The Watering Hole, Wednesday, July 9, 2014: Hobby Lobby Ruling Triggers Massive Health Insurance Cancellations

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A little more than a week after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled business owners do not have to provide health insurance that conflicts with their deeply held religeous beliefs, the health insurance industry reports massive cancellations of employer-sponsored health plans.

Coincidently, the church of Christian Scientists,  which preaches the deeply held religious belief in faith healing, is seeing a massive influx of new members.

OPEN THREAD

GOT ANY DEEPLY HELD RELIGIOUS BELIEFS YOU WOULD LIKE TO RELY ON TO OVERTURN THE LAW?

58 thoughts on “The Watering Hole, Wednesday, July 9, 2014: Hobby Lobby Ruling Triggers Massive Health Insurance Cancellations”

  1. (given the latest SCOTUS ruling, on behalf of a corporations ‘religious beliefs’, why would this be punishable?)//

    Shame on the ‘name of religion’, just shame…

    California pastor, 2 others admit they tortured 13-year-old, forced him to dig own grave

    Lonny Remmers, the pastor of a small church in Corona, sicced two of his goons on a 13-year-old boy in order to ‘scare’ him straight. The men beat the boy, forced him to dig his own grave, rubbed salt in his wounds and maced him in the face until he bled, documents show.

  2. Questions

    “I’ve just become a Born Again Christian!”

    What is the legal waiting period between conversion and full implementation of religious beliefs as “deeply held”? (I only ask this because theologically speaking all beliefs are “full on” the moment one chooses to convert.)

    “Ooh! NOW I’ve just become a Hindu.”

    Are “deeply held religious beliefs” (DHRB) transferable when one converts to another religion?

    “Ahh, my eyes have been opened to the Truth about the religion of Dingley-Dangley-Hell’s Bells!”

    What religions are acceptable to the legislature for the case of determining a DHRB? Must a religion pass a legal test to be acceptable? Wouldn’t that make the government making laws about “the establishment of religion”? (Note that there is a distinction between the legal recognition of a “religion” as a “legal entity” for tax (etc.) purposes and a “religion” as merely existing as a belief set of one or more people).

    “As a member of the Anarcho-Smokes-A-Lot religion we find our religious truth through introspection.”

    Must a “DHRB” be codified in a religious text to be acceptable to the judiciary? Will there be a list of acceptable religious texts? Again I ask – aren’t making such judgments making laws “concerning the establishment of religion”?

    How does the judiciary intend to prove or disprove that a belief is
    1)religiously based, and
    2) “deeply held”?

    I will add that I think that the SCOTUS viewed this as an attack on the ACA (and thus on Obama) far more than a religious issue… because they are stupid and partisan… and stupid… the conservatives will destroy the country in order to achieve their partisan goals and ESPESCIALLY to attack Obama in any way they can, regardless of consequences…

    (Still basically offline… sneaking this in at work…. Bad me… but it is part of my DHRB to have unlimited personal computer access…. Blogging brings one closer to holiness…)

  3. O.k., one more: As science is not the basis for the Hobby Lobby ruling (“belief” is), what if it is my religious belief that paying corporate taxes causes abortions? I mean, I don’t have to prove it is true, I just have to “believe” it. Right?

  4. Well, Cagey, you’re being…cagey. The Supreme Court just opened the door for anyone (except, perhaps, publically traded corporations) to challenge the application of any law that goes against any purported Deeply Held Religious Belief.

  7. I deeply hold my religious conviction that religion is a sham. Therefore, my Constitutional rights are being trampled by exempting these sham organizations from having to pay corporate taxes.

  8. I’m wondering what there actually is to see at ‘The Border’? At least, in the daylight? If Obama showed up there, with his Secret Service entourage, would scores of border crossers rush up to him? Or would the concentration of law enforcement in the area cause the border crossers to avoid the area completely?

