A Solution to the Contraception Insurance Issue

The administration has signaled that it is looking for a compromise to the contraception insurance issue. How about this? Those employers who conscientiously oppose providing contraception insurance to their employees should not be able to profit from a religious exemption. Accordingly, the employers should be required to increase employees' wages by the amount the employers save because of a religious exemption.

The employer might not want to pay higher wages, but could have no serious religious objection to the requirement. Employees could use the money to purchase insurance for contraception if they wished or for other purposes at their option.

From the perspective of the administration, this proposal has a disadvantage. A major reason for requiring employers to include contraception as a part of their insurance was to encourage greater use of preventative services by employees. One way to mitigate this disadvantage would be to afford a tax deduction for the premiums required to purchase contraception insurance. The fringe benefit of insurance was not taxable in the first place. Indeed, from the perspective of the administration, it would make sense to make all contraception expenses tax deductible or, alternatively, even a tax credit. If the evidence showed that tax policy of this character would increase contraception, we could expect abortions to decline in turn. Of course, the Catholic Church would oppose any such tax policy on moral grounds, but it could not argue that the policy would violate its religious freedom.

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Steve Shiffrin]

Connor
I do not understand why there is a measurement problem (though there
may be). I would think you could compare what other employers pay
for the same insurance, but including contraception.
Steve

[link wheel]

The federal government via Health and Human Services can offer low to no cost contraception coverage for men (who want vasectomies) and women (who want anything from birth control pills to a tubal ligation) whose employers refuse to offer such services on religious grounds. There could be a token charge for this "special birth control insurance" which will be waived for anyone making less than a certain amount of money.

[Conor O'Reilly]

Steve, you can't measure what wage a conscientiously objecting employer would have paid without an exemption so you can't calculate what extra amount should be added to the wage.

All is not lost however because, in an transparent job market, conscientiously objecting employers can't profit from the religious exemption. They are forced by the job market to come up with a compensation package equal to or better than what is being offered by competing employers. However, for this to happen it is critical that the fact that they provide more limited coverage be spelled out clearly for all prospective employees. Then those job candidates can make up their own mind whether the wages paid compensate to the more limited insurance coverage.