Conservatives are going to be MAD that they spent all that money on lawsuits to block the new ACA contraceptive rules, but the HHS just put in place Samuel Alito's suggested workaround.
A new "proposed rule" by the Department of Health and Human Services lets female employees of for-profit businesses, like Hobby Lobby, obtain birth control directly from their insurer, at no extra cost, if their boss opts out of covering the service in the company's insurance plan for religious reasons.
The move extends an accommodation that already exists for non-profit organizations, which are allowed to refuse to cover for birth control. In short, the religious owners can pass the cost on to the insurer so that they're no longer complicit in what they view as sin.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/...
With Alito suggesting this workaround, the restriction on contraceptives is basically null and void at this point.
"The Government could ... extend the accommodation that HHS has already established for religious nonprofit organizations to non-profit employers with religious objections to the contraceptive mandate," he wrote. "That accommodation does not impinge on the plaintiffs' religious beliefs that providing insurance coverage for the contraceptives at issue here violates their religion and it still serves HHS's stated interests."
HHS also tweaked rules so that the aggrieved right wing corporate "persons" who didn't want contraceptive coverage for employees could complain to the government instead of to insurance companies, who in turn pass along the workaround solution here to the insurance company. The insurance company then pays for contraceptive coverage.
Convoluted? Yes. But whatever works.
The ironically-named Family Research Council frowned and called this an accounting gimmick. I guess they need to take this "gimmick" up with Alito.