]]> http://christianity.blogoverflow.com/2012/03/05/an-evangelical-view-of-contraception/#comment-1590 Tue, 11 Sep 2012 23:58:03 +0000 http://christianity.blogoverflow.com/?p=11#comment-1590 Very happy for your family, Jon – praying your wife stays healthy through the pregnancy

]]> http://christianity.blogoverflow.com/2012/03/05/an-evangelical-view-of-contraception/#comment-1315 Mon, 27 Aug 2012 16:19:30 +0000 http://christianity.blogoverflow.com/?p=11#comment-1315 In the end, it didn’t matter: our birth control method failed and we found ourselves with a son, who we love dearly, just 10 months after our wedding. God is in control!

And He still is! Last week, my wife and I found out that she is pregnant (with twins) even though we have been using a fool-proof form of birth control. Frankly, this disrupts our plans (my wife is starting the third of four semesters of nursing school), but we are already getting glimpses of God’s greater plans for our family. We both thought we were done at one and now it seems we will have three children instead.

As for socialized medicine, we’ve had it in the U.S. since 1965. It’s called Medicare, and it is available to everyone over the age of 65 as well as people with disabilities. It costs about 1/3 to 1/2 of what private insurance does, and its beneficiaries rate it much better than private insurance. If more Americans could get that kind of coverage, that wouldn’t be so bad.

But I suspect most employers, if they are offering insurance today, will continue to offer it rather than pay a fine of $2000 per employee. Buying insurance would be cheaper than paying the fine.

nobody is compelling employers to pay for health insurance

I think that’s exactly what the new healthcare bill is doing. If you’ve got a company of >50 employees, you have to pay for healthcare or pay a 2,000 dollar fine.

I heard this from Sen. Ron Johnson on Wisconsin Public Radio yesterday, the speculation (from the right at least) is that most employers will opt to pay the fine and let individuals go and purchase their own subsidized insurance through the state run exchanges, putting us on a slippery slope to socialized medicine.

If we are going to persist in the myth that somehow an employer-funded health care scheme is the best that the US can do…

And there’s the rub. We shouldn’t persist in the myth that an employer-based (employer-funded is a misnomer because not all employers actually fund their insurance plans) health care scheme is the best we can do.

And once again, nobody is compelling employers to pay for health insurance. This system only exists because large employers lobbied for it. And they have consistently lobbied to keep it. During the 2010 health care debate, the Chamber of Commerce was one of the strongest advocates of keeping the current system intact.

If employers don’t want to guarantee that their employees can get needed medical services, then they should get out of the insurance business and start supporting a system that allows individuals to make their own choices. (I don’t know what that system would look like, but the focus of the discussion needs to be what we could have rather than what we do have. Anyone who thinks the current U.S. health insurance system is not completely broken, is delusional.)

If mandating services that the employers find onerous is what it takes to get them on board for reform, then that’s what needs to happen.

If an employer purchases an asset on behalf of an employee, it remains the employers until such time as the right is transferred to the employee.

You may as well say that the 6.2% Social Security contribution that an employer must make (in addition to the 4.2% the employee contributes) is then also the employee’s money. It is not. It is a tax that the US Government imposes on employers as a function of doing business.

If we are going to persist in the myth that somehow an employer-funded health care scheme is the best that the US can do (and I agree, its stupid), then we need to be up front and say, it is the employers who are funding this.

If you are going to compel employers to actively participate in that which they find anaethema, don’t be surprised if you get push back!

Should a vegan restaurant be allowed to fire an employee who eats meat?

Now that’s a more interesting one. Bear in mind that the vegan restaurant may merely be a business, but it’s quite possible the restaurant owner has a moral objection to eating meat. In that case, I’d say, the owner could require that employees not eat meat on the premises. I don’t think, though, that the employer should have any control at all over what employees do on their off time.

My take on it, anyway.

But I don’t know how much that helps us with a discussion of healthcare.

TRiG.

The main point, thanks.

TRiG.

Should a vegan restaurant be allowed to fire an employee who eats meat?