MOBILESmart Bombs: Social issues enjoy revival
February 12, 2012 - Updated: 5:52 a.m.
So, what was this year in politics going to be about again? Oh yeah, jobs. Don’t feel bad if this slipped your mind after last week’s fast and furious battles over social issues.
The week started with Susan G. Komen for the Cure announcing that it would rescind its decision to cut off breast cancer screening funds to Planned Parenthood. Then the foundation’s vice president, a pro-life politician from Georgia, suddenly quit, which is odd, because Komen said this officer had nothing to do with a decision that had nothing to do with abortion.
It was during this debate that pro-lifers wondered why people were spending so much time on this issue when the economy needs so much attention.
Meanwhile in Olympia, the House of Representatives passed a historic gay marriage bill and sent it to the governor to sign. It was during this debate that opponents wondered why lawmakers were focused on this when the economy and the budget needs so much attention.
Finally, the Obama administration’s mandate that employers affiliated with religious institutions provide contraception coverage lit a fuse that is sure to burn until Election Day. On Friday, the administration announced an “accommodation” under which the mandate would switch to the insurers of these religious institutions.
It was during this debate that the gatekeepers of the nation’s top concern – the economy – intervened with a reminder. Not really. They instead joined the exaggerated wailing over “the assault on religious liberties.”
So either jobs can wait a while or the nation really can tackle more than one issue at a time.
Public OPtion Reborn? This birth control imbroglio is one of those “only in America” issues. That’s because we’re alone in tying employment to health care coverage. The drawbacks are the lack of portability (lose your job, lose your coverage), the acceptance of millions of uninsured people, and these “conscience” battles over what should be covered.
None of these is a concern under government-run plans in other nations. But a “Medicare for all” idea was shot down during the health care debates, so we’re stuck with the employer-based model. But if there were a public option under this system, women who were denied contraception coverage could make a choice that would keep the consciences of Catholic institutions clean.
Unfortunately, this was also shot down over the fear that private insurers couldn’t compete with a public option; therefore, the very foundation of the free-enterprise system would be shaken to its core.
I suppose the moral of this tale is that Americans worship at different altars and don’t fear the same demons.
For Whom the Bell Tolls. Some Catholic leaders are unhappy with the Obama administration’s compromise because they say there is no middle ground on birth control, which most of the church’s female parishioners use anyway. They want the mandate lifted for all employers so that a Catholic running a secular business can withhold contraceptives coverage.
As Anthony Picarello, general counsel for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said: “If I quit this job and opened a Taco Bell, I’d be covered by the mandate.”
First, I think that would be an excellent idea, because Picarello would discover that many fast food workers forgo their employers’ plans because they’re so skimpy. Perhaps that discovery would animate a secular region of his conscience. On the other hand, he should already know this since Catholic hospitals admirably spend huge amounts on charity care for the uninsured.
Second, he has a profound misunderstanding of the U.S. health care system. As Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic points out, government heavily subsidizes workplace coverage with favorable tax treatment. Absent that, most employers wouldn’t be in the health care business and paychecks would be higher. Under this subsidy, an employer is given an incentive to withhold some worker money to help buy a group insurance policy. Most employers also charge their workers a monthly amount to participate in the plan.
So by what nondivine right could Taco Bell manager Picarello exclude contraceptives coverage under a policy purchased in part with his female employees’ money? Now, if he wanted to buy a policy without government help, he could. But my guess is that a secular consideration would win that conscience battle.
Associate Editor Gary Crooks can be reached at garyc@spokesman.com or (509) 459-5026. Follow him on Twitter @GaryCrooks.
Gary Crooks wrote,
“Under this subsidy, an employer is given an incentive to withhold some worker money to help buy a group insurance policy.”
That is false. The “subsidy” goes to the worker, not the employer. That benefit is part of the employee’s compensation, but is exempt from his personal income tax. It makes no difference to the employer whether he pays that compensatIon in benefits or wages.
“So by what nondivine right could Taco Bell manager Picarello exclude contraceptives coverage under a policy purchased in part with his female employees’ money?”
