Birth Control

If it’s not your boss’s business, why do you expect him to pay for it?

…the Hobby Lobby decision opens the door for closely held companies to deny coverage of all forms of birth control if they can plausibly argue that doing so would violate their conscience. The decision doesn’t apply to large, publicly held corporations, but even if it did, it is unlikely that many companies would go down that path. And even if they did, birth control would not be “banned” – employees simply would have to pay for it themselves. The notion that denying a subsidy for a product is equivalent to banning that product is one of the odder tenets of contemporary liberalism.

The cognitive dissonance required to be a leftist must be quite painful.

48 thoughts on “Birth Control”

  1. If your boss pays for every sort of routine health care except for one, your boss is making it his business. Restricting a benefit when-and-only-when it concerns women’s reproductive choices is plainly intrusive and sexist.

    1. “If your boss pays for every sort of routine health care except for one”

      The female Hobby Lobby employees still have many other choices for birth control that are covered under their health insurance.

      1. Yes, and they may still have the option of the four that Hobby Lobby objects to (the court suggested that the administration provide the same workaround that it currently provides to employees of religious organizations). All the same, for an employer to single out its sexually active female employees in this way is intrusive and sexist.

        1. For the female employees to say they’re unwilling or unable to pay for the 4 out of 20 types of contraceptives that Hobby Lobby refused to pay for makes them seem weak and childish. If one of the 16 approved and funded methods isn’t good enough for them, that’s their problem.

        2. “to single out its sexually active female employees in this way is intrusive and sexist.”

          Why are you calling them sluts? Maybe they use birth control for medical reasons.

          1. The federal government (for which I work) health plan doesn’t pay for Viagra, which is $20 a pill. Is the federal government sexist and discriminatory?

        3. I’m going to flat out say it.

          This is the dumbest comment I’ve ever heard you say. Hobby Lobby refuses to offer every single type of birth control and this is sexist? You are such an ideologue. Your comment is not only stupid, but it is arrogant, narcissistic and selfish.

          The birth control is for recreational sex. Got it? It’s for screwing around. I’m not going to make any comparison to how my company may or may not pay for any of the accoutrements to accompany my recreational activity because it is so obvious that this is bullshit.

          You know what is sexist? That I don’t get free condoms with my health care plan. You realize how stupid that sounds?

    2. JIm, Hobby Lobby was NOT offering every sort of birth control (although their coverage covered, and continues to cover, 16 of 20 approved birth control drugs), they were being forced by this administration to expand their medical insurance coverage to include four abortifacients. They objected and sued, and SCOTUS agreed that a closely held corporation with a clear moral objection could not be forced to expand medical coverage in this manner.

        1. So, Jim–want to explain logically to me why you and the rest of the Hive have the right to force Hobby Lobby to provide birth control to employees?

          (Yes, I know it’s cruel of me to expect a State-cultist to explain some article of dogma using logic, but the entertainment value is better than bear-baiting.

          1. And of course Jim and the Hive have the right to determine what businesses are operating out of sexism, and bring the Mailed Fist down on their heads! It must be great to belong to a cult that empowers you to force other people to do stuff you want them to do.

          2. We’ve had this argument. Nobody is forcing Hobby Lobby to provide health care to their employees. Hobby Lobby could pay the tax for not providing health care – a tax assessed to prevent them from free-riding on responsible people. Hobby Lobby is also taking advantage of a (long-standing) tax write-off for providing coverage.

            Since Congress defines the tax code, they should be able to define what activity does and does not qualify for a given tax treatment. The law Congress passed to implement this bit of tax rule says, once one provides health insurance, it should be gender-neutral. If you’re covering erectile dysfunction and vasectomies, then you should cover birth control.

          3. Gerrib writes like a true Chicago thug. You don’t have to pay our prices, but we’ll make you pay something for being here.

          4. So Chris wants Christians to pay a special tax? Either renounce your faith or pay a tax? It seems that our country was set up with the intention of preventing this sort of bigoted tyranny.

        2. They aren’t abortifacients any more than the covered birth control drugs are.

          Apparently SCOTUS disagrees.

    3. If my boss provides me with a cellphone, he really gets to say what kind of phone I get. If my boss provides me with a computer, he gets to tell me what kind of computer I use. If my boss provides me with a car, he gets to say what kind of car I drive. When you are getting something from someone else, they get a say on what that something is.

      P.S. When you substitute the word boss with the word government in the above paragraph, the same thing applies. For instance, there are limits to what sort of foods one can buy with food stamps.

          1. A “paid vacation” equals “paycheck keeps coming even though I’m not at work.”

            So, if my boss pays me while I’m on vacation, does he get to tell me where I can go while on vacation?

          2. Yes, if he’s paying your airfare and hotel bills. I’m obtuse? I just defined the term “paid vacation” to mean “time off from work during which one is paid” and you’re back to airfare.

            One more time. If my boss gives me time off from work, during which time I shall continue to be paid, does that mean my boss can tell me where to spend that paid time?

          3. Chris, please don’t be such a fucking retard. Rand got the analogy right.

            By your definition, free health care is giving you paid sick leave to go to the Doctor and nothing more.

          4. It sounds suspiciously like Chris thinks an employee can use the money paid them for work to buy birth control and/or insurance.

          5. My point, Rand, is that paid time off is a benefit, and one in which we don’t normally allow the boss to dictate how we use. Health insurance is another benefit in which we didn’t normally let the boss dictate how we use. Except now, for some employees, we do allow such restrictions.

          6. All easily solved by repealing ACA and EMTALA and any other requirements that a business pay in anything but cash.

            If all employees were only paid with cash, there would be none of these questions.

