There's been a huge kerfluffle regarding the contraception mandate and subsequent compromise that the White House rolled out last week which would require that employers and insurers cover birth control. Republicans went bonkers over the mandate and have also refused to endorse the compromise. Missouri's own Sen. Roy Blunt (R) has even gone so far to propose an amendment that would allow any employer or other healthcare provider to refrain from covering any medical service that is "contrary to the provider's religious beliefs or moral convictions."
In short? Your boss could control every single one of your medical decisions. Here are a few examples, courtesy of MotherJones:
A boss who regarded overweight people and smokers with moral disgust could exclude coverage of obesity and tobacco screening from his employees' health plans.
A Scientologist employer could deny its employees depression screening because Scientologists believe psychiatry is morally objectionable.
A management team that thought HIV victims brought the disease upon themselves could excise HIV screening from its employees' insurance coverage.
A business could deny coverage for cervical cancer screening for unmarried employees, out of opposition to premarital sex.
You get the picture, right? Really scary stuff! But get this: even arch-conservative supreme court justice Antonin Scalia thinks it's a nutty idea:
"To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself," Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in a 1990 decision involving Oregon men who sought an exemption to drug laws on the grounds that consuming peyote was part of their religion.
Blunt, stop embarassing Missouri and start working to ensure that every Missourian and American has access to quality, affordable health care. This amendment of yours is just putting another person in between a patient and her doctor.
