Ain't Election Years a Hoot?

Election year politics are always ridiculous, but this year is the ridiculous-est.

The recent dustup over Obama requiring the Catholic institutions to provide contraceptive coverage is a red meat issue for a primary, but general election voters will be tired of this barbecue come November.

In reality, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA aka Obamacare) already has exemptions for religious groups, but to hear some politicians and talking heads tell it, Obama wants to force churches to provide a birth control pill with communion wafers.

The debate boils around the Catholic Church and affiliated institutions, but most Catholic entities like universities and hospitals already provide contraceptive coverage for employees, many of whom are not Catholic.

It seems simple enough, if I’m an employer and have moral objections to some service or drug included in my insurance plan, then I, and employees of like conviction will not use those. If my religion prohibits me from eating Brussels Sprouts, my employees should still be able to get them if they choose.

Requiring employers to cover contraceptives is not new. In 1978, the Senate passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by a margin of 75-11. Republicans were a lot more liberal in those days. The PDA addressed the practice of some employers providing access to prescription drugs, but not birth control.

Individual states have had laws in place for years that deal with this same issue.

Here are some numbers:

26- States that already have laws requiring insurers to cover any FDA-approved contraceptive.*

20- States that offer exemptions from contraceptive coverage (usually for religion) for insurers or employers in their policies.

6- States that don’t allow exemptions for religious beliefs. Even Obamacare doesn’t go that far.

Where has the outrage been all this time? This isn’t about the 1^st Amendment at all. And the GOP is seeking to stunt access in a wider arena.

Senator Roy Blunt, (R)Missouri, recently introduced an amendment to a $109 billion bipartisan transportation bill. It may prove to be a poison pill for the jobs carried in that bill. It’s so broadly written that all employers, not just faith-based employers, would be able to tailor their health insurance plans using the cut of their personal conscience.

I’m not going to paste the legislation-ese**, but one provision uses a lot of words to say that PPACA didn’t go far enough by carving out exemptions just for religious organizations, it needs to also allow for the conscientious objection of any employer to any medical services covered in an insurance plan.

As written, Blunt’s amendment means that: 

• ·      Abortion
• ·      Contraceptive drugs
• ·      Vasectomies
• ·      Tubal Ligation
• ·      Immunization
• ·      Biopsies
• ·      Blood transfusions
• ·      Psychotherapy
• ·      Antidepressants
• ·      Drug therapies of any kind
• ·      Surgery of any kind 

are all on the table to be excluded from an employers health plan on religious or just plain conscientious grounds.

If someone of a certain moral position can make policy for the company’s health insurance plan, then they can decide that no employee should have access to medical interventions that run counter to that policymaker’s conscience.

This seems to be the fight the GOP is waging to beat Obama in 2012. With the economic picture improving on multiple fronts, albeit slowly, their thunder on the economy is not as loud. We see the lightning, but the sound is taking longer to get here as the storm recedes.

They need a new issue, a wedge. So, we find ourselves revisiting the 1990s and dusting off the culture and moral wars of that era. But Republicans’ time-travel has gone back back back and landed them in a time when even contraception was controversial.

Instead of recalibrating their Wayback Machine, they’re saying, “This is nice. We’ll plant our flag here.”

They plopped down in a place that most Americans and a majority of Catholics*** don’t care to be.  Even the Catholic Health Association said that Obama “responded to the issues [they] identified that needed to be fixed.” Did Republican leadership find these facts daunting? Nope.

Faux outrage over non-issues can provide some fireworks to pop for the primaries, but it’ll fizzle at the polls in November.

*National Conference of State Legislatures- http://www.ncsl.org/issues-research/health/insurance-coverage-for-contraception-state-laws.aspx

** Read Roy Blunt’s amendment here: http://blunt.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/ce0de928-f717-436e-9da0-4a3e7fee0302/S.%201813%20Amendment.pdf

*** http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/catholics-support-white-house-contraception-mandate/2012/02/07/gIQAXXu1wQ_story.html

My Father's Words

Whitney Houston brings back echoes of my father’s words.

I don’t remember the exact year, maybe 1964 or ’65. I was about six. I was watching our first color TV with my dad. A comedian performed on his weekly show.

After it was over, my dad said, “The people who make us happy are often unhappy people.”

I remember wondering how that could be. After all, the guy was saying and doing funny things, the audience was laughing and clapping; they loved him. It looked like he was having so much fun, therefore “happy.”

I always remember that as one of the first times my father said something that made no sense to me, but I knew somehow that I should store that little pearl.

Years passed and many times over my dad’s words have proven to be true. I could start listing all the comedians, actors, musicians, singers, poets and painters who led troubled lives and died troubled deaths, but I leave that to you because they are too many.

So it is again. Whitney Houston is dead.

We are saddened at the loss of someone who had the talent, the beauty and the drive. She had wealth and the adoration of millions. Who could want anything more? She seemed to have pursued happiness and when, by all measures that society attaches to success, she caught it only to find that she was not happy.

In this day of instant news, camera phones in every pocket and the insatiable appetite for gossip and dirt, her unhappiness had been on full display for some time. We scorned and ridiculed her for not leading a life that matched the beauty that she had once shown us on stage.

We live vicariously through entertainers. We miss the fact that their achievements are a byproduct of a life out of balance. We thrill at their affluence and imagine how happy we’d be if fate smiled on us so brightly. We’re angered and contemptuous when that someone takes away our illusion of store-bought happiness. We jeer and salivate wide-eyed at the TV, Twitter and tabloids that capture every moment as they spiral back to earth trailing a tail of flame.

We’ll see and hear every lurid detail of Whitney’s long demise and terrible last few days as long as the ratings hold up. There’ll be a spike in online searches and iTunes sales. Investigative reports will be narrated with baritone gravitas in a parody of real news. Onlookers and hangers-on will get their seconds of fame telling what they saw. Everybody will care about her until she fades from the news again.

We’ll find another to marvel at while their surfaces gleam, colors shine and their song is in tune. Again, we’ll find that living our lives through someone else’s outward appearance is a formula for disappointment.

Paint cracks and peels. Rust bubbles up. Their frail inner self shows through. We hate them for that. We throw rocks at them like an abandoned amusement park ride. The only thrill left is the sound of crashing glass when we hit the mark. Then even that is gone as the ride crumbles to rubble beyond recognition.

Many still don‘t get how those who bring us the greatest joys can be so self-destructive and unhappy. It’s as though they take on responsibility for our happiness by losing theirs. If they try to shirk that responsibility, we resent them. If they take it on and fail, we despise them.

My dad's words ring true and serve as a reminder to enjoy and admire someone's high achievements, as well as our own, in the right context. Don't think that great achievements in one arena automatically translate to perfection and happiness in all of life. That's a formula for bitter disappointment.