http://thehill.com/...
The White House will announce an effort to accommodate religious groups who have objected to a rule requiring religious organizations like charities and hospitals to include contraception in their healthcare plans, according to ABC News.
The White House has faced heavy criticism from the Catholic Church and other religious organizations, Republicans, and even some Democrats over the issue, and Vice President Biden has suggested a compromise could be worked out.
According to ABC News, the accommodation will retain the rule's purpose of providing birth control for women employees but would allow the employees to get the coverage from an insurance provider.
ABC said it is possible the announcement will come from Obama himself, who avoided questions on Thursday about the controversy.
I will provide updates as they become available.
A brief commentary - Regardless of the actual compromise, I highly doubt this makes the issue go away. Democrats are willing to call off the dogs when Republicans give an inch. Republicans see it as an opportunity to double down. I will leave it to you to decide whether this is good or bad. It could make Santorum stronger, which in the end would be good for the WH. It could cause a drop in enthusiasm. It could energize women. We will see.
But more importantly, I am left to wonder the impact of any compromise on ACA in general.
If the Admin extends this extension, I predict it will be tough to justify not exempting individual business owners of faith on the conservative side. I suspect you will quickly see lawsuits by other groups of faith (for instance, is Focus on the Family an employer of more than 50?), and I have no clue what legal ground the admin will stand to suggest a religious affiliated employer owned by a church is different from a employer with an individual with "religious conviction". That is going to be a very interesting debate.
I would caution anyone who believes a compromise of any sort will end this discussion. It could buy time, but the debate will continue.
UPDATE 5:37 AM PT:
http://abcnews.go.com/...
White House officials have discussed the state law in Hawaii, where religious groups are allowed to opt out of coverage that includes birth control, as long as employees are given information whether such coverage can be obtained. But this accommodation would not go that far.
This announcement would not go that far. Sources say it will involve health insurance companies helping to provide the coverage, since it’s actually cheaper for these companies to offer the coverage than to not do so, because of unwanted pregnancies and resulting complications.
UPDATE 2 -6:09 AM PT:
Well, now that this is on the rec list, let me add a few videos that I think are helpful to the discussion.
First, there has been a lot of discussion around whether this law is in place for 28 states, with 8 having no exemptions. This may not actually be the case. Feel free to view and decide for yourself.
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I would mention, that there clearly are some religiously affiliated business that do not provide this coverage even thought Title VII seems to say they are not allowed to do that. Does anyone know how those business currently are able to avoid the Title VII rule?
Additionally, on Morning Joe today, they had the Washington DC Cardinal on, and they offered him all types of compromises and reasons why providing this coverage is important, and at every turn, he basically said, "Not Enough". (I will upload the video when it becomes available shortly).
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It could be that the Administration believes by offering a "compromise", they can return fire and create a scenario where conservatives and the church are shown to truly be against any coverage, allowing them to regain momentum and gain traction with folks like Chris Matthews and Mark Shields that are unfortunately driving the conversation. At which point, this becomes a double win, if the base "buys" the compromise. Women are even more energized against the conservative war on women and the issue remains on the table during the Republican primary hurting Romney.
(As a side note, Joe Scarborough predicted this will hurt Romney more than President Obama in the long run. That scares me, but Morning Joke is usually dead wrong :) ).
UPDATE 3 - 6:37 AM PT:
A bit more on the expected compromise...
http://online.wsj.com/...
Details of the compromise position are unclear, but one person familiar with it said it will make sure religious institutions don't have to pay for contraceptives coverage for employees but that insurance companies do.
UPDATE 4 - 7:11 AM PT:
The President will speak from the WH Briefing Room to announce the compromise at 12:15pm EST.
UPDATE 4 - 8:01 AM PT:
On a conference call with reporters Friday, a senior administration official announced that the White House will move the onus to provide women free contraceptive services to insurance companies if their religiously-affiliated employers object to providing insurance coverage that covers birth control.
"All women will still have access to free preventive care that includes contraceptive services," the official said. "The insurance company will be required to reach out directly and offer her contraceptive coverage free of charge," if the employer objects to providing that coverage in its benefit package.
So what do you think?