This week, the Senate had the opportunity to cast a vote about the Blunt amendment. The Senate voted to kill this amendment, which means that it will not be allowed to take effect. This is wonderful news for everyone who has employer sponsored health insurance, or who hopes to have it, someday.
The Blunt amendment that was proposed by Senator Roy Blunt, (who is a Republican from Missouri). This particular proposal was attached, or amended to, a bill that was about funding for highways.
The Blunt amendment had absolutely nothing to do with funding for highways, though. Instead, it was about health insurance coverage. More specifically, it had to do with employer sponsored health insurance coverage.
The proposal, if passed, would have allowed all employers, (whether religiously-affiliated, or not), to be allowed to exclude anything at all from the health insurance coverage that is offered to their workers. It would have allowed employers and health insurers to refuse to provide coverage for, or pay for coverage of “specific items or services” if that coverage was “contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the sponsor, issuer, or other entity offering the plan.”
If you have been following the news, it is easy to see that the Blunt amendment was designed to do two things. It was an effort to reverse what has been called the birth control mandate. That much is clear despite the fact that the Blunt amendment does not actually use the word “contraception”. The birth control mandate requires all employer sponsored health insurance to cover the cost of birth control.
Churches, synagogues, mosques and other places of worship are exempt from having to cover the cost of birth control in their employer sponsored health insurance. So are religiously-affiliated businesses, such as hospitals, universities, and social service agencies.
In those cases, the businesses’ insurers would have to cover the cost of birth control entirely. Some groups, such as the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, disapproves of this compromise. Other religious groups have accepted it.
The other purpose of the Blunt amendment was to create a law that would give the religious groups who feel that the health insurance laws violate their religious freedom the ability to avoid having to comply with those laws.
The Senate voted 51 to 48 against the Blunt amendment. This means that the amendment has been “killed”, and will not be made into a law.
Why didn’t it pass? It seems that several legislators realized how harmful this bill would be for Americans who rely on health insurance coverage that comes from their employer.
Senator Jeanne Shaheen pointed out that the Blunt amendment would have allowed employers to deny coverage of H.I.V./ AIDS screenings, diabetes screenings, mammograms, prenatal care for single mothers, or vaccinations for children, simply because the employer had objections to what he perceived as an unhealthy lifestyle.
Senator Jeff Merkley pointed out that the Blunt amendment would have allowed employers to refuse to cover end of life care because the employer believed that this type of health care interferes with God’s will.
Dr. Hal C. Lawrence III, the executive vice president of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists pointed out that the Blunt amendment would prevented access to contraception. He noted that contraception “improves and saves babies’ lives, improves maternal health, and can be life-saving for women with serious medical problems.”
The American Cancer Society pointed out that the Blunt amendment would allow employers to deny coverage of preventative services like mammograms and smoking cessation programs if the employer had “undefined religious beliefs or moral convictions.”
Image by Gage Skidmore on Flickr