Do right-wingers not understand how insurance works?

[alarimer]

It is a benefit you get in lieu of more pay. Often the employee pays the premium or a portion of it. I'd say most of the time they do, actually. The employer has negotiated with the insurance company to provide a certain level of coverage and they have to be in compliance with what the ACA now requires, among other things.

But everyone on that plan is in the same risk pool. Your premiums and mine and everyone else's go to the company, which then invests the money from the premiums, so that they can pay claims.

Okay, that's overly simplistic, probably, but that's the gist of how insurance works. The idea being that the company takes in more in premiums than they shell out in claims.

My point is that I am no more paying for your birth control than you are paying for my heart surgery. But right-wingers seem to have this idea that they are directly paying for things they don't like. But they are not.

I am in favor of single payer and this Hobby Lobby decision has really cemented that for me. But I do wonder what would happen in the event we get single payer (like Canada, for instance) and they the government, through our tax dollars, really would be paying for things right-wingers don't like. Would these things be covered all in that case, if they are so politically toxic?

Obviously we are not there yet, but I do wonder.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. I don't see why they think it's different from simply paying their employees.

If you don't pay for contraception, but your employees do, where do they think that money is coming from? Their paychecks, which they got from working for your company. You're still 'paying for it', even if your employees are buying it out of pocket. The only way you're not 'paying for it' is if you don't pay your employees at all.

[Igel]

6. Horrible example.

My employer pays me. I'm responsible for what I do with the money. I want to buy drugs, nobody's going to arrest my boss for buying me drugs. I get drunk, drive, and kill a van full of day-care kids nobody's going to come after my boss for facilitating my drunkenness. My employer--my boss, the "company" that employs me, bears no moral or legal liability for what I do with my money.

However it does have a say in my insurance because they contract for it, they negotiate for it, and in the end they pay almost as much for it as I do. That was part of the bargain that arose as a result in the tax code a few decades back. It's an unintended consequence of some Congress and President trying to achieve one goal and people responding in the "wrong" way. It's not taxable, it's not reported as my income, but it's a benefit that's offered. Like vacation and sick leave.

I get to pick my plan, but only from the set that they offer. They felt bad when they had to make changes to save money during some bad budget years because they're responsible to a large extent for the coverage offered. I could see them feeling bad if they had to offer some coverage which, for whatever reason, they found immoral. It's the same for any other benefit. For example, I use the Internet at work. They could lock me out and not allow me to use their bandwidth for non-work-related activities, but they don't. A lot of sites are open for me (including DU) and there's no real bandwidth limitation on access during lunch, breaks, before/after duty hours. On the other hand, there are number of sites that are simply blocked--a rather large list of them, many of them blocked for reasons of morality. In some cases they're things like bit torrent or Pirate Bay. Sites specializing in certain kinds of images are blocked--in fact, some sites that may only occasionally have an "off" image are routinely blocked just in case.

[Arkansas Granny]

2. To be fair, right-wingers don't really care how insurance works. Their corporate mouthpieces

have told them that they must support the wishes of HL, in this case, because to do otherwise would mean that they supported President Obama, and they can't be having that.

[alarimer]

3. This is true

And logic never plays a part in what Right-wingers think anyway

[dawg]

4. Tide goes in, tide goes out ...

you can't explain that!

[Lurker Deluxe]

5. Truth of the matter

Hobby Lobby is self insured.

So, yes ... they are paying, directly, for their employees birth control.

The the SC would have stated that a directly controlled corporation that was self insured was exempt it would have been a little less (very little) obnoxious. It would have been way harder for any other entity to follow suit.

[JaneyVee]

7. Without spreading risk around, the entire insurance

Industry would collapse. Not only is their money paying for birth control, but abortions as well.