“In part” is not good enough. The employer pays the larger part, and thus holds the controlling interest. The “nondivine right” is his natural right to spend his money on whatever he pleases. If employees don’t like the plan he offers, they can opt out.
“Now, if he wanted to buy a policy without government help, he could.”
The employer is not getting any government help. The employee is getting the help. And, no he couldn’t, under Obamacare or the laws of this state. He would be compelled to buy the type of policy dictated by those laws, no matter whose money he spends. In a free (and rational) economy he might opt to exclude contraceptive coverage because it is not an insurable risk. Neither is maternity coverage.
But of course, virtually no one today, and certainly no pol, has the slightest grasp of the concept and purpose of insurance.
@ gmorton, Well said.
@ garyc, nice try. . .
Healthcare is not a “right”. Healthcare consists of products and services someone has to pay for. That “someone” is the person that enjoys those products and services. Healthcare products and services are inherently the same as any other product or service - food, shelter, transportation, entertainment or anything else. Do you expect government (with money plucked from your neighbor’s pocket) to pay for those things on your behalf too? Oh, that’s right, many of you do think that way. . .
gmorton is right on another point: most of you have no clue regarding the concept and purpose of insurance. If your idea of health “insurance” were applied to car insurance, beyond coverage in the event of a covered loss, you’d expect regular maintenance and weekly car washes. And of course you’d expect someone else to pay for it. . .
Government interference in the healthcare and healthcare insurance industries has made both more expensive and the delivery of both more complicated.
The next frontier in government interference in healthcare (ObamaCare): making it more scarce.
^^^^^^^you two saved me so much time that now I’ve no excuse to not accompany the family to church….:-)
At the point where I no longer have a choice—that I am mandated to give my hard earned property (money) to comply with the law, it is no longer a privilege. If it is not a privilege under the law then it must be a right.
Dennis Patterson—Deer Park
Dennis says:
“… then it must be a right.” Really?
Man-made laws do not create real, legitimate rights. The best they can do is protect the ones that naturally exist.
Your “right” to partake of healthcare ends at your neighbor’s wallet. She has the right to keep her hard-earned cash rather that use it to provide your healthcare. Can you not see this? Shall she also provide your food, shelter and clothing? How about your transportation or phone. Your cable and internet?
Oh my bad…we already ARE “giving” those things to people… silly me.
Just a different way of saying what I was driving at. Pay would be higher without the subsidy. This subsidy upholds the current system. Without it, very few employers would do this. Without employer involvement, workers wouldn’t have to worry about their bosses’ heath politics.
And nowhere is it more complicated than in the United States, where we have to debate birth control and pretend the system is hewing to free markets.
Love to see this ideal system that is run like selling televisions and toilet paper. Anyone have an example? First world countries only.
We don’t sell electricity this way. Competitive transmission lines? Get government out it?
Shouldn’t be insurance. Agree with that. Doubt the insurance companies would agree, though.
Insurance model doesn’t work.
“Your ‘right’ to partake of health care ends at your neighbor’s wallet.”
Here in Washington State alone we’re all already covering a $1 billion annual short fall in medical care receipts. We’re doing this through inflated health care costs and insurance premiums.
I’ll say it again: We’re already paying this. So you’re just kidding yourself if you think you can keep your neighbor’s hand out of your wallet. It’s already in it.
The knee-jerk reply is to say, ‘Well then we should stop paying for other people’s health care! If they can’t afford it, then they don’t get it!’
My reply is; in practical terms that’s saying to a lot of people, ‘Go crawl off somewhere where we don’t have to watch your suffering.’
Remember the overwhelming negative reaction during that presidential debate when some of the audience yelled “Yes!” to the question ‘Should we deny care to those who can’t afford it?’
So in the real world, clearly the answer is not any variation of, ‘Your health care costs are not my concern. Go crawl off somewhere.’ Maybe that’s a solution in some libertarian utopia. But we don’t live in utopia.
