AND, make tax-payers, (including Teabaggers!) foot the bill?
President Barack Obama appears to have options to act alone to fill the birth control coverage gap for thousands of women created by the Supreme Court's ruling against Obamacare's contraceptive mandate, legal experts say.
[...]
....but the White House has options. One action the President could take is to simply extend to these women an accommodation his administration offered to employees of religious nonprofits like universities and hospitals: employers can opt out of it but insurance companies are required to pay the full cost of the contraception for female employees who want it.
And this was suggested by none other than.......................Samuel Alito.
In his 5-4 majority opinion in Hobby Lobby v. Burwell on Monday, Justice Samuel Alito suggested that as one way to provide birth control coverage without running afoul of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which imposes strict scrutiny standards for laws that burden religious practices.
"The Government could, e.g., assume the cost of providing the four contraceptives to women unable to obtain coverage due to their employers’ religious objections. Or it could extend the accommodation that HHS has already established for religious nonprofit organizations to non-profit (ed:FOR-profit?!) employers with religious objections to the contraceptive mandate," Alito wrote for the Court. "That accommodation does not impinge on the plaintiffs' religious beliefs that providing insurance coverage for the contraceptives at issue here violates their religion and it still serves HHS's stated interests."
You see, the Right just may have loudly applauded the transferring of costs from Hobby Lobby's coffers, to their own wallets. Without even knowing it. SOCIALIZM!!!1!!!!!!
It seems religious freedom isn't quite..................free?
This has the added benefit of making the teeth of Bobby Jindal gnash. Because HE (and his constituents) would then be paying for contraceptives of "sinners" in New Orleans, and throughout the nation.
As would you and I.
But there may be a hurdle:
The first option would require an act of Congress, far from likely in the current political climate. But an extension of the accommodation could be done by executive action. The problem for the Obama administration is that even the nonprofit accommodation is being challenged in court by Little Sisters of the Poor, which says it violates their religious beliefs to fill out a form opting out of the birth control coverage. But the five Republican-appointed justices who ruled against the White House suggested that accommodation wasn't a serious burden on religious practices.