What's to keep SC from saying employer can dictate how employees spend the MONEY they pay them?

[Faryn Balyncd]

Last edited Wed Jul 2, 2014, 11:56 AM - Edit history (1)

If an employer such as Hobby Lobby, required to include funding for health insurance as part of its compensation to employees, can dictate the specific pharmaceutical details of the doctor-patient interactions purchased by the patient with his/her (health insurance benefit) compensation, what' to keep the Supremes from decreeing that an employer can be involved in, and specify the specifics, of ALL doctor-patient interactions purchased with an employee's insurance/compensation?

What's to keep the Supremes from decreeing that a corporate owner's religious views can be used to dictate whether a patient facing a difficult situation is to have, for example, chemotherapy or hospice care?

What's to keep the employer's whims about how the insurance benefit/compensation it paid the employee (in exchange for the employee's labor) limited to the PHARMACEUTICAL aspects of a doctor-patient relationship the employee subsequently purchases with their insurance/compensation?




And what's to keep an employer's control (of how an employee spends the compensation received for work) limited to the compensation received in the form of a health insurance "benefit"?

If a Hobby Lobby should pronounce that it has "deeply held religious beliefs" about how an employee should spend, not only the compensation the employee is paid in the form of a health insurance "benefit", but also how an employee may spend every nickle of their MONEY that was sourced from the work they did for Hobby Lobby, what's to keep the Supremes from so decreeing?

[misterhighwasted]

1. With this Supreme Court? Nothing can stop them.

Except the election. November 2014.
That's all we have.
Powerful if enough people give a shit.

[Nye Bevan]

2. I'm trying to understand how this would work.

The Supreme Court does not arbitrarily "decree" things; it rules on lawsuits that have been filed, ruled on, and appealed. So first of all there would need to be a lawsuit pertaining to how employees spend their compensation, and I am struggling to understand what this lawsuit might be. Are you suggesting that Hobby Lobby or another company might, as a condition of employment, start dictating what employees are allowed to spend their compensation on, and then when (inevitably) employees filed suit over this, that the Supreme Court would eventually rule that corporations have the right to dictate how employees spend their compensation?

[Fred Sanders]

4. His hair is on fire, it happens very, very rarely on the left wing side, though. This is an outlier?

I do not see any lawsuits on the horizon of slavery returning any time soon.

[Faryn Balyncd]

13. Is speculating on multiple expansive implications of a ruling "hair on fire"?

Do you think increasing control of employees, or others, is a non-issue, or that this ruling has no effect on future developments?

[Faryn Balyncd]

6. Good thought . . . but have you ever heard of payroll cards?

While my major point is a "benefit" that is deemed to be essential to employment (such as health insurance) is, in fact, compensation for work performed, and, this being the case, an employer has no more legitimate right to dictate how that compensation is used than they have a right to dictate how employees spend monetary compensation.

Historically, cash, by its nature, has been consistent with autonomy, and an impediment to anyone seeking subsequent control of how funds are used.

But it seems that one should never underestimate the ingenuity of those whose appetite for control of those less powerful.

"Payroll cards" are one example of such ingenuity.
http://www.bankrate.com/financing/banking/the-problem-with-payroll-cards/

[Rider3]

3. I posted something similar...

... but some people said I was being silly. I'm glad I'm not the only one who is thinking about this.

[Fred Sanders]

5. You can think about it and then you can laugh about it and then you can attack anyone who

thinks otherwise as enemies of the left.

[PowerToThePeople]

7. That is a fantastic idea

I think it is exactly what we should be doing. Purge right wing thoughts and ideals from the party.

[MohRokTah]

8. Employers are already capable of controlling legal activities of employees outside of work

Nicotine use is one example. Employers can ban employees from smoking and the courts approved of that.

It's not a stretch to imagine a time when employers have even more control over your private activities and choices.

[Lee-Lee]

12. True- lots of firefighters are banned from outside activities

For example many large fire departments ban their firefighters from also being volunteer firefighters if they live in an area covered by a volunteer fire department. This goes along with banning other off the job activities that could lead to exposure to smoke or harmful fumes, and on any smoking off duty.

