Hobby Lobby Oral Arguments Started Today!

[Cleopatra7]

Although my knowledge of the law comes soley from the "Law and Order" franchise, I not optimistic about the outcome of this, simply because this country is going backwards on every issue except for gay marriage. Maybe we'll go back to the days when you had to buy contraceptives through the mail in "plain brown wrappers."

Actually, various people in the US have been trying to set up a single payer healthcare system since the days of Teddy Roosevelt. If a tenacious guy like him could get single payer a reality, I don't know if anyone can. I think what we will need is a pragmatic conservative figure who can get the Republicans to get on board, while making important liberal gestures. Nixon was that figure in many ways, but his personal demons caused him to crash and burn.

[starfish]

I think the oral arguments and the case would have been more interesting if an employer had refused to cover Viagra b/c it contributed to a homosexual lifestyle or if a JW refused to cover blood transfusions, or some health organic health nut refused to cover vaccines.

Women are just too easy for the courts to knock down. Now start messing around with a penis drug, and you've got a fight. :angry-banghead:

[Coconut Flan]

It's a mixed bag on ACA for me. My premiums went up only $4 a month which is the least in 5 to 10 years. One of my neighbors says that their monthly premium doubled. Another neighbor is like me with virtually no change in either coverage or premium. A friend was helped out because her 21 year old daughter can now get Medi-Cal where previously they would have been saddled with thousands of dollars of medical bills from a bad burn.

[louisa05]

It's a mixed bag on ACA for me. My premiums went up only $4 a month which is the least in 5 to 10 years. One of my neighbors says that their monthly premium doubled. Another neighbor is like me with virtually no change in either coverage or premium. A friend was helped out because her 21 year old daughter can now get Medi-Cal where previously they would have been saddled with thousands of dollars of medical bills from a bad burn.

I know two people who are screaming bloody murder about ACA. Here is the deal with both of them. They were uninsured and do not qualify for Medicaid. Because of ACA, they had to purchase insurance. One is my sister-in-law. Here is how it worked out for her:

Post ACA: She had to buy a plan via the marketplace. It is subsidized (because she is a fricking tax cheat and does not report all of her income) and she is paying about $60 a month out of pocket for it. She recently had a bad case of the flu (a shocking fact as she constantly explains to us that she never gets sick and never will because she does yoga!) and needed to go to the doctor. She had to make an appointment at a regular physician's practice and had to pay a co-pay and then the rest of the bill later because it applied to her deductible.

Pre ACA: She was uninsured by her own choice having dropped a plan she previously had when she discovered it would be substantially cheaper to remain uninsured thanks to the advice of the second ACA whiner we know. A year ago, she had a bad case of bronchitis. She could not go to a regular doctor's office due to not having insurance. No problem, that was never part of her "it is cheaper to be uninsured" game plan. She went to the emergency room. A massive bill ensued (something like $700). She then returned to the hospital and explained that she just does not have the money. She produced her falsified income, cried a little, and the bill was written off nearly 100%. She paid $28 total in the end and drove off in her brand new car.

Her friend who advised her to drop insurance and use the ER for healthcare previously is also madder than hell about having to use insurance.

This makes me wonder: how many people throwing a shit fit about it are just pissed about having to pay their own way?

I know it is not everyone. But I suspect these two are not the only ones. And why should conservatives be so pissed about something that makes freeloaders like my sister-in-law take some responsibility for their own health care bills? Isn't that what they want?

[doggie]

the thing is HL is not paying for anything the money spent on insurance is just part of a persons pay. So what they are really wanting to do is to dictate how an employee spends their money and they have no right to do that. they just want control and they think they have the right for religions control of their employees. Really no employer should have that much control over an employee.

[Coconut Flan]

This makes me wonder: how many people throwing a shit fit about it are just pissed about having to pay their own way?

I know it is not everyone. But I suspect these two are not the only ones. And why should conservatives be so pissed about something that makes freeloaders like my sister-in-law take some responsibility for their own health care bills? Isn't that what they want?

That's exactly what I think it is with the two biggest whiners about ACA that I know. One was completely uninsured and had two ER visits and a surgery with complications written almost completely off. She then gloated about it online.

The second one deliberately refused insurance through work for a spouse who became so sick he almost died. They negotiated the hospital bill WAY down but did pay something.

They both bitch that the Gubment shouldn't have the right to force something on them. I asked about driving licenses, taxes, etc but they brushed those off as necessary.

