Health Insurance as a Form of Taxation and Questions about Religious Freedom

Petja Mihelič

Health Insurance as a Form of Taxation and Questions about Religious Freedom

Keywords: Barack Obama, Health and Human Services Mandate, totalitarian state, Bill of Rights, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise

Abstract:
In August 2012 Health and Human Services Mandate (HHS mandate) was issued. It is a rule, accompanying the law on health care (Patient Protection and the Affordable Care Act), that requires private businesses and religious institutions to include coverage of contraception, sterilization and abortifacient drugs in the health-care benefits they provide for their employees, even though that opposes their religious beliefs. If they don’t comply, they are penalized by the IRS. Consequently, a huge number of lawsuits was being filed in defense of their freedom of religion. With this unjust law America’s first freedom, guaranteed in the Constitution, is being violated. The final aim of the HHS Mandate is to exclude religion from public space, under which category fall running institutions of public character, into a private sphere. Attack on constitutional freedoms, which curtailment of religious freedom and destroying or subjugating non-governmental enterprise certainly is, bears a hallmark of totalitarian government.

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