Charlie Bass and Individual Liberty

In a recent online discussion with constituents, Congressman Charlie Bass was asked his opinion of the  Blunt Amendment. This is the bill that would have given rights to employers and insurance companies to determine what preventive health services would be covered in their insurance plans based on religious or moral grounds. In the following discussion, Charlie used the terms “religious liberty” and “individual liberty” in discussing his distaste for federal government health
care mandates.

Voters should ask what “individuals” he and the Republican candidates for president are talking about. In spite of what Tea Party Republicans and the right-leaning Supreme Court think, employers and insurance companies are not individuals and they should not be given rights reserved for citizens by the U.S. Constitution. The Blunt Amendment is the latest dangerous application of the Supreme Court Citizen's United decision. It follows closely on subversion of campaign financing by Super PACs using unlimited and secret corporate contributions.

The only individual liberties affected by the Blunt Amendment belong to the people who would have lost preventive health service coverage had it passed the Senate. This bill was designed to eliminate  coverage for a woman's contraception services, but it opened the door to attack any preventive health service. Under this bill, Scientologists could have limited mental health services and other religions could attack blood transfusions. More importantly, how can the religion or moral commitment of a corporation be tested to ensure that these decisions are not just profit-making schemes?

Insurance companies would love to have this individual liberty because it allows them to reduce the services that they must reimburse without reducing premiums. Bingo – higher profits. Some employers might support Blunt because they think that insurance premiums would be reduced for their co-pay health plans, but this will never happen.

Real liberties of individuals are under attack in this country. It's time to pass a Constitutional Amendment to overturn Citizen's United. Corporations are NOT people. If they were, Mitt Romney might be indicted on many counts of slavery and a few counts of murder for the leveraged buyouts of corporations he led while managing Bain Capital.