[starfish]

I know two people who are screaming bloody murder about ACA. Here is the deal with both of them. They were uninsured and do not qualify for Medicaid. Because of ACA, they had to purchase insurance. One is my sister-in-law. Here is how it worked out for her:

Post ACA: She had to buy a plan via the marketplace. It is subsidized (because she is a fricking tax cheat and does not report all of her income) and she is paying about $60 a month out of pocket for it. She recently had a bad case of the flu (a shocking fact as she constantly explains to us that she never gets sick and never will because she does yoga!) and needed to go to the doctor. She had to make an appointment at a regular physician's practice and had to pay a co-pay and then the rest of the bill later because it applied to her deductible.

Pre ACA: She was uninsured by her own choice having dropped a plan she previously had when she discovered it would be substantially cheaper to remain uninsured thanks to the advice of the second ACA whiner we know. A year ago, she had a bad case of bronchitis. She could not go to a regular doctor's office due to not having insurance. No problem, that was never part of her "it is cheaper to be uninsured" game plan. She went to the emergency room. A massive bill ensued (something like $700). She then returned to the hospital and explained that she just does not have the money. She produced her falsified income, cried a little, and the bill was written off nearly 100%. She paid $28 total in the end and drove off in her brand new car.

Her friend who advised her to drop insurance and use the ER for healthcare previously is also madder than hell about having to use insurance.

This makes me wonder: how many people throwing a shit fit about it are just pissed about having to pay their own way?

I know it is not everyone. But I suspect these two are not the only ones. And why should conservatives be so pissed about something that makes freeloaders like my sister-in-law take some responsibility for their own health care bills? Isn't that what they want?

I'm right there with you on it. A lot of folks had the ER scam going on and didn't want the ACA to mess with their good thing. They wanted, effectively, everyone else to pay their d@mn ER bill while they spent insurance premium money on anything but insurance premiums. McMama comes to mind, among others. I recognize that the ACA is a mixed bag. But I resent those folks who refused to buy insurance even though it was often available to them, and then ran their little ER scam.

[Aggie2145]

Well, I know nothing but I suspect it was more that employers started offering it as a perk (in the same way that some places give free lunches, or company cars). And dental and vision are separate because dentists and opticians run themselves completely separately.

Part of the problem is that your health care system grew without any imposed structure for so long. By the time anyone tried to do anything it was multi-million business.

You are correct, health insurance was a fringe benefit that certain employers added to compensation packages lumped in with 401k's and paid vacation.

Dental and vision are separate because a Dentist or Optometrist can run a completely independent enterprise. Also, the risk of not electing to carry Vision and Dental is dwarfed in comparison to not having health insurance. Because these two doctors only negotiate with plans that are specific to their field, they can keep prices low for their cash patients - who usually outnumber the insureds 2-1.

I have always had the option to add these on to my current insurance but have decided not to as paying completely out of pocket is just more economical. Instead of $10/month in vision insurance (which would not cover contacts,) I pay my Optometrist $60 per visit and $50 per year to Costco for my contacts. Dental insurance this year would have been a $30 per month with a $30 co-pay. My only major dental procedure was my third molar removal ten years ago. I would rather pay $50 per cleaning and deposit the rest in a savings account.

[louisa05]

Count your vision blessings, Aggie. We buy the vision insurance. My exams are $90 a year. That doesn't include $200+ twice a year for the retinal specialist, but that is covered by health insurance. My contacts run about $160 per year (and I cannot get them at Costco or WalMart or 1-800-CONTACTS--hated that commercial from awhile back. I really do have "special eyes" and they really don't carry my brand). Glasses, when we replace them which we don't very often, run about $450 just for lenses. Plus I have reading glasses. Tried drugstore ones, but need glare coating so we have to pay for prescription for those, too.

[Georgiana]

Although my knowledge of the law comes soley from the "Law and Order" franchise, I not optimistic about the outcome of this, simply because this country is going backwards on every issue except for gay marriage. Maybe we'll go back to the days when you had to buy contraceptives through the mail in "plain brown wrappers."

Actually, various people in the US have been trying to set up a single payer healthcare system since the days of Teddy Roosevelt. If a tenacious guy like him could get single payer a reality, I don't know if anyone can. I think what we will need is a pragmatic conservative figure who can get the Republicans to get on board, while making important liberal gestures. Nixon was that figure in many ways, but his personal demons caused him to crash and burn.

