Friday, March 29, AD 2024 12:36am

Dropping all insurance coverage appears to be the most morally sound approach…

 

Founded in 1972, the National Catholic Bioethics Center  (NCBC) “pledges its fidelity to the magisterial teaching of the Church and to the bishops who provide leadership and pastoral guidance to clergy and laity on complex bioethical issues.”

NCBC recently has published a detailed analysis which concludes that it would be immoral for a Catholic who owns a private business to purchase health insurance for his or her workers under Obamacare.   The conclusion is terse: “Dropping all coverage appears to be the most morally sound approach.”

Assessing all of the options available, the NCBC also calls for action, including suing the Obama administration: “We support and encourage the many lawsuits challenging this injustice and expect them to be successful before the Supreme Court.”

The NCBC’s excellent analysis raises some politically difficult choices for faithful Catholic business owners. If they choose to drop insurance coverage, it is likely their employees will be forced by circumstances—fully intended by those who crafted Obamacare—into healthcare plans offering medical services that are contrary to Church teaching.  While those employees would not be forced to avail themselves of those morally objectionable services, the simple fact remains that those services would be funded by taxpayer money, meaning in this instance the taxes paid by those businesses owned and operated by faithful Catholics.

Is this not an infringement on religious liberty?

 

To read the NCBC analysis, click on the following link:
http://www.ncbcenter.org/document.doc?id=450&erid=0

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KM
KM
Thursday, September 27, AD 2012 11:31am

I believe this (the dropping of private insurance) was the intended result…in order to ensure a single-payer system. Such a system, in the end, will be FAR more horrible and anti-life.

trackback
Thursday, September 27, AD 2012 11:54am

[…] Dropping All Insurance Coverage Appears to be the Most Morally Sound Approach – The Motley Monk, The American Catholic […]

philip
philip
Thursday, September 27, AD 2012 12:44pm

Oct 20th, Saturday is the third Stand Up For Religious Freedom National Rally day. The 1st was Friday March 23rd. June 8th, a Friday as well, was the second rally day. Please go to standupforreligiousfreedom.com to find out more.
This mandate is from the pit of Hell.
Obama has chosen P.P. as his pet. To hell with the Catholic church and it’s two millennia track record of service to the poor, is what it feels like when we read the individual and H.H.S. Mandates.
By the way. The abortion funding mandate is sickening. No less than a dollar a month per subscriber that is enrolled in that particular plan.
Which plan has it? Thats the $0.13 question.
To call RU-486 preventive medicine is akin to saying Hiltler was just another misinformed city organizer trying his best to bring Change and Hope to his countrymen.

Michael
Michael
Thursday, September 27, AD 2012 3:21pm

I fail to see the moral calculus here. Both company plans and the alternative cover objectionable services. Both are paid for directly or indirectly by the employer. What is gained by dumping good benefits for current employees? Making the situation harder on employees and their families who will probably be forced into inferior and more expensive coverage doesn’t sadly…seem to enter in the equations of many in the Church these days. Some Catholic businesses will likely lose good employees over such a move. As a parent of a child with a chronic life long pre-existing condition I would be very challenged as an employee. My Catholic employer denies paying for coverage that my family desperately needs because it covers services we’ll…as Catholics…NEVER use. Sometimes we can succeed in making ourselves look cruel and Pharisaic in the eyes of many…and not without cause…sadly.

KIm Deavid Poletto
KIm Deavid Poletto
Thursday, September 27, AD 2012 4:09pm

I disagree. The most morally acceptable way of adrressing this issue is to continue to offer health insurance, but to ignore the HHS mandate. This would then force the govenment to fine those who do not adhere to the mandate. Those who are fined should refuse to pay and continue to refuse to pay even if it meant losing buildings, property etc. This would force the govenment to shed its sheeps clothing and would bring into the daylight the actual war that we are in. Read Bonhoffer. The same thing that happened in Nazi Germany is happening here. Civel disobedience is a MUST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!e

Michael
Michael
Thursday, September 27, AD 2012 7:56pm

I agree with the civil disobedience angle. Offer and ignore….AND join a class action relief lawsuit.

anzlyne
anzlyne
Thursday, September 27, AD 2012 8:36pm

So then could the Catholic employer who drops buying insurance coverage, raise the employee’s pay so they can buy their own coverage that is suitable for them and their family?