In my opinion, the better solution is to make everyone carry as much of the burden as they can, even if they can only cover a small proportion. And the way to do that is to mandate insurance coverage for everyone.
garyc wrote,
“Without it, very few employers would do this.”
That’s still misleading. Very few employers *would be* doing it without the tax break, because very few employees would be interested in it. They’d take the money and buy their own insurance.
If that were to happen – if individuals bought their own insurance and paid for it out of their pockets – you can be sure all these politically-imposed mandates would disappear fast.
“We don’t sell electricity this way. Competitive transmission lines?”
We do sell electricity that way; we just don’t sell transportation of electricity that way, for the same reason we don’t sell transportation of anything else that way. We use public roads. Transmission lines, like roads, are public goods. Health care is not.
garyc wrote,
“Anyone have an example?”
We have thousands of examples, embracing everything from hamburgers to cell phones to big-screen teevees to skyscrapers to cruise ships.
“Everybody is doing it” is a fallacious form of argument. You don’t adopt a policy which is unsound in principle merely because populist pols elsewhere have adopted it. Free lunch schemes are always popular – and always destructive in the end (see Greece).
Jeffrey_Grey wrote,
“Here in Washington State alone we’re all already covering a $1 billion annual short fall in medical care receipts. We’re doing this through inflated health care costs and insurance premiums.”
Yes, because other gummint dictates command it. Obvious solution: repeal those.
Jeffrey_Grey wrote,
“‘Should we deny care to those who can’t afford it?’”
That is not a “we” question. It is a “you” question. How much charity care to provide, to whom, under what conditions, is a question for *you*, and every other moral agent, to decide for herself.
You’re approaching the issue on the assumption that society is a collective. It isn’t.
Jeff, you’re right back to gmorton’s leave ‘em die in the ER parking lot solution, again. Somebody will have to dispose of the corpses, of course. I’m sure they’d burn well in the Waste Of Energy incinerator.
BTW, just for grins, the Pope says health care is most certainly a human right (so long as it doesn’t include birth control, abortion even to save the life of the mother, etc.)
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/11/19/pope-is-no-tea-partier-benedict-backs-guaranteed-health-care-fo/
One of the most ridiculous concepts that gets bruited about is “conservative” this or that or “conservative” values. Why don’t these guys just say that it is all about religious activism? Or would telling that bit of truth would put the nation up in arms over the very idea that gvt should act on the behalf of religious agendas?
There are two ways in which gvt meddles with “religious freedom,” either it is asked to do so by religious activists; or it proceeds to do so by the stances it takes on abortion, gay marriage, stem cell research, etc.
But, just like the so-called “free market,” I fail to see how “free” religion is given 1. The various overt religious opinions voiced by GOP candidates or 2. How “outraged” the Catholic church got over being told, that as long as they are employers, they can provide birth control coverage. (Yet, they’d have no objection to Congress passing a law that basically guarantees one church doctrine can intrude on what other people choose or choose not to believe.) One objection I have to Gary Crook’s editorial? It should be The many sides of social engineering.
greenlibertarian wrote.
” … the Pope says health care is most certainly a human right.”
The Pope is badly mistaken. A common occurrence among popes.
Actually, GMorton, given the history of Roman Catholocism’s ties to secular gvt, the pope is simply reinforcing what those ties mean in the modern era.
It can come as no surprise, under the circumstances that Roman Catholics as a rule, turn to gvt and demand that gvt do this or that for their specific agendas. They have a very long history since St Augustine of wanting gvt to act on their behalf. Not always, however was it very beneficial.
gmorton,
At some point even you are going to have to realize that ‘charity and welfare but no free lunch’ isn’t a workable answer to the question.
You’re not going to make the problem of un-affordable health care go away simply by declaring it’s not your problem or trying to shift a $1 billion annual load off onto charity.
