U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Mandate
Leaders in the Catholic Church are extremely concerned since hearing in late January that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is requiring virtually all private health plans, starting on Aug. 1, 2012, to include coverage for all FDA-approved prescription contraceptives, female sterilization procedures, and related “patient education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity.”
In a statement, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that non-profit employers who, based on religious beliefs, do not currently provide contraceptive coverage in their insurance plan will be provided an additional year, until August 1, 2013, to comply with the new law.
“HHS falsely characterizes these as ‘preventive services’ as if pregnancy were a disease,” said the Most Reverend William E. Lori, the bishop of the Diocese of Bridgeport and the chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, and Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan, archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York and the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), in a recent statement. “HHS further stipulates that these ‘services’ must be included in private health insurance plans without co-pays or other cost sharing. In spite of many appeals, the Administration also refused to broaden the religious exemption to these rules – an exemption limited to groups that hire and serve people primarily of their own faith. In a word, most churches and church-run institutions do not qualify because of their very openness to serving the common good of society and all people regardless of creed.”
They referred to HHS’s mandate as “an egregious affront to religious liberty.”
Sister Mary Ann Walsh, the director of media relations for the USCCB, blasted the mandate as “the first time in our history that the federal government is forcing religious people and groups to ante up for services that violate their consciences.”
In a fact sheet issued by the USCCB, some of the concerns the bishops have include the following:
• “Everyone deserves access to basic life-affirming health care, and health care reform is supposed to serve that goal,” the fact sheet said. “The effect of this mandate is just the opposite, as it pressures organizations to drop their health coverage for employees and others altogether if they have a moral or religious objection to these particular items.”
• “By requiring coverage for all drugs approved for contraception and ‘emergency contraception’ by the FDA, the mandate includes drugs that can interfere with implantation in the womb and therefore destroy the early human embryo,” the fact sheet said. “One such drug already approved, ‘Ella’ (ulipristal), is very similar to the abortion drug RU-486 in its formula and its ability to cause an abortion in the first weeks of pregnancy. The new health care reform law forbids HHS to mandate coverage of abortion, but it is doing so here.”
• “Ideally, HHS can leave the law the way it has always been, so those who provide, sponsor and purchase health coverage can make their own decisions about whether to include these procedures without the federal government imposing one answer on everyone,” the fact sheet said. “If HHS refuses, it will be especially urgent for Congress to pass the “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act” (HR 1179/S. 1467), to prevent health care reform act from being used to violate insurers’ and purchasers’ moral and religious beliefs.”
Cardinal-designate Dolan and Bishop Lori said in their statement that prayer is important in trying to overcome the mandate. “Let us remain united in prayer and in our defense of human dignity,” they said.
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