Republicans Exploit Bishops Opposition to Contraception, includes "anything goes" objections to care!!!

The conscience clause has always been one of the biggest threats to health care, that barely gets any coverage. Now with this ridiculous fabricated outrage over contraception vs religious freedom, leave it to senate Republicans to come up with a bill that would essentially make health care coverage chaotic, subject to providers personal views and opinions. 

Mother Jones: Top Republicans in Congress are now pushing a bill that would allow employers and insurance companies to pick and choose which health benefits to provide based simply on executives' personal moral beliefs. Sen. Mitch McConnell has already endorsed the proposal, and it could come to a vote this week. The measure would make the religious exemptions to President Barack Obama's health care bill so large they'd swallow it whole. Obama's Affordable Care Act requires all health care plans to offer certain services and benefits, including birth control. Last week, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) offered a "conscience amendment," to the law, pitching it as a way to allay religious employers' qualms about providing birth control to their employees …

But Blunt goes so much further:

Blunt's proposal doesn't just apply to religious employers and birth control. Instead, it would allow any insurer or employer, religiously affiliated or otherwise, to opt out of providing any health care services required by federal law—everything from maternity care to screening for diabetes.

Employers wouldn't have to cite religious reasons for their decision; they could just say the treatment goes against their moral convictions … an employer could theoretically claim a "moral objection" to the cost of providing a given benefit … a boss who regarded overweight people and smokers with moral disgust could exclude coverage of obesity and tobacco screening from his employees' health plans … A management team that thought HIV victims brought the disease upon themselves could excise HIV screening from its employees' insurance coverage. Your boss' personal prejudices, not science or medical expertise, would determine which procedures your insurance would cover for you and your kids … A business could deny coverage for cervical cancer screening for unmarried employees, out of opposition to premarital sex."

This exaggerated version of the conscience clause wasn’t always acceptable, even by conservative Justice Antonin Scalia:

"To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself," Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in a 1990 decision involving Oregon men who sought an exemption to drug laws on the grounds that consuming peyote was part of their religion. 

You know the radicalized version of the Republican Party is off the deep end when I'm using Scalia as the voice of reason.