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Showing posts from June, 2012

What's wrong with the HHS Mandate?

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          Earlier this year, the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services unveiled a new policy now known at the “HHS Mandate.” The new Mandate would require nearly all private health insurance plans to include coverage for all FDA-approved prescription contraceptive drugs and devices, surgical sterilizations and abortion-inducing drugs—drugs that interfere with implantation in the womb and therefore destroy the life of a human being in the earliest stage of development. This Mandate is the result of Affordable Care Act, commonly known as “Obamacare,” passed in 2010. Although the HHS Mandate provides an exemption for “religious employers,” the exemption is so narrow, most religious institutions providing health, educational or charitable services will have no protection.           On February 10, 2012, responding to intense opposition from a broad spectrum of religious institutions all over the country, President Obama announced there would be an “accommodation” for religious institu