In a March 1 CNSNews.com article defending an since-defeated amendment by Republican Sen. Roy Blunt to a transportation funding bill that would have allowed employers or health insurers to deny coverage for services they say violate their moral or religious beliefs, Matt Cover writes:
Also misleading is the charge that “any corporation could deny any preventive health service to employees on the basis of religious or moral objections.” The legislation does not say that.
Instead, it states plainly that its purpose is to ensure that employers can offer insurance coverage to their employees that conforms to the employer’s religious beliefs, without being penalized by the government under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the legislation also known as ObamaCare.
“The purposes of this Act are – (1) to ensure that health care stakeholders retain the right to provide, purchase, or enroll in health coverage that is consistent with their religious beliefs and moral convictions, without fear of being penalized or discriminated against under PPACA; and (2) to ensure that no requirement in PPACA creates new pressures to exclude those exercising such conscientious objection from health plans or other programs under PPACA,” it states.
Nowhere in the bill does it say that corporations are allowed to deny anyone any type of health care service, as the Democrats’ video claims.
Cover’s defense, however, doesn’t contradict what critics of the amendment have claimed — that it was so broadly written that it would have allowed any employer to deny coverage for a given health care service by claiming religious or moral objections.
Cover is simply misleading about the bill by cherry-picking criticism to distort it.