  9. God bless America, the most wonderful and charitable nation ever created! Words by Emma Lazarus inscribed on the Statue of Liberty read:

    “Give me your tired, your poor,
    Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
    The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
    Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
    I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

    And now, today, with some 50,000 refugee children arriving here from Central America — the homeless, tempest-tossed — fleeing from the horrors implicit in their homelands, seeking only freedom (YES) and liberty (YAY USA!!) . . .

    Oh wait. They’re brown skinned and don’t even talk Amurkan. Damn Obama, bringin’ ’em up here jest ’cause he knows they’ll vote Democrat. GIT ‘EM OUTTA HERE! SEND ‘EM BACK WHERE THEY COME FROM!

    Goddamn Republicans.

    America, that which once it was: R.I.P.

    • I think we should let them all stay. Any older child that can manage to safely get themselves and their younger siblings from Honduras or Guatemala to the USA is one smart, tough cookie. They’ll make fine citizens.

    • Years ago, there was a (Democrat, obviously) governor of Arizona whose name was Raul Castro. He was a bright and serious-minded man, one with a mind that would show AZ’s current governor Jan Brewer to be the total and complete imbecile that she is. Of course, unlike Rafael Cruz, AZ’s Raul Castro was NOT from Cuba. Oh, the irony.

    • I’ve found a perfect little bit of social commentary when I pass the guy in the supermarket on his cell getting shopping instructions from home:
      A slightly condescending and quiet little laugh.
      They are instantly shamed….
      I’m not mean am I?
      😉

  13. ‘Deeply held religious beliefs’ will never go so deep as to be below the bottom line…

  15. “Deeply held” belief:
    Clung to out of sheer terror,
    Or fear of own thoughts

    • on that note, so to speak:

      Apollo’s Song

      What says the blowing of the wind,
      When love’s sent out, ne’er returned;
      And the lonely chariot rides the sky,
      Warming earth and sea below?

      Play, gentle Muses, Play.
      Play harps and lyres;
      Set melody and words afloat,
      That lover’s hearts might hear the tune,
      And pause, with gentle sigh,
      To appreciate the gift that each has given and each
      received:
      Love to Love,
      In Love to Live,
      In Love to Die.

  20. So. Do we have stupid leaders because people are stupid or does the stupidity of stupid leaders make people stupid? What about the dishonesty factor? Do stupid leaders actually believe the crap they spew or are they just intentionally appearing more stupid than they really are in order to appeal to truly stupid people? Insanity? A lot of stupid leaders say things that, if they truly believe them, strongly imply that they are stark raving mad. How can we tell when they are off the stupidity scale, the insanity scale, and the dishonesty scale?

    Crap! Now my head hurts.

    • Sweet. Anecdotal evidence is not the best, but based on my experience some doctors milk Medicare. My mom had vascular dementia. No one was interested in predicting/studying/preventing this until it was too late. Once she had it, every cardio/vascular/lung specialist in a 50 mile radius was comfy with ordering every test under the sun in order to confirm that she really had this condition. We received no test results or advice that would help us understand how to proceed with her care, just copies of the statements delineating how much Medicare had paid.

      • The little seaside town I live (near) has the highest per capita number of PHD’s, apparently in the nation, or so they claim.
        Most if not all are retired, and they were all specialists in some narrow medical arena. Experts they are in dispensing out of date advise, most couldn’t find their way out of a wet paper bag.
        One expounded on his doctorate in ‘thin film technology’, so I asked him if he could help me cover a greenhouse with Visqueen. He was obviously offended. Made my day… 😉

    • When 60 Minutes did a story on Medicare fraud at the end of the Bush years they estimated it was costing $60 billion a year. Bush’s DoJ didn’t care because they wanted it to go broke.

    • I hate it when some ass thinks he’s proving something by trying to crush your hand. I guess it’s some weird male thing about dominance or something.
      My favorite reaction is to briskly pull my hand away and look at the guy like “Ewww, what’s WRONG with YOU…” -chuckle-
      (The ones who don’t react with subsequent submission to my obvious alpha are the ones to keep an eye on.)

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