Could Proposed Amendment Put Employers in Charge of Health Services?

this is whats wrong with our law makers,what in the hell does birth control have to do with highway saftey bill an why and how do they attach it to this bill

These Ayatollahs are aiming much higher than birth control. Many fundamentalist christian groups do not believe in various forms of medical care. In a coalition with right wing Republicans, the Blount Amendment would let ANY employer opt out of covering ANY medical treatment he disagreed with as a matter of personal faith.

A business owner who objected to, for instance, childhood vaccinations on religious grounds could have an insurance plan that did not cover them, in effect overriding a federal requirement that vaccinations be provided free with any health-insurance plan.

In 1990, six children denied care on religious beliefs - whose parents were members of the Faith Tabernacle and First Century Gospel Church in Philadelphia - died of complications following measles. A local health official said that five of the children could have been saved with medical care. All 6 would probably be alive today if they had been vaccinated.

The Blount Amendment would allow this.

The son of Dennis and Lorie Nixon, members of Faith Tabernacle Congregation, died as a result of an ear infection that was left untreated, except for prayer. They were arrested for manslaughter.

4 years later, their daughter Shannon died at the age of 16 of juvenile diabetes. She was anointed with oil and prayed over. Three days later, she went into a coma and died. Both diseases are not normally life threatening if treated medically. The parents were tried and convicted of involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment.

The Blount Amendment would make this kind of neglect "legal".

So will this mean that employers will hire and fire FASTER to skirt the health care issue, since soooo many people are in the unemployed work-pool?

How about Blunt's employer castrating him with a chain saw? Blunt's recommendation will force people to practice medicine without a body of knowledge to make medical decisions. There are people who refuse to take flu shots or vaccinations because of moral obligations and plain stupidity. 19 million people died in 1918 because there was no flu vaccine and we don't want employers blocking flu shots or vaccinations for employees. This a war against women, not a war against religion. Republicans are very good at obstructing and blocking. This is what needs to happen to the Blunt amendment. Some Democrat needs to block it. If the amendment stands, then President Obama will veto it and three hundred million women will be grateful.

The right way to go would be the opposite from this craziness. Health and employment should have nothing to do with each other. No businessman should be a nanny, saddled with buying health insurance and paying taxes for his employees. Health insurance should be removed from the workplace, and put into two channels: 1. Private insurance; if you can afford it, you buy it; 2. Means-tested government health insurance so that if you can't afford it, then the government will provide cut-rate but adequate care. No one will go without care, no one will be forced to buy insurance, employers will no longer have the enormously burdensome expectation that they will provide health care plans, and everyone would be happy. Taxes would probably stay about the same if the (again) govt care is means-tested and cut-rate. And you think I would make a bad president. Just wait until I am in the saddle!

The basic problem I have here is that it's quite arguable that, if an employer is going to bear the major financial burden of an employee's insurance, he or she have a say in, perhaps even outright control over, what will and will not be covered. As a corrolary, why shouldn't a prospective employee bear the burden of determining whether an employer - provided insurance plan includes coverage for items like contraception?

Paraphrasing an oft-used phrase, the views just expressed are not necessaritly those of the writer; but I can't say they are unreasonable per se.

It is one thing for the government to establish programs like Social Security and Medicare as an entitlement, available to all at certain ages or under certain conditions. It seems to me quite another to make this insurance an entitlement in the same sense that a minimum wage or inclusion under all-inclusive Wage&Hour or Worker's Comp laws.