Insurance, religious freedom, politics, & wingnuts

Common Sense has often noted  wingnut silliness.  Today I received this bit from Senator Scott Brown in response to a note I'd sent in opposition to the Blunt amendment to the current highway bill.  This inappropriate amendment would have created an exception for religiously affiliated businesses to the healthcare law.  Herewith the entirety of Senator Brown's email:

     Thank you for contacting me regarding religious conscience exemptions in healthcare.  I value the input of my constituents on all issues and would like to take this opportunity to respond.

     The First Amendment to the Constitution secures for all Americans the freedom of religion.  Our Founders felt this freedom was so important that they didn’t just place it in the First Amendment — it’s the first thing to be mentioned — ahead of freedom of speech, the press, or the right to petition government.  I support a conscience exemption for religious organizations from the new healthcare mandate because I want to make sure that we are providing the same protections for religious groups that have existed for more than 220 years.

     Under President Obama’s healthcare law [P.L. 111-148], for the first time in our history, religious organizations are being coerced by a federal mandate to violate their deepest religious and moral convictions.  Religious organizations are faced with an impossible choice: drop coverage entirely for their employees and pay a punitive fine to the federal government, or violate their faith.  As a husband and the father of two daughters, I believe insurers should provide access to contraception services, and I support federal funding for family planning and health services for women.  That is the way I have voted as a member of both the Massachusetts legislature and the United States Senate.  However, I also respect people of faith and believe we can both provide coverage for the services that women rely on, and have a conscience clause that guarantees religious freedom.  It is important to note that we have found that balance in the Massachusetts healthcare law, and we should also be able to do so at the federal level.

     It is for these reasons that I voted in favor of an amendment to the Highway Bill (S. 1831), on March 1, 2012, offered by Senator Roy Blunt (MO), which would have restored the conscience protections in law that existed prior to the new federal mandate proposed in February 2012.  The amendment would have required plan sponsors who received a religious exemption for specific services to offer health coverage of the same or greater value as a plan that included those services. This means that employers would have no financial incentive to seek religious exemptions to any mandated health service. The amendment would not have prohibited women from accessing any healthcare service they need, nor would it have impacted existing state laws, and it did not address any other federal law besides the new flawed healthcare mandate.  The amendment failed by a vote 51-48.

     Again, thank you for getting in touch with me.  Should you have any additional questions or comments, please feel free to contact me or visit my website at www.scottbrown.senate.gov.     

Scott P. Brown
     United States Senator

Senator Brown's note seems reasonable enough at a casual read but fails on the facts.  Consider the following:

In his second paragraph Senator Brown notes the first amendment to the Constitution, argues it's importance as a reason to support a conscience exemption for religious organizations 
to the law that requires insurance coverage for birth control with an exemption for churches.  This argument is dis-ingenious on several grounds.  First, the first amendment provides only that the federal government can not establish an official religion.  It does not exempt religious organizations from law and indeed religious organizations are subject to many laws.  Thus the issue is not about the first amendment in itself.

Secondly, the second paragraph sets up an untrue straw man.  It references religious organizations as though they are all a thing of a kind, as though churches and organizations such as hospitals or universities with a religious affiliation are all religious organizations in the same sense.  Clearly a Catholic university that employees many non-Catholics and offers education services independent of religious affiliation is principally a university.  It is not a religion as understood by the First Amendment.  It's purpose is not religion but education.

Finally, the second paragraph ignores the laws existing exemption for churches proper.

In the following paragraph Senator Brown continues his fuzzy thinking about what religious organizations are and sets up another false straw man, this time around violation of religious faith.  It implies that there is an element of faith that addresses health insurance coverage, particularly health insurance coverage for employees not of their employer's religious faith.  This is simply not true.  Consider that contraception is a violation of Catholic faith notwithstanding the reality that virtually all Catholics violate this religious stricture.  However, it should be noted that the Catholic faith does not speak to insurance coverage in any regard.  It follows that non-church Catholic affiliated organizations should not be empowered to impose their religious strictures, however much those strictures are actually ignored by Catholics, on non-Catholic employees.  Indeed, it can well be argued that even churches proper should not be allowed to impose their articles of faith on their employees.

In this paragraph Senator Brown goes on to cite his family and previous support for family planning and health services for women and then appeal to people of faith.  It is clear from Senator Brown's previous record that he generally reflects the will of the people of Massachusetts where support for contraception is extremely high.  To the degree that Senator Brown is elected to represent the people of Massachusetts then he should have no issue supporting contraception services for all employees no matter the religious views of their employer.  Senator Brown goes on to offer that there should be a compromise.  What he fails to do is to offer a compromise.

In the final paragraph Senator Brown distorts Senator Blunt's amendment.

It should finally be noted that the United States has a long history of religious freedom.  The first amendment provides a legal basis for freedom of religion.  Existing law and practices provide freedom from religion.  People of faith are free to practice their faith.  They are not, however, free to impose their religious views on others.  Religious affiliated institutions are not free to impose their religious views on their employees.

Our laws provide for equal protection under the law.   They provide that employers can not discriminate based on the employees religion.  Surely those laws apply to American bedrooms for those who work in religious affiliated institutions such as hospitals and universities.  That's just common sense.

Political discourse, particularly discourse on contentious issues, is not advanced by distortions, false straw men, and other distortions of the sort in Senator Brown's email.  That's just common sense.