Insurance Mandate Violates Religious Freedom
Health “reform” coming out of Congress has many problems, but one of the more obscure is also one of the most important: It might violate religious freedom.
Across the country, thousands of people, operating out of religious conviction, don’t have health insurance. Instead, they participate in health sharing ministries. Members get newsletters that describe the financial and medical needs of others in the ministry. A central office coordinates things but otherwise, money goes directly from healthy members to sick ones.
The Roanoke Times offers up a description of these efforts, which are known as health sharing ministries. One woman, for example, had her expenses for treatment of kidney stones covered by Samaritan Ministries International. They also paid for her fertility treatments. Those were successful, which means that soon they’ll help pay her childbirth expenses. In addition to receiving financial benefits, ministry participants report spiritual and emotional benefits of connecting with others.
But they’re worried about legislation that would hit them with a financial penalty for not having insurance. After all, if there’s going to be a law requiring someone to have insurance, Congress must define it. People who belong to such ministries may face a choice: Pay the steep penalty for not having insurance, or give up on the ministry, and buy a government-approved insurance product.
The article, perhaps in an attempt to be balanced, includes some criticisms of health sharing ministries. I find those hilarious.
First off, someone from the office of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners warns that the ministries aren’t licensed or regulated.
Not licensed or regulated by whom? By state insurance commissioners. Can you say “job security?”
Aside from that self-interested motivation, people who live in the world of insurance regulation have, understandably, a different mindset from people who participate in health sharing ministries. (After all, they ministries are faith-based organizations.)
The second warning in the article came from a representative of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the trade group that tried to cut a deal with the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats to … require everyone to purchase their products. Think AHIP can take an objective look at health sharing ministries?
Health sharing ministries aren’t for everyone, and at best, they’ll serve a small portion of the American public. But the fact that people may be forced to choose between their religious convictions and a government diktat shows how oppressive health “reform” can be.
(There may be some exceptions, in the end. But even those are cold comfort, as they would inevitably entangle government in the question of what was a “sincere” religiously based sharing organization.)
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