Elaine Krewer
Admin
Friday, September 28, AD 2012 5:40am

“So then could the Catholic employer who drops insurance coverage, raise the employee’s pay so they can buy their own”

That’s what I would think.

Paul W. Primavera
Friday, September 28, AD 2012 5:58am

The only moral response is to drop insurance coverage when government regulation demands that insurance coverage include an intrinsic moral evil. It doesn’t matter if the insurance coverage does a thousand good things for needy and sick people. If the coverage provides for one intrinsic evil (such as abortifacients and contraceptives), then the Catholic employer (indeed, any authentically Christian employer) must as a matter of righteousness and holiness reject it. The end of Matthew chapter 6 says that our Heavenly Father knows that we need all these things, but we are commanded to put His Kingdom and His righteousness first. Do those who obfuscate this issue with cries of “But the insurance does all kinds of good things!” so distrust Jesus as to lack faith in His promise? The answer is yes because their God isn’t Jesus but Caesar.

trackback
Friday, September 28, AD 2012 12:52pm

[…] article informing us about the National Catholic Bioethics Center’s (NCBC) advice, ”Dropping All Insurance Coverage…” Speaking as a concerned Catholic, mother and citizen, I would love to see a lot more […]

Jean
Jean
Friday, September 28, AD 2012 9:19pm

If Catholic employers drop health insurance to avoid the mandate, they are simply shifting the burden of the fight onto the individual Catholic families who would then be forced to go out and buy the same insurance privately or refuse and be fined. So the fight trickles down to those who cannot fight on their own. The Catholic Church as an institution and private businesses need to come out swinging on this issue with all their might because they are the ones with the resources to stand against it. Individual families just simply cannot fight on their own.

Ms. B - Texas
Ms. B - Texas
Saturday, September 29, AD 2012 11:10pm

If the employees are illegal aliens, will they still insist on coverage being dropped ?

Mary De Voe
Sunday, September 30, AD 2012 3:49pm

Several years ago, Phylis Schlafly on Eagle Forum promised that no insurance company could compete with the bottomless taxfilled pockets of the admministration. Congress has been swindled, as have the taxpayers. Obama has thrown the taxpayers under the bus. The Supreme Court has thrown us under the bus. We may as well trust in God, for we are so doomed. Created in original innocence, the rational, immortal soul of the human being brought into existence by our Creator is the standard of Justice for our nation. Legally and morally innocent at creation, the newly begotten soul is necessary. We, the people NEED the innocence of our posterity.

The gargantuan, monstro, Goliath, Philistine government is poised to eat the seven fat cows by subsuming all private property to pay for its compensation, health insurance and pensions.

Congress needs to demand that all issues not explicitly enumerated and declared by the Affordable Healthcare Act be expunged as not being legislated by the will of the people. The HHS Mandate was added after the passage of the ACA. What kind of representative government is this? constituted by whom? I did not buy this. Congress did not buy this. No sane person, sovereign person bought this. One nation under God did not buy this.

Amy
Amy
Tuesday, October 2, AD 2012 12:26pm

It isn’t only employers who are facing the question of what to do about this. I work for a tiny non-profit and have been purchasing my own insurance for years. I have already received a letter from my insurer informing me that they are now offering me “free” coverage of contraception and sterilization procedures, among other things. Should I drop my insurance coverage? If so, would I be able to find a new plan that doesn’t cover these objectionable services? It is my understanding that all new plans have to cover this.

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