This is done in exchange for a contract that says any lung diseases are automatically presumed work related, and covered as such.

Of course the IAFF also prohibits union firefighters from volunteering- but because it considers volunteer firefighters the equivalent of scabs working for free so that municipality doesn't hire paid professional firefighters.

[ljm2002]

9. This decision will embolden others...

...to bring suit on various grounds. And even though the Supreme Court attempted to limit the scope of their decision by declaring it a non-precedent, they can't really control if or how the decision is used by lower courts. So now others will bring suit in lower courts, on various grounds: 1 - another religious objection (such as blood transfusions for Jehovah's Witnesses); 2 - equal protection (if Catholics get their exemption on the BC issue, then equal protection demands that our religious belief be honored as well); 3 - other new and novel grounds yet to be determined.

This decision is a Pandora's box indeed. While it is true that the Supreme Court cannot rule until a case is brought before them, the decision they made in the Hobby Lobby case will cause mischief for years to come -- and eventually some of those new cases will come up before the Supremes. If we're lucky there will be fewer right wing ideologues and their useful idiots (Kennedy, I'm looking at you) on the court by that time.

Actually I would like to bring suit regarding taxes. I am sincerely against war, in any case except direct self-defense. At this point in my life I have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to various war efforts, for wars that I opposed! Short of getting my money back, I want to withhold the percentage of my taxes that would be going to pay for the MIC (including the secret agencies they are so wrapped up with these days). It offends my conscience. I don't see how a country that supports freedom to practice one's religion can at the same time force people to pay for things that offend their conscience. I object. If Hobby Lobby can get out of paying a benefit based on their conscientious objection to birth control, then I should be able to get out of paying for a killing machine that I have a conscientious objection to. Equal protection, doncha know.

[Lars39]

10. The Greens, Southern Baptists and others will pursue in the courts

any social issue that they feel goes against their "religious liberty". They are not shy about stating their goals.

[The Magistrate]

11. Actually, Ma'am, Nothing

Should an employer sanction an employee for spending money on something, let us say pornography, that the employer has a religious objection to, there is nothing in the logic of the Hobby lobby decision that would dictate the court would have to rule in favor of the employee should that person file suit against the company's action.

[Igel]

14. The HL decision, however, is not the totality of legislation, case law, and regulation.

It says, basically, that the employer isn't forced to provide something that SCOTUS says there's a constitution prohibition against forcing the employer to provide. Even health insurance in general isn't something that must be provided--there's mechanisms for a surtax on employers who fail to do this. That's been found Constitutional.

The conditions of pay isn't something that falls under this decision so it simply doesn't apply, or applies at best vanishingly weakly. Other aspects of compensation and contract law apply strongly but don't form part of the HL decision's reasoning.

[leftstreet]

15. Why didn't HL just drop their insurance coverage?

If they had strong convictions why not refuse to participate in the unGodlyness of the ACA mandates, give the employees the $ to buy their own insurance, and be done with it?

Oh that's right. Rich people get to make, break, or change the rules

[MoonchildCA]

18. This wasn't really about that.

Anyone can see, especially with the latest stories about Hobby Lobby investing in companies that make birth control, it wasn't really about their ideology.
This is about a right-wing company opposing Obamacare, and doing whatever they can to chip away at it.

[The Magistrate]