The way I understand it, I expect that what it comes down to will be the Justices' interpretation of two points:

--Whether a for-profit commercial enterprise can be said to have the right to claim religious protection. The rights granted in the Bill of Rights are granted to individuals. For freedom of religion, religious institutions by necessary extension are covered because impeding the freedom of religious institutions naturally and directly infringes on the rights granted to individuals (among other things). For profit commercial enterprises are not people, ergo they do not naturally inherit the rights granted in the Bill of Rights.

--Whether to overturn a previous Court decision (someone give me the case pls) that decided that the rights of one person end where the rights of the other begin, and therefore no person or organization can claim the protection of THEIR right if said right is being used to infringe upon the rights of another.

I think the case of Hobby Lobby is weak. I think the more Conservative Justices will not agree that a corporation has rights, which nullifies Hobby Lobby et al's argument entirely. I think the Liberal Justices will also not go for "Corporations are People" and will further assert the previous ruling of the Supreme Court.

But I could be wrong. I'm not a lawyer.

[Firiel]

Ugh. I accidentally decided to comment on my super conservative cousin's Facebook when he brought up this issue. I stayed out of large-sweeping policy shit and just commented that it was inconsistent for them to offer birth control pills and not the morning after pill because they both worked the same way. I asked him how he personally justified accepting birth control pills as non-abortive and not the morning after pill.

He basically replied that one prevents fertilization and the other ONLY eliminates the capability for a fertilized egg to implant in the uterus, thus abortion.

No. That is totally not how things work, and a FUCKING GOOGLE SEARCH reveals that. They both do exactly the same thing. But good thing men with literally no idea how the reproductive system works are making policy about the reproductive system. I pointed him in the direction of resources that actually have correct information. I also informed him that, according to his definition, breastfeeding is abortion because it can thin the endometrial lining. He hasn't replied yet.

[dairyfreelife]

Ah, OK. I was just responding to the part where you said you didn't know who came up with that idea. I didn't know it was a rhetorical question.

My fault for not making that more clear. It was/is a perk, but still a dumb idea to come through companies.

To the person who said her dental cost so little, wow. I wish my bills were so low. After getting my wisdom teeth out last fall, I am so glad I had dental insurance. And to get my cavities filled as I had a couple last check-up...my first cavities since I was five, so sad...but the sadness was alleviated by seeing how much it would have cost without insurance. Damn. :pink-shock: Another thing is that a know a number of dentists who won't take medicaid, so more people on medicaid won't be seeing more dentists.

[brigid]

The way I understand it, I expect that what it comes down to will be the Justices' interpretation of two points:

--Whether a for-profit commercial enterprise can be said to have the right to claim religious protection. The rights granted in the Bill of Rights are granted to individuals. For freedom of religion, religious institutions by necessary extension are covered because impeding the freedom of religious institutions naturally and directly infringes on the rights granted to individuals (among other things). For profit commercial enterprises are not people, ergo they do not naturally inherit the rights granted in the Bill of Rights.

--Whether to overturn a previous Court decision (someone give me the case pls) that decided that the rights of one person end where the rights of the other begin, and therefore no person or organization can claim the protection of THEIR right if said right is being used to infringe upon the rights of another.

I think the case of Hobby Lobby is weak. I think the more Conservative Justices will not agree that a corporation has rights, which nullifies Hobby Lobby et al's argument entirely. I think the Liberal Justices will also not go for "Corporations are People" and will further assert the previous ruling of the Supreme Court.

But I could be wrong. I'm not a lawyer.

This diary at Daily Kos should have what you're looking for:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/2 ... ent-Clause

The sad sorry truth is that this is already established law and I can't believe SCOTUS is even hearing it. Then again they never should have taken up Bush v Gore either - ask any legal analyst back in 2000.

[GeoBQn]

We had a women's health rally yesterday in my town. It got a pretty good turnout in spite of temperatures cold enough to make my lips numb. Apparently our rally got on Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell tonight.

[GiggleOfGirls]

And actually, the morning after pill is scientifically unlikely to do anything other than stop ovulation because you don't take it long enough to even be able to alter the endometrial lining of the uterus to make a hostile environment and more than a few studies have backed up the fact that Plan B doesn't work (or "cause an abortion" as HL would, no doubt, put it) after ovulation has already occurred. As opposed to the regular BC pill that is taken on a long-term basis and would be far more likely to change the lining of the uterus.

[salex]

If they win this case, because their business is being forced to do something that is "against their religion" does that mean the next suit will be a large company refusing to promote women over men, or removing women managers if a man is hired below them, or just not hiring qualified women because women should be "keepers at home?"

