Three of the eight letters to the editor published in the St. Petersburg Times on Monday refer to Bishop Robert Lynch's comments last week that if the regulations to the health care reform law do not change, he will not be able to offer health insurance to the Diocese of St. Petersburg's 2,300 employees in a few years.
Here's the bishop's beef: He says the existing draft of the federal plan (which doesn't fully kick in until 2014, though parts of it are currently operational) would mandate that the church offer its employees health insurance that covers contraceptives, including any kind of abortion procedures and sexual enhancements "like Viagra."
Twenty months after it was signed into law, there is still substantial resistance to the bill. But over the weekend there were some strong arguments made in its favor by Donald Berwick, the official in charge of Medicare and Medicaid the past 17 months, who in the NY Times and on the MSNBC show Up with Chris Hayes talked about the tremendous amount of waste in the health care system right now (he estimated between 20-30 percent), and said learning how to contend with that could be viable in trying to bring down escalating costs.
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This article appears in Dec 1-7, 2011.