Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (23066)	2/18/2012 11:07:11 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

The optics might be different, but the reality is not. The reality is not different, I agree. But optics matter. A lot more than I think they should, generally, but they matter. Very often in trying to reach agreements you look for ways that the parties can spin that agreement to make agreement possible. Often people want to agree but they can't because of how it will be received by their constituencies. You find a way for them to agree. You parse it carefully. Everyone around the table winks. Now that is reality. Found this quite in today's Post and thought of you. “The issue here is forcing the church to provide [contraceptives] directly or indirectly in contravention of the Church’s teachings,” said William E. Lori, who chairs the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’s Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty. “That’s what we don't want to do. It’s one thing when tax dollars pay for it; it’s another when church dollars do.” So we have a distinction between the Church paying directly, the Church paying indirectly, and the taxpayers paying. I realize that the "it" you were referring to was the distinction between direct and indirect. But even in the third option the Church is paying indirectly, just more indirectly than via the insurance company, considering that the taxpayers included Church members. It's like in that old joke the punchline of which is that we now know what you are and need only negotiate the price. Here we're only negotiating how indirectly.