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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhite House Contraceptive Regulation Fact Sheet
The White House Office of Legislative Affairs issued the following fact sheet on its plan to accommodate religious organizations that were angered by the administration's rule requiring health insurance coverage of contraceptives.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2012/02/10/us/politics/10reuters-usa-contraceptives-factsheet.html?ref=reuters
Richardo
(38,391 posts)Thanks for the post, elleng
elleng
(131,264 posts)Ruby the Liberal
(26,219 posts)ProgressiveEconomist
(5,818 posts)resolution of the issue.
However, although I haven't seen the details in the Federal Register, it appears that insurance companies are being required to give away contraceptive coverage for free to employees of any religious nonprofits they cover.
Obviously, insurance companies aren't going to give anything away for free voluntarily. Either somebody is going to have to reimburse them for the contraceptive coverage or else insurance companies are going to have to be required by law or regulation to provide the contraceptive coverage to religious nonprofits as a fundamental cost of being in the health insurance business. Perhaps there will be a regulation punishing severely any insurance company that drops a current religious nonprofit or tries to raise their prices more than other comparable client organization prices.
Left to their own devices, IMO insurance companies would negotioate higher prices for contracts with religious nonprofits than for comparable entities, or else refuse to cover religious nonprofits.
But all these considerations always will be extremely difficult to document. And in any case, they'll only come into play after November 5th. Thats the "extremely clever" part of this White House plan, IMO!
crazylikafox
(2,763 posts)Per the White House contraception fact sheet linked to in the OP
ProgressiveEconomist
(5,818 posts)for insurers might be that millions of women who work for Catholic nonprofits ALREADY have contraceptive coverage, though perhaps not with zero copays.
karynnj
(59,507 posts)Obama iwins on so many levels.