Sometime soon, the Supreme Court will reveal its decision regarding the Affordable Care Act. Richard Mourdock, who is running for Senate in Indiana, decided to go ahead and respond to that ruling – before the ruling was actually made.
Most of us are waiting to see what the Supreme Court will decide about the Affordable Care Act. Will it decide that the entire thing stands? Will it pick out parts of it that we can keep, and exclude other portions? Will the Supreme Court decide that the entire Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional? No matter what is decided, one thing is certain. It will have an impact on the health insurance policies that cover our families.
Recently, candidate Richard Mourdock made the news for a comment he made about health insurance coverage. Mourdock is the current State Treasurer of Indiana. He is a Republican who is running for Senator against incumbent Senator Joe Donnelly, who is a Democrat. Mourdock was interviewed by the Clark County News and Tribune. He was asked some questions about his views on health care.
In the interview, Mourdock made it clear that he is against the entire Affordable Care Act. He also stated that he is opposed to requiring employers “to pay for certain services they may be morally opposed to – such as birth control”.
The interviewer asked him “But is that fair to the consumer, who may want their birth control covered?”
Instead of directly answering the question, Mourdock made up a hypothetical scenerio where an employer chose to cover everything in their employer sponsored health plan, but chose to exclude coverage for cancer. Mourdock said:
“Does that employer have the right to do it? I would say yes they do if they want to keep their health care costs down but it also means it’s less likely you are going to want to work here. If that employer wants to get the best employees coming in the door he’s going to offer the best insurance possible”.
Today, Mourdock is in the news for an entirely different health insurance related reason. Like many of us, it seems that he is aware that the Supreme Court is about to reveal its decision about the Affordable Care Act. So, he decided to just go ahead and make a response to that ruling – before the ruling has been made public.
Since he couldn’t possibly know what, exactly, the Supreme Court would decide, he went ahead and made four different response videos. All four videos somehow made their way to his YouTube page recently. They have since been taken down, but, are still available for viewing in some places online. A spokesman for Mourdock responded to the accidental release of the videos with: “But as the Boy Scouts say, ‘Be Prepared’”.
Image by Perry Andrew on Flickr