The Hobby Lobby decision has opened up a pandora’s box of potential legal claims for exemptions from the Affordable Care Act under the umbrella of religion, especially since it’s very difficult for the court to rule on what is a deeply-held religious belief and what is not. There will be a whole queue of weirdos now lining up to get their particular weird tinfoil belief exempted from insurance, or looking for excuses to not offer insurance under the ACA, and you can bet that one of the first movements to get to the courts will be the anti-vaxxers.
When Obamacare was first being floated, Republicans made a big fuss about death panels, in which a body of old men with no experience of health care (federal judges, in fact!) would decide whether a person was worthy of care, and what care they could receive, on non-medical grounds. This, we were warned, is the inevitable consequence of socialism. Well, the Hobby Lobby decision – which was supported by Republicans – guarantees that Americans get to experience just exactly that. A body of old men (federal judges) will decide whether a person is worthy of care, and what care they can receive, on non-medical grounds.
Because Religious Freedom!
Compromise and Conceit 
August 12, 2014 at 8:23 pm
Stop being so hard on Religious Freedom! Instead you need to embrace the weirdness.
Clearly with Gary Gygax’s migration beyond the transmundane it’s time for religious beliefs to be codified and the frigging attack of opportunity rules standardised and ruthlessly enforced. Under this system, employee’s at any company I run will be able to take a swing [1] at one person per day and be fully covered. Attempting to take another such action will result in having to forfeit your next action. Which was probably going to be breathing or similar, so I’d watch out for that.
Now I know that some people will argue that this is just the voices in my head. But that’s what’s so great about this finding! At long last being an asshole about other people’s religious beliefs by mockingly claiming to believe in a levitating pasta monster will become indistinguishable (legally speaking) from being raving mad or a bishop. And it’ll form the basis of an argument you can take to the highest court in the land!
So start ranting now. Or it’s possible that the court will only accept “faiths” of over a certain size and with a sufficiently codified “dogma”. To overcome this, I suggest forming some sort of union (or religion I guess) then documenting a vast array of nonsense that contradicts itself so that we can always claim to be supported in our actions. You may think that writing such a dogma is a lot of work, but we can avoid most of it by just claiming an existing religion’s holy book – those all seem to meet my criteria anyway.
[1] Similar to making a pass at someone, but faster.
August 14, 2014 at 5:07 pm
I think this is a good plan. I can’t wait to have my new religious beliefs investigated for their depth of conviction by a group of aging Christians! But first I have to figure out what, exactly, my religion thinks should be excluded from healthcare on moral grounds. Hmmm… decisions, decisions …