As the dust settles from the Hobby Lobby decision, it is becoming clear that this will not be the end of the matter. A TPA trade association is upset that are being stuck with the bill for contraceptives:
In a letter sent Monday to the U.S. Health and Human Services, Treasury and Labor departments, the Simpsonville, South Carolina-based trade group said it was “deeply concerned” about the prospect of expanding the accommodation to include religiously inclined for-profit employers, as the U.S. Supreme Court suggested in its recent ruling in favor of family-owned companies seeking an exemption from the coverage rule.
The SIIA’s letter argues that the accommodation already places third-party administrators for self-insured health care plans sponsored by nonprofits in an untenable position: either terminate their contracts with religious nonprofit clients or pay out of their own coffers for the coverage with, in the SIIA’s view, little chance of being reimbursed in full.
“To date, the Departments have been unable to locate the necessary number of insurance issuers that could partner with all of the TPAs currently paying for certain contraceptive coverage services to facilitate reimbursements for amounts expended,” the SIIA said in its letter. “The inability to locate these carrier partners to facilitate reimbursements is having an adverse impact on many TPAs that remain committed to serving self-insured religious organizations, but that are void of any prospect of payments for these services.”
The source of the problem is HHS's "accommodation" that required carriers to simply "eat" the cost of these contraceptives without any charge backs to their customers. Only in the fantasyland the government occupies (where money is simply created and everything is free) would this accommodation ever work. Here we see the people actually getting stuck with the bill starting to complain. Will these complaints fall on deaf ears? I wonder.
