By Edward Zelinsky
Among the bitter but unnecessary controversies of this election year was the dispute about the federal government’s mandate that employers provide contraception as part of their health care coverage for their employees. Employers religiously opposed to contraception believe this mandate infringes their right of Free Exercise of religion under the First Amendment. Advocates of the contraception mandate characterize it as vital to women’s health and choice.
This acerbic controversy is totally unnecessary. This dispute can be diffused by health savings accounts (HSAs) or similar employer-funded medical accounts under the employee’s control. Such a solution should be appealing to political leaders committed to civil discourse and mutual respect for opposing views. Unfortunately, such leaders appear to be in short supply.
Substantively, the most recent event in this controversy is the decision of US District Judge Reggie B. Walton. Judge Walton recently held that the contraception mandate violated the rights of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., a Christian publishing company opposed on religious grounds to certain of the mandated forms of contraception. Judge Walton held that the contraception mandate violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Earlier in the year, Missouri’s legislature, overriding the veto of Governor Jay Nixon, declared that Missouri employers religiously opposed to contraception need not provide contraception as part of their employees’ medical coverage. This Missouri law directly defies the contrary federal mandate adopted as part of President Obama’s health reform package.
On this issue, serious and sincere people come to different conclusions. These differences can be accommodated by requiring employers with ethical or religious qualms about any particular type of medical care to fund HSAs or similar accounts under employees’ control. Such accounts enable the employees to make their own decisions about the medical services such employees obtain with their employer-funded health care dollars.
HSA supporters tout such accounts to control medical costs and to increase consumer autonomy. But HSAs can also diffuse religious and ethical controversy by shifting contentious choices from employers to employees.
If employers have religious or ethical scruples about providing contraception or other medical services, they should instead pay into independently-administered HSAs for their employees. Employees who want these services could then purchase such services with the pre-tax funds in these accounts – just as such employees can today purchase these services with their post-tax salary dollars.
Like all compromises, this proposal is imperfect. A religious employer might object that it knows that its payments to independently-administered HSAs are underwriting services to which the employer objects. But the employee can use his or her salary dollars in ways to which the employer objects. At some point, the religiously sincere employer must acknowledge that control of compensation has shifted from the employer to the employer’s employees. And health care dollars are part of the employee’s compensation package.
The proponents of birth control and other similar medical services can object that employees purchasing such services through HSAs or similar accounts will pay more than employers who can purchase such services more cheaply because of economies of scale. That is an argument for improving the operation of the market for medical services through better information about the prices of such services and for the proponents of such services to themselves harness economies of scale by aggregating purchasers.
Many details must be decided before implementing this proposal. Most obviously, we must decide how much the religious employer must contribute to each employees’ HSA for the employer to be released from the mandate he considers religiously objectionable. This concern, like others, can be resolved by those committed to civil management of our differences.
While the public discussion has to date been stimulated by employers religiously opposed to providing contraception and abortion services, there may be other employers whose religious convictions preclude them from providing other kinds of health care services. Some employers who are Christian Scientists, for example, might object to some or all of the package of medical services being mandated by the federal government. If so, these employers should also be given the alternative of funding HSAs or other similar accounts which shift control of health care dollars to the employees.
A genuinely diverse society must be tolerant of genuine diversity. In this spirit, employers with religious objections to particular medical practices and services should be given the alternative of funding employees’ HSAs instead.
Edward A. Zelinsky is the Morris and Annie Trachman Professor of Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University. He is the author of The Origins of the Ownership Society: How The Defined Contribution Paradigm Changed America. His monthly column appears on the OUPblog.
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James W. Jones is Professor of Religion and Adjunct Professor of Clinical Psychology, at Rutgers
University. His book, Blood That Cries Out From the Earth: The Psychology of Religious Terrorism, looks at what makes ordinary people evil. Jones argues that not every adherent of an authoritarian group will turn to violence, and he shows how theories of personality development can explain why certain individuals are easily recruited to perform terrorist acts. In the article below Jones argues that understanding people who turn towards terrorism is the first step to halting their violent acts. Check out Jones’s webpage here.