The expense exists and will continue to exist so long as people need health care they can’t afford. (And their numbers are steadily growing.) The expense will exist so long as this nation keeps a conscience and recognizes that ‘go die in the E.R. parking lot’ isn’t an acceptable response to the need. ‘Repeal the mandate’ simply doesn’t have anything like the support it would need to succeed. Bark at the moon about how offensive that is to your other-worldly libertarian dogma all you want. You might sway a few people who can be satisfied with dogma over real-world facts. But you’ll never sway the majority. So essentially you’re just wasting our time and your effort pontificating about a solution that isn’t a solution.
You cradle to grave, dependency facilitating psuedo-saints are going to drain this country to its demise. What are you going to do when we reach the tipping point between producers and leeches and the producers quit producing? I’m certainly not going to bust my ass only for you steal the fruits of my labor and give it away as you see fit. That’s for sure. The world will eventually stop loaning us money and we will go the way of Greece.
Socialism: a great idea until you run out of other people’s money.
Jeffrey_Grey wrote,
“The expense will exist so long as this nation keeps a conscience and recognizes that ‘go die in the E.R. parking lot’ isn’t an acceptable response to the need.”
Can’t find your way out of that collectivist *weltanschauung*, can you, Jeffrey?
Nations do not have consciences, Jeffrey. Only individuals do. But it is true that some individuals will always seek to impose the dictates of their consciences on other individuals by force, or carry out the commands of their consciences with other people’s money. And in this post-Constitutional Era, they often get away with it.
So tell me why ‘go die in the parking lot’ hasn’t come about?
Societies do act collectively. That’s the basis of society. Societies do have a conscience - it’s the collective result of the conscience of the majority of its constitutient members. Remember that presidential debate? Remember the groundswell - including among the candidates - against those who wanted ‘go die in the parking lot’ to be the national imperative? That groundswell was “society’s conscience” expressing itself.
Deny it if you want. But that won’t make the denial true.
It’s you who can’t find your way out of your belief that abstract dogma trumps reality. You state as an objective fact that which you only wish was true, but clearly isn’t since we can see the opposite going on all around us all the time.
Jeffy,
If you were a thousandth part as smart as you think you are, I’d nominate you for the Nobel Prize myself.
Gotta love your “people will be dying in the streets” straw man (and the many others).
Oh, what did the USA do before the creation of the welfare state, creation of the Dept of Ed, EPA, Dept of Energy and the rest of the bureaucratic state?? Oh, how did we survive? Thank heaven BHO is here to lead us to the promised land!
Jeffrey_Grey wrote,
“That groundswell was ‘society’s conscience’ expressing itself.”
No, Jeffrey. It was the expression of those individuals present who uttered it, (and who meant by it what you think they did) nothing more or less.
Societies do not have consciences, Jeffrey. That is a “category mistake.” Only individuals do, and for many of those individuals, their “consciences” operate only to the extent they can foist the costs of heeding them off onto someone else.
“Gotta love your “people will be dying in the streets” straw man (and the many others).”
I gotta love the fact that you’ve been challenged to answer the question so many times - and failed in each attempt (‘charity and welfare but no free lunch!’) - that you’re now reduced to branding the crucial question a strawman.
“Nations do not have consciences, Jeffrey. Only individuals do.”
But nations, being composed of individuals who act upon their consciences, have - in aggregate - the conscience of the majority. Nations therefore have consciences. (By proxy, if you insist. But that’s a distinction with no practical, real-world significance.) Play your definitional games all you want. In the end you’ll still be asserting a flawed abstract against the real world fact we can all observe.
“Oh, what did the USA do before the creation of the welfare state, creation of the Dept of Ed, EPA, Dept of Energy and the rest of the bureaucratic state??”
We put up with the harm, inequality and inefficiencies those agencies were created to correct - created, I might add, by the mandate of the people acting collectively through our participatory form of government. Are those agencies perfect in concept and execution? No. Nothing fallible man can create is perfect. Could they be improved upon and in some cases significantly reduced in scope and power? Certainly. Does all of that prove that we must do away with the bureaucratic state? No. Swinging to the other polar extreme - the extreme that time and again you have made clear you dream of - would only allow the harms, inequalities and inefficiencies to again assert themselves and as a society working collectively, we’d just have to re-invent the wheel to again address them.
