"On August 1, Obamacare’s preventive health services mandate will be implemented, and with it the Health and Human Services (HHS) anti-conscience mandate," writes Sarah Torre for the Heritage Foundation blog.
"After Wednesday, nearly all employers will be forced, at the beginning of their next health plan year, to pay for coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization—regardless of moral or religious objections. Despite the false assurances of the Obama Administration and supporters of the mandate, few employers will ultimately escape the rule’s coercive requirements."
Who are the most immediate victims of this coercive policy? Torre's list includes family business owners who are producing jobs and growing the economy, Catholic social organizations that provide invaluable services to their communities, and evangelical colleges and universities who educating the next generation.
For many of these non-exempt employers, August 1 signals the beginning of a season of impossible decisions, Torre explains. "After tomorrow, at the renewal of their health plan years, the HHS mandate will force employers into an untenable choice: violate their deeply held beliefs or forfeit the provision of health insurance altogether and risk steep fines."
Some religious employers may qualify for the Administration's "temporary safe-harbor" provision, a exemption Torre calls "offensively narrow" which covers only formal houses of worship. This leaves countless organizations, from schools to soup kitchens, completely unprotected.
"Insinuating that faith should remain behind closed doors, not influencing or motivating the care for others, this mandate assaults the right to the free exercise of religion."
Thankfully, more than 60 organizations have joined more than 20 lawsuits against the HHS seeking protection from this religious liberty-stifling rule. As of last week, a federal judge agreed with the Catholic owners of a Colorado business that the rule appears to be infringing on their religious freedom and issued a temporary injunction to enable the case to be studied further.
But this won't be the end of it, Torre warns.
"Unfortunately, the HHS mandate is only an early warning sign of how one-size-fits-all health care requirement will trample on religious liberty as well as individual liberty. August 1 will only be the beginning of Obamacare’s rules that undermine constitutional freedoms."
Torre believes the only way to truly save employers from the coercive HHS mandate and other provisions that remain hidden in ObamaCare is to insure that this albatross is repealed and replaced with health care reform that "reduces costs, increases access, and leaves personal health care decisions where they belong—in the hands of the American people."
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