If a corporation has religious freedom that trumps local, county and federal laws, then welcome to hell....

[louisa05]

If they win this case, because their business is being forced to do something that is "against their religion" does that mean the next suit will be a large company refusing to promote women over men, or removing women managers if a man is hired below them, or just not hiring qualified women because women should be "keepers at home?"

If a corporation has religious freedom that trumps local, county and federal laws, then welcome to hell....

And how many will have religious epiphanies when it is convenient and gets them out of discrimination suits or excuses them from paying benefits or whatever? :pink-shock:

[Rescinded and Mended]

Count your vision blessings, Aggie. We buy the vision insurance. My exams are $90 a year. That doesn't include $200+ twice a year for the retinal specialist, but that is covered by health insurance. My contacts run about $160 per year (and I cannot get them at Costco or WalMart or 1-800-CONTACTS--hated that commercial from awhile back. I really do have "special eyes" and they really don't carry my brand). Glasses, when we replace them which we don't very often, run about $450 just for lenses. Plus I have reading glasses. Tried drugstore ones, but need glare coating so we have to pay for prescription for those, too.

A friend of mine put me on to this website for glasses, Louisa05. You can enter in the parameters of your glasses prescription and almost always come out much cheaper than you would paying for them locally. I think you also need to enter in your pupil width (ask your doctor), but several people I know have saved a ton of money. :)

http://www.zennioptical.com/

[louisa05]

A friend of mine put me on to this website for glasses, Louisa05. You can enter in the parameters of your glasses prescription and almost always come out much cheaper than you would paying for them locally. I think you also need to enter in your pupil width (ask your doctor), but several people I know have saved a ton of money. :)

http://www.zennioptical.com/

In general, none of those places will work out for me. My mother's side of the family should probably be the national poster family for eye disease. We have them all and a few that no one else has. It is complicated, but the short version is that it is hard to prescribe and fit for me. Messing around with not doing it in person is probably not the best idea. I don't wear regular glasses much, so we don't pay for new lenses often and my current frames are seven years old. And fortunately, with Kindle I can make things bigger and don't have to get new reading glasses as often either.

[JenniferJuniper]

If they win this case, because their business is being forced to do something that is "against their religion" does that mean the next suit will be a large company refusing to promote women over men, or removing women managers if a man is hired below them, or just not hiring qualified women because women should be "keepers at home?"

If a corporation has religious freedom that trumps local, county and federal laws, then welcome to hell....

Yep. Let's hope Justice Kennedy gets this....

[salex]

And how many will have religious epiphanies when it is convenient and gets them out of discrimination suits or excuses them from paying benefits or whatever? :pink-shock:

I was just asking today, if a corporation can hold religious beliefs and not have to violate them, can our company become Christian Scientist, thus not cover any medical costs, even if we are not? The corporation is, after all, a seperate entity under the law.... :lol:

[salex]

A good article from MOther JOnes.

motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/hobby-lobby-supreme-court-obamacare

From the article

Hobby Lobby is a privately held, for-profit corporation with 13,000 employees. It's owned by a trust managed by the Green family, devout Christians who run the company based on biblical principles. They close their stores on Sundays, start staff meetings with Bible readings, pay above minimum wage, and use a Christian-based mediation practice to resolve employee disputes. The Greens are even attempting to build a Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC.

Didn't know the bolded part was legal.... :?

On many levels, the Hobby Lobby case is a mess of bad facts, political opportunism, and questionable legal theories that might be laughable had some federal courts not taken them seriously. Take for instance Hobby Lobby's argument that providing coverage for Plan B and Ella substantially limits its religious freedom. The company admits in its complaint that until it considered filing the suit in 2012, its generous health insurance plan actually covered Plan B and Ella (though not IUDs). The burden of this coverage was apparently so insignificant that God, and Hobby Lobby executives, never noticed it until the mandate became a political issue.

The most well-publicized and controversial element of the case is Hobby Lobby's assertion that a for-profit corporation can have the constitutionally protected right to the free exercise of religion. It's a strange notion, but the court opened the door to this argument when it ruled in Citizens United that a corporation has First Amendment rights. So now the justices will have to consider whether corporations can pray, believe in an afterlife, and thus, be absolved of ACA's contraception mandate. But that's hardly the only thorny issue the court has to grapple with.