And it’s not that I arrogantly believe myself to be that much smarter than anyone else, gmorton. But I am smart enough to know when someone states opinions and abstractions as facts and then tries to assert those ‘facts’ against the objective real world. And I am ‘arrogant’ enough to dare to call you on it every time you try to do so.
What I find amazing in this entire argument, just how many of you people would have been prepared to argue that the bible is the basis for this nation’s laws, constitution, gvt, etc.? And yet, when it comes to discussing how humanity should or should not behave in a compassionate or humanitarian manner (ie by way of biblical standards) ultimately, you dudes shoot it down if presumably it comes from the gvt.
Which of course gvt is based upon biblical standards, gvt law is based upon biblical standards, etc.
Have any of you ever recognized just how much you corkscrew about until you have an argument that literally bites itself in the rear?
A “conservatism” that can’t stay consistent to its own argument.
Jeffrey_Grey wrote,
“But nations, being composed of individuals who act upon their consciences, have - in aggregate - the conscience of the majority. Nations therefore have consciences.”
Er, Jeffrey, that is a *non sequitur*. A majority is not the nation. It is merely a bigger gang able to impose its will on smaller gangs and individuals. And for the majority in most such majorities, as I said, their heed their consciences only as long as they can foist the costs onto someone else.
“But I am smart enough to know when someone states opinions and abstractions as facts and then tries to assert those ‘facts’ against the objective real world.”
This may come as a surprise to you, but popular opinion is not the “real world.” It is, by-and-large, a world of superstition and myth. You do not refute an argument by declaring that it is unpopular and therefore cannot be enacted in a “democratic” State. Whether or not it is enactable has no bearing on its validity.
And you are the one dealing in abstractions – such as “the nation’s conscience,” “society’s conscience,” “the social contract,” *et al*. None of those have the slightest empirical basis.
Arch_druid wrote,
“Which of course gvt is based upon biblical standards, gvt law is based upon biblical standards, etc.”
Arch, that is not only false, it is absurd.
Not only does the fact that an opinion or belief is shared by a majority not validate it logically or bear on its truth, it does not endow it with the slightest moral stature, either.
This may come as a surprise to you, but popular opinion is not the “real world.”
Only gmorton’s opinion is.
Same old tactics. Theories stated as conclusions. Opinions stated as irrefutable truth. Arguments re-defined to suit answers. Lots of arguing the argument.
And arrogance. Above all arrogance. (And accusations of arrogance against anyone who dares to point out all the above tactics.)
There was a time - before I saw through all the smoke and mirrors - when you challenged me, gmorton.
Nowadays you just bore me.
JG,
I just read your latest post (10:28) and I busted out laughing. Really.
You really ARE full of yourself. You are hands down, THE most arrogant person I’ve ever “met”. Virtually everything you accuse gmorton of is a projection of yourself …and you’re too blind to even see it.
You are in a class by yourself. The “Seer” can’t even hold a candle to you. Congrats!
Jeffrey_Grey wrote,
“Same old tactics … . arrogance … . smoke and mirrors … . Nowadays you just bore me.”
Ah. When refutations are elusive, there are always *ad hominems*.
wormlike queried: ” What are you going to do when we reach the tipping point between producers and leeches and the producers quit producing?”
Oooooo, I’m so scared. Is John Galt going to kidnap all of you to some deserted location so we can witness the vast void which remains once your talents are removed from our culture?
If only….
gmorton: No ad whatevers… you ARE boring.
GMorton, apparently you don’t read the letters to the editors in which “God’s law” with reference to the bible is invoked when any kind of “controversial issue” is raised and petitioned before gvt.
Or, those letters that declare the bible to be the basis for the Declaration of Independence, or even constitutional and civil law.
Why don’t you just come out and declare that in fact you are an atheist, Ayn Rand was an atheist, what you view in your ultimate libertarian fantasies is based on atheism.
That way, we all know exactly why humanity doesn’t matter to you one way or the other. But for the rest of us, morality is human centered, that is exactly why humanity and our place in society matters very much.