I have no words for this…if he prevails, how will insurers keep track of this? They will pass the extra recordkeeping costs to us.
Oh man, I’d love it if this got to the Supreme Court. I thought that Hobby Lobby case was the start of a slippery slope, and here it is.
Great example of what gives many of the religious right a terrible name.
If he doesn’t want birth control, he shouldn’t buy any. He should keep his stinkin’ hands off everyone else’s choice.
How does this man even have standing in this case?
Maybe they should change the law so the explanation of benefits does not go to the main policyholder with specific detail about treatments for other insureds.
I presume the adult daughters are still on his employer based plan and he and his employer are paying the premiums.
Are you freaking kidding me.
I always wondered about this. HIPPA is such a big deal, yet I see all of the EOBs, and two of my children are adults. They have no way to prevent me from seeing their EOBs.
This is ridiculous, so basically what the father is trying to do is control the behavior of his adult daughters, pure and simple (I guess for all his bible thumping and hooting and hollering, he doesn’t feel confident his daughter’s faith is strong enough not to use birth control or gasp have sex, so he needs to force this).
What bothers me most about this is where is the self control religious conservatives talk about? So if a plan offers birth control, that means people have to use it, like his daughters? This is like the fundamentalist Christians objective to teaching evolution, that it ‘ruins kids beliefs in their faith’, if their faith is that weak that they need to deny their daughters birth control to make sure they don’t use it, what kind of faith is that?
The article is also very enlightening about the attitudes of the religious right, about why they are anti abortion but also anti sex ed:
“As ThinkProgress previously explained, “[w]hen a vaccine became available for a common sexually transmitted disease . . . many people raised a religious objection to the vaccine on the grounds that it would reduce the potential consequences of sex and thus lead to greater promiscuity.” So some parents could object to having to pay for insurance that covers this vaccine. Or they may object to paying for coverage for STD treatments generally, on the theory that the potential consequences of sex are even greater if a person who becomes infected with an STD must pay the full out of pocket costs for medical care or else go untreated".
This is exactly the mentality, that sex needs to have consequences, that getting pregnant is a ‘wage of sin’, that getting HPV and cancer or Syphillis or whatnot is “God’s vengeance” and so forth.
I am getting tired of people who are religious complaining they get negative reactions, are told they are stupid, that they want to force their beliefs on others, are intolerant, etc, well, guess what, when the government caters to idiots like this, when we are told that a health care plan can’t cover birth control because someone on the plan might use it, something is royally screwed up. What’s next, the same guy saying because his religious belief forbid birth control, no plan he is on can cover it, because he objects? Hopefully the insurance companies with all their financial resources will put the screws to politicians to nip this one in the bud, this is getting ridiculous. As others have said, the moron doesn’t seem to understand that no health insurance company ever forces you to use something, if you don’t like morning after pills, birth control pills, blood transfusions, antibiotics, or whatnot, don’t use them.
“I presume the adult daughters are still on his employer based plan and he and his employer are paying the premiums.”
It doesn’t say anything in the article about them being on his policy, but I suppose that is the case. If he doesn’t want to pay for his daughters birth control through his premium, he should remove them from his policy and let them get their own insurance since they are adults. Or he can simply order his daughters not to use birth control. But he won’t do either of those things because this lawsuit is really about is banning birth control coverage from all insurance policies.
Exactlly, emilybee. This case has nothing to do with the Weiland family.
I wonder who the financial backers are?
This is disgusting.
And yet another, different reason why we need to get away from this type of insurance model.
I have students who come to me all the time who want birth control, the HPV vaccine, STI testing, etc but are afraid to do it because they don’t want their parents to find out. (Of course, there are other options but they tend to be more expensive and students don’t know about them.)
What makes this even more dangerous is there are less and less plans…Anthem is buying Cigna, and other health insurance companies are merging and so forth, so this becomes even more acute, given that there already is limited choice. More importantly., insurance companies can say “since some people on the plan have objections to X, I can’t tailor the plan to a few people, so I’ll just drop coverage for that”, and if the government says they have to, they can argue religious liberty, too. Tailoring health care plans to someone’s beliefs is fraught, does that mean a jehovas witness can opt for a plan that doesn’t pay for transfusions, and if he requires a transfusion for a kid on the plan who has an accidental fall, is the hospital stuck cause the insurance doesn’t cover it?
The headline is confusing. I thought he was suing to prevent his DD’s from getting BC.
I think he and his wife want to be able to purchase a family plan (that they pay for) that won’t include BC. The adult DDs are free to buy their own insurance and/or pay for BC outright. The parents aren’t suing to prevent their DDs from having access BC.
As odd as this is, I guess it’s their right since it’s the policy that they’re paying for …and they’re under no obligation to pay for any adult children’s plans.
Not much different than what is often said here, your money , your decision. Just like parents don’t have to pay for college, they don’t have to pay for adult children’s healthcare.
There are going to be something like 4 for profit major health insurance companies in the US. (UNH and Aetna are talking merger too). Might as well just go to single payer now. For all intent and purposes the 4 are remaining health insurance companies are going to merge together anyway.
What a freaking ridiculous health care, health insurance system we have in the United States.
Well, I’m really confused about a few things. (Nothing new here.)
I was a benefits director for about a hundred years. Most medical plans cover abortion. Some don’t cover it at all, some cover it in the case of incest or rape, and the companies where I worked covered all abortions, including elective abortions. In the 30 years I was a benefits director no one ever objected to anything.
I understand the rationale for peoples’ objections to covering BC, but why don’t they raise the same objections to covering abortion? It seems to me covering BC is pretty tame in comparison. Have people just not realized yet that plans cover abortion? Or are they too busy passing silly legal requirements on clinics to worry about the medical plans’ coverage?
If the father doesn’t want his premiums going for coverage of birth control, he can pay the penalty and go without insurance.
^^
Good question. Unless those with the abortion coverage objections are already choosing plans that don’t offer coverage, it doesn’t make much sense.
I’d read that insurance without BC coverage is or should be more expensive than insurance with BC coverage–because having a baby is much more expensive than BC.
Generic birth control pills are dispensed at no cost to the person who had RX coverage on their insurance. The parent is objecting to having this benefit on his plan. if his daughters are using generic BC pills, there is NO copay for them. He isn’t paying any additional money to get this RX filled.
ETA…the father can discontinue his under 26 kids from his policy. That would be one way for HIM to deal,with this.