A lot of talk/action recently about how the Catholic Church is opposed to paying for abortions and contraceptives due to the Health care Reform Bill aka "Obamacare" mandating such coverages in insurance plans. The Catholic Church doesn't want to pay for these services which is understandable as it is against their religion(cue Eddie Murphy in Trading Places on the train to Philadelphia). The powers that be tried to make it more palatable to the Catholic Church by tasking the insurance companies with paying for the services. And it is true that the Catholic Church does pay the premiums to the Insurance companies or to themselves if it is self-funded plan.
The real issue then is that the Catholic Church doesn't seems to understand how insurance works. Insurance companies, if the Catholic Church is in a self-funded plan it still works the same way, charge a monthly premium for each employee/spouse/child for services that the employee/spouse/child will probably use based on past health related care expenditures. If its a new plan there are actuarial tables that set the premiums. Each year the insurance company goes over the last years expenditures and makes sure that it covered them and made their profit. If the premiums charged did not cover expenses and profit the premiums for the following year go up.
If the employees of the Catholic Church don't use certain services then the premiums reflect that. In the perfect Catholic world none of their employees would ever have an abortion and none would use contraceptives. Of course it's not a perfect Catholic world and some of their employees will be bad Catholics and not follow church doctrine and some aren't Catholic to begin with and don't give a damn about Catholic doctrine as it's a job to them nothing more. So thusly this is the Catholic church's problem, they have to be the ones to educate their employees just as other non-religious companies have had to educate their employees to not smoke, eat better or exercise more so that premiums do not keep going up.
Some employers use incentive plans to get the employees to comply and some use punishment to make employees tow the line. The Catholic Church needs to step up and use either incentives or punishment to get their employees to keep those costs out of their premiums. It's that simple Catholic Church, time to get thehounds of war human resources department working on bringing the unwashed masses flock in line.
The real issue then is that the Catholic Church doesn't seems to understand how insurance works. Insurance companies, if the Catholic Church is in a self-funded plan it still works the same way, charge a monthly premium for each employee/spouse/child for services that the employee/spouse/child will probably use based on past health related care expenditures. If its a new plan there are actuarial tables that set the premiums. Each year the insurance company goes over the last years expenditures and makes sure that it covered them and made their profit. If the premiums charged did not cover expenses and profit the premiums for the following year go up.
If the employees of the Catholic Church don't use certain services then the premiums reflect that. In the perfect Catholic world none of their employees would ever have an abortion and none would use contraceptives. Of course it's not a perfect Catholic world and some of their employees will be bad Catholics and not follow church doctrine and some aren't Catholic to begin with and don't give a damn about Catholic doctrine as it's a job to them nothing more. So thusly this is the Catholic church's problem, they have to be the ones to educate their employees just as other non-religious companies have had to educate their employees to not smoke, eat better or exercise more so that premiums do not keep going up.
Some employers use incentive plans to get the employees to comply and some use punishment to make employees tow the line. The Catholic Church needs to step up and use either incentives or punishment to get their employees to keep those costs out of their premiums. It's that simple Catholic Church, time to get the
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