            Employer pays for work completed. Employee can pick his own insurance and retirement plan and whatever else completely divorced from the place of employment.

          7. paid time off is a benefit, and one in which we don’t normally allow the boss to dictate how we use. Health insurance is another benefit in which we didn’t normally let the boss dictate how we use.

            We used to not dictate how the boss offered health insurance. Hell, we used to have a lot more freedom before Obama. But it is remarkable how you still don’t see the fallacy of your comparison of paid time off and health insurance.

            If we were to all agree that corporations must contribute to employee health, then your comparison would be the company matching HSA contributions and nothing more. Obamacare is much more disastrous than your comparison.

        1. He’s not actually paying for my vacation, he’s paying for the time I’m not working. He doesn’t get to tell me where to go on the vacation because he isn’t paying for that part. If he actually was paying for the vacation, then yes he’d get to tell me where to go.

          1. “Health insurance is another benefit in which we didn’t normally let the boss dictate how we use. Except now, for some employees, we do allow such restrictions.”

            Actually it’s a benefit that is restricted by the kind of plans the employer is willing to pay for. Hobby Lobby didn’t want to pay for plans that included the kind of birth control its owners had religious objections to.

    4. It strikes me that if your boss will pay for you to have kids, to have a vasectomy and
      pay for drugs like viagra, it’s a unique form of discrimination to interfere with
      a female employees decision to choose not to have children.

      I’m okay with all these republicans running around cheering for the Hobby Lobby
      decision. It’s just going to increase the gender gap in 2016.

      1. I’m okay with all these republicans running around cheering for the Hobby Lobby decision. It’s just going to increase the gender gap in 2016.

        The women’s vote has an expiration date. Thanks to its support for the huge national debt and unfunded liabilities. As well as its support for the Family Courts.

        1. For at least 20 years, the GOP has been losing the gender ballot.

          I don’t expect it to get better.

          1. Again you are completely wrong.

            Dems get the single woman vote. Republicans get the married woman vote. Look it up.

            Hitler also got the single woman vote. (Just an aside.)

      2. None of my male health care needs are mandatory coverages under Obamacare. Mandating that women, a demographic group Democrats are trying to appeal to through free government services, receive everything for free from their insurance company while at the same time not giving males equal access to gender specific health care needs isn’t discrimination against women but rather discrimination against men.

        Democrats claim to be for equality and equal treatment but in reality, they just favor demographic groups that they want votes from and then punish everyone else.

    5. “If your boss pays for every sort of routine health care except for one, your boss is making it his business.”

      This is the stupidest comment I’ve read in a long time.

      It does not make it his business what the employee takes. It does not restrict the employee in any way. The employee is free to take whatever pill they want. The employer is not asking to be informed about what the employee ingests.

      The employer is simply exercising the right to dispense the benefits they choose.

      Healthcare from your employer is a benefit – not a right. The employer can offer as much or little as they please.

      The employee gets to decide if the benefit is satisfactory. If it isn’t…they are free to seek employment elsewhere?

      Please spare us the high school debate team argument that the employee might not be able to afford them. BC is affordable to everyone.

      Can’t find a job elsewhere?

      Blame Obama.

      (It’s becoming increasingly clear to me why Obama doesn’t lift a finger to improve the economy)

  2. Thank you for making my point. I don’t want my boss to pay for my health care because it is NONE OF HIS BUSINESS unless it interferes with my job performance.

    So if her boss does pay for her birth control can he demand a complete report including how it is used?

  3. ‘The cognitive dissonance required to be a leftist must be quite painful.’

    Indeed. I didn’t have much interest in the Hobby Lobby case at first, but it has now caught my interest to see how it has brought the usual lice out of the woodwork, and it is amazing how Orwellian their rhetoric.

    1. Yes, they say they’re in favor of diversity except that of thought and belief. Anyone who disagrees with their dogma is labeled a racist or worse. They will attempt to get “unacceptable” people fired whenever possible.

      They say they’re in favor of free speech but then enact speech codes and enforce political correctness to stiffle unapproved (by them) speech.

      In other words, they lie a lot, probably even to themselves.

  4. Why is it that in order to be an employer, and have one’s nose in someone else’s business, one must be a male? Isn’t that counter to every other feminist ideal of equal treatment?

    So this whole issue is just an extension of the whole ‘glass ceiling’ argument, then? By not choosing to cover 4 out of 20 BC options, men are preventing women from moving up the corporate ladder by forcing them to choose to have unprotected sex, thereby relegating them to remain barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen?

    I just made that argument up out of the portion of my brain that allows for creative, hypothetical, ridiculous thoughts, but there’s another part of my brain that fears that such an argument has already been advanced by someone who actually believes it to be true.

    1. Ya, corporations cant be people but they can be men waging a war of patriarchy to prevent their female employees from working outside the home. I guess that means Democrats don’t view men as human beings either, which explains their new name for men, homo rapiens.

  5. The root problem is that our system is totally FUBAR. Employers shouldn’t be paying directly for your healthcare, period. They should just be paying you enough to get your own damned insurance.

    1. They should just be paying you enough to get your own damned insurance.

      There’s actually problems with that as well.

      1. Yes, and insurance should be insurance, not a maintenance contract. And, it should not be regulated to produce captive markets in individual states, and in other ways which raise the price well beyond what it otherwise would be.

  6. I didn’t think Chris Gerrib could get any less logical, but by golly he did it! What next–Baghdad Jim becoming even MORE of a State boot-licker? It must be the End of Days.

    1. Actually with the latest Drudge headlines, it kind of does feel like “The End of Days”.

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