HOW MANY TIMES MUST I SAY THIS?

From Ross Douthat in the New York Times on the evils of the new rules of Obamacare:

But sometimes the state goes further. Not content with crowding out alternative forms of common effort, it presents its rivals an impossible choice: Play by our rules, even if it means violating the moral ideals that inspired your efforts in the first place, or get out of the community-building business entirely.

This is exactly the choice that the White House has decided to offer a host of religious institutions — hospitals, schools and charities — in the era of Obamacare. The new health care law requires that all employer-provided insurance plans cover contraception, sterilization and the morning-after (or week-after) pill known as ella, which can work as an abortifacient. A number of religious groups, led by the American Catholic bishops, had requested an exemption for plans purchased by their institutions. Instead, the White House has settled on an exemption that only covers religious institutions that primarily serve members of their own faith. A parish would be exempt from the mandate, in other words, but a Catholic hospital would not.

Ponder that for a moment. In effect, the Department of Health and Human Services is telling religious groups that if they don’t want to pay for practices they consider immoral, they should stick to serving their own co-religionists rather than the wider public. Sectarian self-segregation is O.K., but good Samaritanism is not. The rule suggests a preposterous scenario in which a Catholic hospital avoids paying for sterilizations and the morning-after pill by closing its doors to atheists and Muslims, and hanging out a sign saying “no Protestants need apply.”

Ross, I ponder that, and I am not at all disturbed that the Roman Catholic hospitals and universities will need to provide all types of health care to all of their employees. Not one bit. Have you pondered that some communities have only a Roman Catholic hospital to serve them and that not all of their employees are members of the RCC? Why should everyone who works in the community hospital have to play by Roman Catholic rules? What about the common good?

Furthermore, Ross, have you pondered the fact that Roman Catholic hospitals and universities already provide coverage for contraceptives in health care packages? See below from NPR. How does the church square the coverage that is already offered in some states with their consciences? Whatever the reasoning of the powers in the case of the states which mandate coverage for contraceptives, the same powers should apply that reasoning to the hospitals and universities in the rest of the country under the new rules for health care coverage.

From NPR:

But while some insist that the rules, which spring from last year's health law, break new ground, many states as well as federal civil rights law already require most religious employers to cover prescription contraceptives if they provide coverage of other prescription drugs.

While some religious employers take advantage of loopholes or religious exemptions, the fact remains that dozens of Catholic hospitals and universities currently offer contraceptive coverage as part of their health insurance packages.

"We've always had contraceptive birth control included in our health care benefits," said Michelle Michaud, a labor and delivery nurse at Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz, Calif. "It's something that we've come to expect for ourselves and our family."

Dominican is part of the Catholic Healthcare West System. A spokeswoman for the 40-hospital chain confirmed that it has offered the benefits since 1997.

Ross takes it further. The way of Obamacare is a slippery slope that leads to what? Armageddon? A dark future surely.

The White House attack on conscience is a vindication of health care reform’s critics, who saw exactly this kind of overreach coming. But it’s also an intimation of a darker American future, in which our voluntary communities wither away and government becomes the only word we have for the things we do together.

Ross, I doubt that. I doubt much of what you write.

That Douthat, along with David Brooks, writes for the Yew Nork Times, the newspaper of record, continues to amaze me. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but I believe the paper could hire better opinion writers from the freshman class of a school of journalism.