16. But The Fact Is, Sir

The employer no more provides the services insured than the employer provides anything an employee purchases with compensation received for working for the employer. The premium paid to the insurer is part of the employee's compensation; something the employee receives in exchange for labor. The matter is analogous to that of the 'employer's contribution' to Social Security: saying the payment under FICA is split between employee and employer is a mere cosmetic fiction, intended to disguise the full weight of the tax on the employee's salary --- the 'employer's contribution' is actually part of the wage paid, it simply is sent in payment of part of the tax on behalf of the employee by the employer. That the employer acts as the agent for the employees in purchasing health insurance for them does not alter this: the insurance is part of what the employee receives for labor, a portion of the compensation paid, and neither purchased by nor provided by the employer. One could, I suppose, have scruples about what one will do as the agent of another, and refuse to do something one is asked to do by another as her or his agent. But in a case where law directs a person acting as another's agent to do a thing, and one has scruples against it, the proper course is to decline the agency. Hobby Lobby, in short, would be free to not include health insurance as part of its compensation for employees, if doing so would require it to do something its owners had scruples over --- they would have to pay a fine, but what is a clear conscience without a price paid? What they do not have any right to do, cannot have any right to do, is require people to abide by their own religious beliefs as a condition of employment, which is what their exemption from a general requirement of law in construction of law in structuring their compensation to employees amounts to. And if they can require employees to accept a compensation package that does not provide birth control as part of their health insurance, which is in fact stating that no portion of the compensation an employee receives as insurance can be spent on birth control, I fail to see any limiting principle in this decision which would prevent an employer from telling an employee no portion of the compensation you receive from me for your time and labor can be spent on something I personally find immoral. And you may be sure that sooner or later someone with sufficient gumption to try that will emerge, and the case be ram-rodded to the supreme Court....

[Fred Sanders]

17. We are not talking logic here anymore, all the hair on fire has consumed all logic.

[Faryn Balyncd]

19. Is refusing to answer questions (post 13), & refusing to define your logic, & communicating using...

...pejorative dog whistles (mocking others as having "hair on fire&quot without responding to substance, logical?

[Fred Sanders]

20. "....expansive implications"...like employer mandated salary spending, you have slipped way off the

end of the slippery slope, is all I am saying.

And I do not answer your question because I do not want to, and you can not make me.

[Faryn Balyncd]

23. Yes, it's true. No one can make you...

A continuum of expansive implications were discussed:

First, as discussed in Reply 6, the major point is that insurance "benefits" are, in fact, compensation, just as is monetary salary. Consequently, ruling that an employer may dictate the specifics of a doctor-patient relationship purchased by an employee with that compensation is as inappropriate an expansion of an employer's intrusion into the private lives of employees as would be the case if they had the ability to control how employees spent monetary compensation (which is obviously morally preposterous even disregarding the seemingly insurmountable technical obstacles).

Second, as discussed in the 2nd paragraph of the OP, there is the possibility of extending control to include not simply pharmaceutical coverage, but to include coverage for other medical decisions to which the employer might object.




To attempt to control what employees do in their private lives is not only morally offensive, but in many cases, such as to attempt to control the spending of monetary compensation, seemingly impossible. So perhaps it would be have been adequate to simply point out that a ruling that an employer's control of how a patient spends their health insurance dollar is logically no more or less intrusive than would be the case if it were logistically possible to control spending of monetary compensation.

Yet others have given examples of employers imposing control on employees private lives.

While we may have thought that our society has long ago emerged from an era in which, for example, a miner might work in deplorable conditions only to be paid with company issued script redeemable at the company store, and remain in a condition of chronic debt from which he was unable to extract himself, others have argued that we, as society, are on a regressive path.

When billionaire investor Nick Hanauer, for example, comments about the growing economic power inequality:
"The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.". . . . . does he too have "hair on fire"?




It is frustrating to discuss the preposterous logic of a court decision that continues a trend of increasing polarization of economic & social power, and to discuss potential ramifications (some feasible, and others much less so, but due to logistical difficulties rather than the court's flawed logic) only to be mocked with the pejorative "hair on fire" charge so often thrown at those whose concern regarding civil liberties or issues of growing socioeconomic polarization you may not share.

Yes, as you say, no one can make you discuss the substantive issues, and drop the pejoratives. But what is the purpose of such?

Cheers.

[Fred Sanders]

24. The difference between employee benefits and monetary compensation in terms of contracted

Compensatory obligation is crystal clear, comparisons are moot.

Pay is not a benefit, it is pay.

[Faryn Balyncd]

25. Thanks for responding on a substantive basis.

So are you saying that the benefit was not part of the contracted relationship, and was a gift given over and above what was contracted?

[ck4829]

21. It has happened before. More of a matter of convenience rather than mandate

But in these days of corporate personhood and corporate religion, could there be a corporate desire to keep money inside the corporation's purview at some point?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store

[Cha]

22. Thanks for your OP, Faryn!

And, no your "hair isn't on fire".