A victory last Tuesday seems to have gone by under the radar. I was thumbing through today’s Sunday San Antonio Express-News, and I must not have felt busy because I opened the “Faith” section. I can’t find a web link, but on page K3 is a column by Mark Silk, professor of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College.
On Tuesday the nonprofits filed a supplemental brief agreeing to the Supreme Court’s proffered solution — one advanced by a group of 50 Catholic theologians — that the insurers be required to offer the employees a separate plan providing the coverage.
In other words, they caved.
In its own supplemental brief, the government grumpily insists that the court’s scheme does not differ significantly from the accommodation that the nonprofits are challenging. And the government is right.
This wasn’t in the political news or on the editorial - opinion page. Up to today all the coverage I’ve seen about the case, Zubik v. Burwell, has been preoccupied with whether the Supreme Court is ‘legislating from the bench’ and stuffy comments on how odd the order asking both sides for supplemental briefs was. I hadn’t noticed Joan McCarter’s diary www.dailykos.com/…
from April 13, or this April 14 article in Slate www.slate.com/…
or this one on April 14 by the same Mark Silk in Religion News Service marksilk.religionnews.com/…
It wasn’t until today’s column that anyone seemed to have discarded the frame of looking at this as a legal case full of technicalities and presented it as a victory for contraception and women’s health. And I think the news media folks still haven’t completely realized how big a victory it is. Even today’s column borrows the wording from the anti-contraception plaintiffs:
The government can obligate, incentivize or contract with the insurance company to offer separate contraceptive coverage...
And Mr. Silk writes that the plan “requires the insurance company to pick up the tab” for contraception. REALITY CHECK: Unless the insurance companies manage to duck out of paying for obstetrical and maternity care (and I don’t think they can), contraception saves them money. A lot of money. Congress doesn’t have to pass any new obligations or fund any incentives. The insurance companies will be happy to pay for birth control. I wonder if they’ll even find a way to bill those employers who don’t want it covered more, and then pay the insured ladies some of the extra to accept contraceptives.
So it seems all this legal to and fro ended up saving a few employers two pages of paperwork. That’s how short the form they were being asked to fill out was. I don’t like red tape, but a year long fight to get out of a two page form once a year is a pretty hollow victory for the plaintiffs.