A recent application for injunctive relief from Obamacare by Hobby Lobby was denied by Justice Sotomayor on the company being required to provide birth control in its health plan for women. Hobby Lobby will get its day in court on the issue, they just wanted to be exempted from the law while they were waiting for the trial date.I would like to argue that if Hobby Lobby has such a guilty conscience about having to provide birth control, their solution is quite simple. Outsource your health insurance! On page one of the U.S. 568 _ 2012 decision, it states:
Employees of the two corporations [Mardel & Hobby Lobby] and their families receive health insurance from the corporations’ self-insured group health plans.Rather than being self insured, Hobby Lobby and other for-profit non-religious conscientious objector institutions should underwrite their health insurance through an actual outside insurance company. This way, they're not directly paying for birth control. They're paying for an insurance service and that insurer is the Devil paying for the birth control ordered by its customers and their own doctors.
You see, there is nothing new about this tactic. Companies pull out the culpable deniability card all the time. For example, if Hobby Lobby wants its grass manicured, but cannot hire cheap undocumented workers, it can hire a Landscaping service whose job it is to vet its employees for proper eligibility to work. This way if ICE comes knocking, HL can throw its hands up and say "Whoa there, Buster Brown! We don't know anything about this. That's the landscaping company's job!"
