The company is facing $1.3 million a day in fines for each day it chooses not to comply with a piece of the Affordable Care Act that was set to trigger for them on January 1. The craft store chain announced in December that, because of religious objections, they would face the fines for not providing certain types of birth control through their company health insurance.
The penalty was set to go into effect on the day the company’s new health care plan went into effect for the year.
Peter M. Dobelbower, general counsel for Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. said in a statement released through the Becket Fund that, “Hobby Lobby discovered a way to shift the plan year for its employee health insurance, thus postponing the effective date of the mandate for several months.”
The statement continued that “Hobby Lobby does not provide coverage for abortion-inducing drugs in its health care plan. Hobby Lobby will continue to vigorously defend its religious liberty and oppose the mandate and any penalties.”
The simple fact is that a company should not be allowed to make any decisions, be they religious or otherwise, for its employees. If America had a single payer health care system, decoupled from their employer, these types of issues would not come up.
Telling your employees what kind of health care they are going to receive is not different from telling them what kind of car insurance they are allowed to get, where they can purchase their groceries, or what bank they can put their money in. If you don’t like the food that your employee purchases, you can simply withhold it from them until they do purchase the “correct” food.
