> Your health care decisions are not your bosss business, said Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington
–[newspaper: New York Times] story about a Democratic bill to override the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision

I’m as unhappy about the Hobby Lobby decision as anyone else, especially since the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops say they don’t object to insurance covering Viagra. There’s an obvious double standard, and I hate it.

But really. Here’s reality:

1. By ‘Your health care decisions’, what Murray means is ‘what your insurer is required to pay for.’ Let’s be clear on that, because you can still go ahead and pay for contraception on your own. Again, I’d like to see insurance plans pay for contraception, but let’s be clear on what “Your health care decisions” means.
2. Your health-care decisions, by that standard, are never entirely up to you. Insurance pays for some things and not for others.
3. This would still be true even if — as I would prefer — we had a single-payer health system. The government would still pay for some things and not pay for other things.

I think it’s hopelessly muddled to frame this in the language of “your health-care decisions”. What the big debate is about is simply this: what do we believe that the our insurers — whether it’s the government or a private insurer — should be required to pay for? That’s an ethical and economic decision. And our insurers will sometimes make decisions at variance with our own ethics. And that sucks. Those on the other side would, presumably, say that it sucks when they need to go against *their* ethics to pay for something that they consider objectionable. My response to that would be: how far are you willing to take that? If my religion forbids male doctors from palpating naked female patients unless the doctor is married to the patient, are you willing to deny coverage in that case? Are you willing to make female patients seek out female doctors if they want the insurer to pay for it?

Indeed, I think I need to read more on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Hobby Lobby decision, because I’m confused why religion here doesn’t excuse just about everything. SCOTUS describes the RFRA as follows:

> The [RFRA –SRL] prohibits the Government [from] substantially burden[ing] a persons exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability unless the Government demonstrates that application of the burden to the person(1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest. 42 U. S. C. 2000bb1(a), (b). As amended by the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA), RFRA covers any exercise of religion, whether or not compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief. 2000cc5(7)(A).

I’m tempted to find some excellent regulatory arbitrage out of this, whereby I can make a lot of money by hiding fraud under cover of religion. More than that, though, I find it offensive that I have to pay, through my taxes, for wars that I don’t agree with. Did the government use the least restrictive means of furthering its compelling government interest in destabilizing Iraq when it taxed me? Okay, arguably yes. Was the government’s decision to require coverage of contraception 1) not in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest? Or was it 2) not the least restrictive means of furthering that interest? I guess I need to read the decision.

So anyway: yes, this sucks, and it conflicts with my ethics. Let’s be clear that this is an ethical objection, not an objection — as Murray would have it — about someone interfering in your health decisions. Someone’s always going to interfere in your health decisions.