoyfulA
@martha: No, Catholic hospitals don’t do vasectomies, at least our local one doesn’t, as a friend found out to his surprise.
Villago Delenda Est
@pseudonymous in nc:
In the past, they’ve openly defied the red beanies. Performing therapeutic abortions when the life of the mother was at stake and the fetus was not viable, and would have died regardless, taking the mother with it. Still they got slapped by the beanies, even though they were saving the incubator for another day.
Scott
This is not a war on just women. It is a war for the right of any large organization to deny freedom to individuals. They argue that corporations can control your lifestyle (smoking, eating, drinking) because they are paying for it. Religious organization can control your private life even if you are not part of their theology. One of the Pauls said that the Civil Rights Act denied the right of private business to deny goods or services to blacks. And people are afraid of the Government? What is the difference between the power of the religious organization, corporations, organized crime, or government to control the actions of the individual. The Founding Fathers understood that you had to divide power. The so-called conservatives are so radical they are un-American.
How far is this going to go? I hope these people get their head handed to them. The big organizations shouldn’t have rights; only people should have rights.
Scott
@Jay C: I think the “conscience exemption” is totally bogus. If a pharmacist doesn’t want to hand out birth control or morning after pills, he can exercise his right by quitting. Unfortunately, these people want to exercise their “rights” by taking away other people’s rights. They don’t have the courage of their convictions and are not willing to pay a price to exercise their convictions.
General Stuck
Wingnuts are taking the whole “fungibility” thingy about tax dollars to stretch over anything they don’t like. Kinda like some of us half funning around about our tax dollars going to fund the war in Iraq. It is an ancient tact, and they can play that game all day long, but it is a loser if they are trying to seriously convince anyone that general subsidies under the ACA are going to fund contraception, or abortion, or whatever the wedge issue of the day is.
But then they aren’t too bright, and they have nothing much else in the way of ideas to offer the American people. So it’s the hated ACA’s turn to weather the current storm of stupid in a campaign silly season. Maybe like pre SCOTUS shelling to soften up the battlefield of public opinion, in hopes that will embolden the robed wingnuts to kill the HCR dead as Caesar. OR maybe they just don’t have anything better to do.
Lizzy L
I agree, Roy Blunt’s amendment is unlikely to get out of committee, and if it does, it will not get enacted. This theater. But somebody should inform Senator Blunt that insurance companies don’t have consciences, because they are not people. Only human beings have consciences. And I’m beginning to wonder about the functionality of Senator Blunt’s…
Jamie
I will insure you. This insurance promises that if you get sick, you will die. Burial coverage, no, we don’t provide that. We are actuarial experts, trust me, this is a good plan. It only costs $245 a month*, and your employer gets a tax break. Deal?**
*that is what my high deductible, single provider plan costs my employer, but see footnote 2, your mileage most likely varies.
** except it doesn’t cost that, and it is close to impossible to figure out what employers actually pay, but that is the number you’ll hear when you ask for a raise. Also, the deal is, take the job, or be unemployed and uninsured.
Suzan
Ann Coulter has said women should not vote because “women have no capacity to understand how money is earned”. She’s actually said it many times.
As for the 98% of catholic women use birth control statistic, doesn’t that mean 98% of catholic men use birth control too? I think we should make that point more clearly too. All those male talking heads last week scolding Obama and talking about the church’s moral authority (?) I wanted to scream: You are benefiting from the use of contraceptives so shut up! Do any of them stop to think how much sex they’d get if women stopped taking the pill? Or how many preggers girlfriends they would have?
gregorkent
@JoyfulA: Fortunately virtually all vasectomies can be done as an office precedure so it should not be too difficult to find a provider unaffiliated with Catholic health care.
MosesZD
When Obama comprimised and I was snarky about it, yesterday, I got a bunch of crap. And, today, here we are experiencing the very forseeable reason I was snarky…
Obama, who has got to be the most inept stratagist-negotiator I’ve ever seen in politics, should have known what was to follow. I did. Most people I knew did.
Therefore, there was no point in compromising. It is a basic fact of life that these people are so fucked up they will not be happy until we’re all living in mud huts praying 24/7 and blaming liberals for the collapsed economy, lack of opportunity and 32-year life expectancy thanks to the crushing poverty in which we’ll all be experiencing as they turn us into a third-world country.
