Presidential Legerdemain

I was talking with Pastorius tonight and said essentially the same thing.

Obama has said that the employers do not have to provide contraceptive services.

But the insurers do. So now the employers just have to pay insurers who provide contraceptive services.

Of course Ace says it better than I do.

Guess that's why he makes the big bucks :)

Ace of Spades:

Obama's Compromise: I'll Just Mandate That Employers Contract With Insurers To Cover Contraception For Free, and Hence Employers Cannot Be Said To Be Paying For It

—Ace

Has he gone insane?

The revised Obama mandate will make religious groups contract with insurers to offer birth control and the potentially abortion-causing drugs to women at no cost. The revised mandate will have religious employers refer women to their insurance company for coverage that still violates their moral and religious beliefs. Under this plan, every insurance company will be obligated to provide coverage at no cost.

Essentially, religious groups will still be mandated to offer plans that cover both birth control and the ella abortion drug

According to Obama administration officials on a conference call this morning, a woman’s insurance company “will be required to reach out directly and offer her contraceptive care free of charge. The religious institutions will not have to pay for it.”

The birth control and abortion-causing drugs will simply be “part of the bundle of services that all insurance companies are required to offer,” White House officials said.

So here's how this works.

I'm an insurer. Here were your two options, before Obama's brilliant solution:

I could cover your employees for x dollars.

If you want birth control/abortifacient coverage, we'll add that rider for y dollars. So this option is x + y dollars.

Obama's genius solution is:

Hey, we'll cover your employees for x + y dollars as a baseline. But we'll toss in abortifacient coverage for 0 dollars.

Uhhh... That x+y is what it cost to have base insurance + birth control/abortifacient coverage. All that's being done here is that people are lying about the costs -- now the insurer and the contracting party lie and pretend the base insurance cost is x + y (which it isn't; it's x) and also pretend the cost for the birth control coverage is 0 (which it isn't; it's y).

All Obama's doing is mandating that employers enter into a contract with insurers in which both parties pretend that the base cost of the service is higher than it is, and that abortifacient coverage now costs zero dollars.

Obama's mandate solution is now just to force the conscience-objectors to lie about it. He

The old mandate was just to provide abortifacents. The "solution" just adds a new mandate on top of that one: That you lie about that fact in a legal contract.

This new "solution" is the same one you had before: You always had the option to lie to yourself that you were not part of the abortion providing industry, if you liked.

The only change is now that option is mandatory.

Obama's actual policy doesn't change, nor does the coercion against you. Just a new coercion is added -- that you lie about it -- to insulate him from the political consequences of his policy.