Fix Health Care Policy

Setting Biden Straight on Obamacare’s Anti-Conscience Mandate

 Vice President Biden didn’t get the story quite straight.

As the Obama Administration reels from the backlash for Obamacare’s anti-conscience mandate that forces religious employers to provide coverage and pay for abortion-inducing drugs, Biden yesterday set out to convince America that the Administration has a “new” version of the mandate that respects religion. The only problem is, the version is neither new nor respectful of religious liberty.

To set the record straight, we’ve put together a point-counterpoint response to the Vice President’s remarks. Simply put, the federal government should not be meddling with religious freedom, and the American people need to know the truth about Obamacare’s liberty-trampling dictates.  (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: anti-conscience mandate, attack on liberty, backlash, religious employers, Vice President Joe Biden

Video: Conscience Lost in Vast Verbal Oceania of Obamacare

 Efforts to repel the Obama Administration’s attack on liberty of conscience suffered a setback today on the floor of the U.S. Senate, but in the process kept alive an issue on which an extraordinary variety of Americans are willing to continue fighting – and with good reason.

The core hubris of President Obama’s attack on conscience is his apparent belief that manipulations of language alone can defuse the controversy over his preventive services mandate and its destructive effects on religious entities and other employers. But there is subject matter that is beyond both political spin and media messaging. A conscience knows when it has been trampled upon. Religious institutions know when they are acting in accord with the tenets of their faith, and the history of religious providers in the realm of health care is as long and noble as any in the course of civilization.   (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: anti-conscience mandate, attack on liberty, manipulations, religious entities

Two Centuries of Religious Freedom Rolled Back

Since 1791, when the Bill of Rights was formally adopted, America has enjoyed the legal protection of religious freedom, enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Today, 221 years later, centuries of progress in the protection of religious and other liberties is at risk of being rolled back in one fell swoop. The culprit: Obamacare.

As we all know, President Obama’s health care law will mandate that religious hospitals, charities, and schools abandon the tenets of their faiths and provide their employees insurance coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, contraception and sterilization. This anti-conscience mandate is but the latest assault on liberty Obamacare has ushered in. Its shock waves are reverberating across the country, waking Americans to the fact that our first freedom — religious liberty — will be the first to fall now that the federal government has unfettered control over the country’s health care system.   (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: anti-conscience mandate, Bill of Rights, Constitution, ObamaCare, religious liberty

PODCAST: Obamacare’s Anti-Conscience Mandate

In this week’s Heritage in Focus, Heritage expert Jen Marshall discusses the controversy over Obamacare’s anti-conscience mandate. Click here to listen.

Is this issue about more than just religious liberty? How is Heritage continuing to fight Obamacare? Is opposition to this mandate anti-women? Click above to hear Jen answer these questions and more.

Tags: anti-conscience mandate, contraceptive coverage, religious liberty

Religious Liberty Under Attack

Today is Ash Wednesday — the first day of Lent — the beginning of 40 days of prayer and fasting observed by Christians across the country, culminating in the Easter feast. Likewise in April, Jews will gather to celebrate Passover, one of many traditions observed under the religious freedom that the U.S. Constitution was designed to preserve. Now, though, that freedom is under direct attack by the very government that purports to represent the people, and that is but the first step in Obamacare’s re-writing of America’s blueprint.

This week, two more Christian colleges joined other religious institutions in fighting back against that attack when they filed lawsuits against the Obama Administration for imposing an anti-conscience mandate under Obamacare. The controversial regulation forces almost all employers to provide health insurance coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, and sterilization, without a co-pay.   (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: abortion-inducing drugs, anti-conscience mandate, contraceptive coverage, Lent, religious liberty

Religious Leaders Testify for All Americans’ Liberty

Since the Obamacare anti-conscience mandate was proposed in August, the Obama Administration has come under intense scrutiny for the rule’s violation of religious liberty. In the wake of the final rule’s publication in the Federal Register yesterday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a full committee hearing yesterday to further investigate those claims, highlighting the law’s serious threat to freedom.

Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, Connecticut, who serves as chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Religious Liberty, began the panel testimony by telling a story, “The Parable of the Kosher Deli.” Bishop Lori’s parable drew a parallel between the mandate coercing many religious employers to pay for abortion-inducing drugs and contraceptives against their beliefs and a hypothetical situation of a government forcing all Jewish delis to serve pork sandwiches. The latter situation is clearly an absurd violation of religious freedom, and Bishop Lori’s story ended with the government rescinding the requirement to serve certain meat products and restoring Jewish deli owners’ liberty.   (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: anti-conscience mandate, contraceptive coverage, mandates, ObamaCare, religious leaders