AMY GOODMAN: Isn’t the issue ... who pays? Who can afford to pay for it, and who can’t afford? So, women who are better off can afford to get it outside, even if their health insurance doesn’t pay, but poorer women will just not have access to birth control.MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY: Right. But we have this already in our employer system with other parts of healthcare. Many employers don’t even offer dental coverage or eye coverage, and yet we’re not dragging them, you know, before the trial of the American public and saying that they are committing a war on people with bad vision. I mean, this is such hyperbole. And most of the people who want to enforce this rule would prefer a single-payer system of healthcare anyway, where you’re not actually forcing employers to violate their conscience in buying this.
AMY GOODMAN: So you’re saying a single-payer system would solve the problem.
MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY: Well, I’m saying it would solve this particular problem of conscience, as it has in Europe. The bishops don’t—they do not like that the government subsidizes abortion or contraception, but they are not in full mode of fury, because they are not being asked to formally cooperate with things they view as sinful. And the Church will not cooperate with this and will resort to civil disobedience to avoid it. [emphasis added]
AMY GOODMAN: Loretta Ross, final comment on the issue of why birth control over dental care, eye care? Those stuff is optional.
LORETTA ROSS: Well, first of all, I do agree with Michael that we should have had a single-payer system. ...
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to leave it there, and I thank you all for being with us, Michael Dougherty of Business Insider and American Conservative, Jon O’Brien with Catholics for Choice, and Loretta Ross with SisterSong Reproductive Justice Collective in Atlanta, Georgia.
Also, single payer offers a similar solution on other issues, for example, whether same-gender couples should have heath insurance coverage under each other's plans.