They won’t intend us to be that way… It’s just they’re stupid, short-sighted, crazy and pander to the dumbest possible people and their solutions… Kind of like the management of Sears, only with extra Jesus and hate…
And, sure enough, that DAY, this stuff started.
MosesZD
@Mnemosyne:
He didn’t say no. He back off and said he’d make new rules for insurance companies.
What part of this was a 100% win for the Catholic Dress Club do you not understand? It further legitimized their power and influence, if only in their minds. It was a step-back from respecting the Constitution.
And it gained nothing, because as soon as Obama moved the goal post for them, they moved the goal posts again…
Sammi
Some states test all pregnant women for HIV. HIV screening of pregnant women is to get life-saving medications to the HIV+ women and their developing fetuses. Given early enough, the anti-viral medications have been very effective in preventing prenatal transmission. If the 8-week old embryo is an “innocent person” fully deserving of protection, then why would the so-called conscientious objectors not want prenatal testing for the fetuses?
General Stuck
Say what? You mean seeing that the wingnuts made fools out of themselves over hating on women’s health in an election year. And now they are doubling down. Did you watch his press conference and the profound commitment to women’s issues that came from a resolute heart like no other POTUS I have ever seen, to not actually ever compromise on providing health services for women. That was golden when half the voters are women. Who gives a shit if dollars were shuffled around on paper to give the godbotherers/republicans a fig leaf. And now they are stupidly going back for more alienation of the female electorate. There was no compromise on anything that mattered. Just like most all of Obama’s so called caves/compromise people like you scream about. Jeebus, we need to get new firebaggers.
Mnemosyne
@MosesZD:
No, what he said was that prescription birth control coverage is going to be folded in with coverage for ALL prescriptions, so the only way that the church can avoid covering contraception is to not offer health insurance at all, because the ACA says you can’t offer a health insurance plan that doesn’t include prescription coverage.
How was it a 100% win if they didn’t get what they said they wanted? They wanted to be able to deny birth control to their female employees, and they failed. Their female employees are still going to get it, and there’s not a damn thing they can do about it.
Wow, that sure is some loss for the Obama administration — the red beanies failed to get what they wanted, but Obama appeared to make a meaningless compromise, so the red beanies won! Somehow! Honest!
Mnemosyne
@MosesZD:
By the way, this “loss” includes a public statement from the head of the Catholic Health Association (which oversees all of the hospitals the bishops were whining about) saying that she is “very pleased” with the compromise and feels that it protects the hospitals’ religious freedom while still allowing women to have full access to healthcare.
But I guess the fact that the head of the CHA is making a public stand against the bishops is just more proof — PROOF! — that this was a total loss, amirite?
Bex
@efgoldman: No, that was Dan Burton a Republican congressman from Indiana. I believe he recently announced his retirement. But you’re right, he is a bag o’hammers.
grandpa john
@Karmakin: True, but nobody attacked the privilege of religious institutions . this is about all businesses that hire people conforming to the law of the land.Religion doesn’t excuse you from that
Tyro
@feebog: No kidding. Ironically, digby was one of the best writers out there during the Bush administration, but I feel her blog has gone downhill starting with the 2008 presidential primaries.
Tyro
Obama, who has got to be the most inept stratagist-negotiator I’ve ever seen in politics, should have known what was to follow.
That’s true, but this time he negotiated correctly– he make an opening offer that appeared to lay down the line. He allowed the outrage to fester, creating a “path for retreat” he could take on “religious liberty”. He “compromised” with an offer that addresses all those “religious liberty” concerns without actually changing the parameters or outcomes of the policy. The only thing his opponents have left to argue about is over contraception, which is a losing battle for them.
It was precisely the sort of negotiation I wish I had seen from him on a regular basis.
Brachiator
@MosesZD:
Hah!
The GOP claims that Obama is a diktator turning the country into Kenyuropa. So he should not have compromised, and proved their point.
Do your friends play poker?
General Stuck
@Tyro:
This situation did not involve needing a vote in congress, and that is a whole different equation. Why do we need to go through this nonsense on blogs with ‘I coulda done it better’ . no you could not, and neither could I.
the republicans were completely irrelevant until this year, and before the only negotiations were with other democrats in congress. And that is also a different thing than dealing with the oppo party to get votes to pass bills. Still, we got the best HCR bill that the dem party negotiated with itself. No one else had ever done that.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
Almost, not quite there.
That’s probably right, since how else can they keep screwing everyone, in the ass.