momof4 wrote:
Religious employers are not subsidizing birth control.
They at least had a choice before HHS came out with its pronouncement about the subject.

They have 2 choices, provide insurance benefits or don't provide them. If this is such a moral conundrum for them why not just cease with insurance benefits for their employee's and let them fin for themselves?
Because they have no problem at all with providing 99.9% of the health care benefits. Because allowing their employees to fend for themselves doesn't fit with their overall beliefs. Do you really want employers to stop providing health care insurance because the government is micro-managing things down to how much is charged for certain services?

And when PPACA goes into full effect, it won't be an option in any case.

The insurance company is who is being forced, follw the new law or else. If the religious employer was actually forced to subsidize something against their tenents I would be on their side. This is the cruxt of this "starkingly dishonest debate", that a religious employer is forced into anything. The next falsehood is that they are forced to provide them for free, since the insured pays premiums and is responsible for co-pays, where's the free?
I'm sorry, but I don't think the above states the issue at all.

If you are forced to pay for a service that goes against your core beliefs, you are paying for those things whether or not other services are part of the total package.

Claiming that the third-party must provide those benefits out of the third parties own profits is equally egregious but for a completely different reason.

Do we really want our federal government to be able to force people to do things against their will just because the government believes it is a really, really good idea? Is that one of the principles this country was founded on? Are we the masters or is the government?

Finally, on the issue of free, the PPACA states that many services must be provided with no co-pay. Contraception is one of those services. So the brouhaha about "free" is valid. Before PPACA, co-pay, after PPACA, no co-pay.

"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it." --Thomas Jefferson