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3.03.2012

A Religious Look at the Failed Blunt Amendment

The Blunt Amendment has failed, thankfully. It was a bill, sponsored by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo), to provide for employers to deny their employees healthcare coverage costs based on religious moral objections.
At first, the bill would have only applied to religious based employers, but Republicans later demanded that it be made to apply to any employer, religious or no, who had a moral objection to paying for any medical costs they found objectionable.

The discussion focused mainly on how the bill would allow an employer to deny a woman access to contraception, which was initially how the entire thing got started, when a Catholic employer had objections to paying its employees' medical costs for contraception. Though, while such a topic was justified, it was also just a little but narrow, because technically, the bill would've allowed any employer to deny any kind of medical coverage to any of its employees for any moral objection.

So, now that the bill has been defeated, we can all breath just a little bit easier.

But for any of you out there with strong moral convictions who may be wondering how to resolve the mental conflict, some words of thought for you,

As an employer it is absolutely none-of-your-business to know what an employees medical expenses are going toward. Nor are you accountable for what an employee pays for with their money/medical insurance. Even if the employee chooses to use their medical insurance for something you find objectionable, you cannot be held responsible for what someone else does in their own private life. Furthermore, once the employee has submitted their labor, all that money is now technically theirs and no longer yours because they've earned it. So, in a way, it is really the employee who is paying for the medical insurance, and not you, because the employee has earned that medical insurance with their labor. Ergo, what they do, with their money, and their insurance, is none-of-your-business.

More reading here,
 Employment-Based Medical Insurance and Ethical Concerns

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