Little Sisters and Birth Control

… and if your manager is a nun, you don’t even need to bother asking. 

In a way I don’t blame the Little Sisters of the Poor for their objections.  It makes sense because we pose the wrong question in this country.  Even with the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or ‘ObamaCare’), the procurement and administration of health insurance is still left to employers, who peruse the details of costs and coverage.  This is a vestige of the ancient ‘patron’ theory of employment—which enabled broad invasions of employee privacy—most aspects of which have been relegated to the dustbin of history.

Health insurance is a human right, and the minimum basic coverage required under the ACA is bare bones.  It is much better to view paying for the coverage as part of the cost of employing people, while leaving the selection and administration to professionals.  That administration is time-consuming and costly for small employers; it is terribly inefficient for, say, a restauranteur to be expected to gain enough expertise (not to mention power) to negotiate with a huge insurance company.  No other advanced industrial country burdens employers with this; we shouldn’t either.

It would be much more efficient and affordable to establish a single risk pool, called ‘human being’, and negotiate rates for minimum basic coverage en masse.  For those employed, the employer’s role would simply be to contribute the appropriate amount into a fund to cover their obligation – much as is done with Social Security and Medicare.  It is not an employer’s business to look into the details of a human being’s healthcare coverage, any more than a range of other personal choices they make. 

I understand the Little Sisters balking at having to specifically procure health insurance coverage that contains clauses they find immoral.  This should not be in their hands; they should not be customizing coverage – any more than an employer who is a Christian Scientist might customize coverage that covers only prayer.