But in the Hobby Lobby case, there might be a good reason for the court to take a closer look at whether this legal challenge is politically, rather than religiously, motivated. Not only had the company never objected to covering the kinds of birth control that are now central to its lawsuit, but the reason Hobby Lobby now balks at covering these forms of contraception is based on a false premise—one the court will have to accept as true in order to find in Hobby Lobby's favor.

The company argues that emergency contraception pills, such as Ella and Plan B, destroy fertilized eggs by interfering with implantation in the uterus. Hobby Lobby's owners consider this abortion. But the pills don't work that way. When Plan B first came on the market in 1999, its mechanism for preventing unplanned pregnancies wasn't entirely clear. That's why the FDA-approved labeling reflected some uncertainty and said that the pills "theoretically" prevent pregnancy by interfering with implantation. Since then, though, there has been a lot of research on how these pills work, and the findings are definitive: They prevent pregnancy by blocking ovulation. In fact, they don't work once ovulation has occurred. As Corbin recently wrote in a law review article, "Every reputable scientific study to examine Plan B's mechanism has concluded that these pills prevent fertilization from occurring in the first place…In short, Plan B is contraception."

Labels on these products have been updated in Europe to reflect the science, and the Catholic Church in Germany dropped its opposition to local Catholic hospitals providing emergency contraception to rape victims after reviewing the evidence. The science is so clear, in fact, that even Dennis Miller, an abortion foe and director of the bioethics center at the Christian Cedarville University, concluded that emergency contraception drugs don't cause abortions. Last year, he told Christianity Today. "[O]ur claims of conscience should be based on scientific fact, and we should be willing to change our claims if the facts change." (IUDs generally work like spermicide, preventing conception.)

Yet the Becket Fund's Windham insists that the question of the science is not before the court. So basically, the Hobby Lobby case requires the court to decide whether a corporation has sincere religious beliefs that would be compromised by having its health plan cover the contraception that it once covered because it believes that contraception causes abortions, even when it doesn't. Got that?

Hobby Lobby and the other companies currently suing the Obama administration can resolve their problems by simply jettisoning their health insurance plans and letting their employees purchase coverage through the exchanges.

An employer that drops its health plan would have to pay a tax to help subsidize its employees' coverage obtained through the exchange or Medicaid, but this option is actually far cheaper than providing health insurance. And if a company doesn't even have to provide insurance, much less a plan that covers contraception, Hobby Lobby doesn't have much of a case that the ACA burdens its free exercise of religion.

Lederman's analysis gives the court an easy out in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby, allowing it to avoid the dicey questions of whether corporations have religious-freedom rights, whether scientific ignorance is a religious belief—or even whether the plaintiff is sincerely religious or simply part of a larger Republican-led political effort to kill off Obamacare.

[PennySycamore]

Well, my family is helped by the ACA. My son's asthma is now a covered medical expense. Pre-ACA, it was considered a pre-existing condition so we had to pay out of pocket for anything related to asthma. We wre paying up to $1300/month for his prescriptions, ER visits, nebulizer, and doctor appointments. Now, we pay about $275.

Oh, and our premiums went down, a lot, and our coverage actually improved, since the ACA.

Oh, and my MIL can afford to pay for insurance AND doctor appointment co-pays AND prescription co-pays.

Thanks, Obama!

I would be one of the ones considered uninsurable due to having a pre-existing condition. I survived a stroke two years ago. It sucks that you could financially be better off if you'd died! That is no longer the case. My just-graduated-from-college daughter also benefits due to the Medicaid expansion in Connecticut.

[PennySycamore]

There's a good diary over at DailyKos on Mike Papaantonio's take on the Hobby Lobby case. Mike is an attorney and is host of Ring of Fire radio show. Mike was a guess on Ed Schultz's radio show and pointed out that Hobby Lobby does not have any amici briefs filed in its behalf. When Citizen's United was before the Supreme Court, there were tons of briefs from various corporate governance group. According to Mike, the Chamber of Commerce, et al, is scared shitless of the Hobby Lobby case. It's an interesting idea.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/2 ... bby-Is-DOA

The link has the audio of what Mike said on Ed's show.

[BravaAmica]

I would be one of the ones considered uninsurable due to having a pre-existing condition. I survived a stroke two years ago. It sucks that you could financially be better off if you'd died! That is no longer the case. My just-graduated-from-college daughter also benefits due to the Medicaid expansion in Connecticut.

As of January 1, 2014, insurance companies cannot withhold coverage for pre-existing conditions. (Insurance companies stopped being able to use "pre-existing condition" to deny children care the day it was signed into law.) So, even with your health history, you can get health insurance.