Cato: Obamacare’s Shell Games Collectivize Our Consciences

Facing increasing losses in federal courts over Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate, the Department of Health & Human Services last week promulgated a rule to expand exemptions for religious nonprofits. That sounds good, but what the government is actually doing is a sort of accounting shell game: employers will no longer have to pay for the products/services to which they objects, but the government requires them to contract with an insurance company that the government then requires to provide these products/services to employees who want them “for free.”

As Yuval Levin put it, “If religious people thought about their religious obligations the way HHS lawyers think about the law, this might just work. But they don’t.” Matt Bowman, an attorney litigating some of these cases, makes some amusing analogies to illustrate the point:

Suppose the government decides that college students need access to pornography for their sexual health. It forces all colleges to give their students a free subscription to the Playboy Channel. Christian colleges object. So the government says it will merely force those colleges to give their students a subscription to cable television, and then it will force that cable company to give those students a free subscription to the Playboy Channel. Why would the Christian colleges be content with this arrangement?

Imagine that the government wishes to empower Second Amendment rights. It pairs employers with local families struggling with mental illness and requires the employers to provide the families with free handguns. Religious groups object. So the government forces the religious groups to give people with mental illness a membership at a shooting range, and then forces the shooting ranges to provide those people with free handguns as a benefit of membership.

Perhaps the government decides that Americans need to just calm down, especially religious fanatics. It forces employers to supplement the water supply in their buildings with sedatives. Religious groups object. So the government forces the religious groups to maintain an account with the water company, and then forces the water company to put sedatives in the religious groups’ water supply.

Read more at http://www.cato.org/blog/obamacares-shell-games-collectivize-our-consciences