The IRS prepares to enforce Obamacare’s contraception mandate.
On August 1, the one-year “safe harbor” for religious charities objecting to provisions of Obamacare will end. Starting then, these nonprofit employers will be forced to violate their religious beliefs or pay large fines. In charge of collecting the fines will be our recently newsworthy friends at the Internal Revenue Service.
Gary Locke
To recap how we got here: In 2010 a panel created by the new health care law determined that all health insurance policies provided by employers must cover contraception, sterilization, and abortion drugs free of charge. Employers not complying with this Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate will be fined up to $100 per employee, per day. For some, that could mount to millions of dollars a year.
The administration and its supporters promoted the mandate as necessary for women’s health. They trotted out activist Sandra Fluke, who argued that women are withering under the pressure of having to pay for their own birth control. Never mind the fact that contraception can cost an insured woman as little as $9 a month, and many without insurance have access to the same products through publicly funded programs like Title X. To question the necessity of the new requirement, its supporters said, was to make war on women.
Some have tried to create the impression that a compromise was brokered to accommodate the objectors’ conscience concerns. But this is not so.
See: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/won-t-turn-out-well_733957.html
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