How much do we really know about terrorism? The short answer is “a lot” and “a very little.” “Terrorism” — as the cliché about one person’s terrorist being another’s freedom fighter suggests — is more often used as an epithet or a bit of propaganda than a category useful for understanding. There is general agreement that terrorism is not an end in itself or a motivation in itself (except perhaps for a few genuinely psychotic individual lone wolves). No movement is only a terrorist movement; its primary character is more likely political, economic, or religious. Terrorism is a tactic, not a basic type of group.
The first step in clarifying this topic of “understanding terrorism” is to become clear about the purpose of our attempts to understand terrorism. Part of the confusion over the understanding of terrorism results from the more basic confusion of not knowing what we want our explanations of terrorism to do for us. Before we undertake to “explain” terrorism, we should be clear as to what we want this “explanation” to accomplish? Many hope that understanding terrorism will help predict future terrorist actions. Others hope that it will help devise effective counter-terrorism strategies. Will a psychological, or political, or military, or religious understanding of religious terrorism aid in those goals?
I know from my work in forensic psychology that predicting violent behavior in any specific case is very, very complicated and very rarely successful. And dramatic acts of violence that change the course of history — the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand that lit the match on the conflagration of World War I, the taking hostage of the American embassy in the Iranian revolution, the 9/11 attack — are rarely predictable. We can list some of the characteristics of religious groups that turn to violence and terror. I have studied some of the themes common to Muslim, Christian, and Buddhist groups that have turned to terror. We can also outline the steps that individuals and groups often go through in becoming committed to violent actions. The NYPD has done exactly that in a recent study. But I remain skeptical that any model will enable us to predict with any certainty when specific individuals or groups may turn to terrorism. There are warning signs we should be aware of. But these are signs, not determinants or predictors.
As for counter-terrorism, it is an important strategic principal that one should know one’s enemy. We succeeded in containing the expansiveness of the former Soviet Union in part because we had a detailed and nuanced understanding of the Soviet system. Understanding some of what is at stake religiously and spiritually for religious groups that engage in terrorism can help devise ways of countering them. So a religious-psychological understanding of religious terrorists’ motivations can be an important part of the response to them.
In the months following 9/11 I often heard demagogues on the radio say that psychologists (like me) who seek to understand the psychology behind religiously motivated violence simply want to “offer the terrorists therapy.” The idea that one must choose either understanding or action — that one cannot do both — is an idea that itself borders on the pathological and represents the kind of dichotomizing that is itself a part of the terrorist mindset. Such dichotomized thinking, wherever it occurs, is a part of the problem and not part of the solution. I worked for two years in the psychology department at a hardcore, maximum security prison. But I never thought of that as a substitute for just and vigorous law enforcement. Understanding an action in no way means excusing it; explaining an action in no way means condoning it.
There is, however, a deeper issue here. Understanding others (even those who will your destruction) can make them more human. It can break down the demonization of the other that some politicians and policy makers feel is necessary in order to combat terrorists. The demonization of the other is a major weapon in the arsenal of the religiously motivated terrorist. Must we resort to the same tactic – which is so costly psychologically and spiritually – in order to oppose terrorism? Or can we counter religiously motivated terrorists without becoming like them?
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"Energías limpias" es el nuevo portal que un grupo de jóvenes profesionales ha iniciado con el objetivo de promover y desarrollar fuentes de energía limpias y renovables.
Es un sitio pensado para todos. Porque comprender que es preciso generar energías sustentables y accesibles, es tarea de los gobiernos, pero también de cada uno.
La invitación a participar me llegó de Juan Cruz Mones Cazón, a quien desde aquí le doy las gracias. Y los invito a ustedes a que se den una vuelta por allí. Ser limpios es la tendencia.
