PROVIDENCE — Despite the introduction of a floor amendment by Sen. Jessica de la Cruz that would allow employers to exclude coverages in the healthcare plans they offer which are contrary to their bona fide religious or moral beliefs, a bill that would require three categories of health insurers to provide coverage for 10 categories of essential health benefits passed in the Senate March 25.
Senate Bill 2080 Sub A was passed by a vote of 26-8 and has been referred to the House Health and Human Services Committee. De la Cruz’s amendment failed by the same margin.
The bill, whose chief sponsor is Sen. Joshua Miller (D-Cranston, Providence), chairman of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, is designed to codify into Rhode Island law protections afforded by the Affordable Care Act.
But Senate Minority Whip de la Cruz (R- Burrillville, Glocester, North Smithfield), contended that those protections do not include the ability for religious employers to refuse to provide coverage for contraceptive services that are contrary to their deeply held beliefs in the health plans they offer to their employees.
“The chairman is correct when he pointed out that this legislation does codify the meanings and recommendations and scope of preventative services, however it does not for the exemptions for the Little Sisters of the Poor from the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, which was decided on July 8, 2020,” she said.
De la Cruz proposed the language be amended in three places in the bill that the preventive services mandate appears.
“Notwithstanding any provision of this section, any insurance company may issue to an employer an individual or group health insurance contract plan or policy that excludes coverages which are contrary to the employer’s bona fide religious or moral beliefs,” she proposed.
The amendment proposed that every employer that invokes the exemption allowing them to curtail contraceptive services in their health coverage provide written notice to prospective enrollees prior to their enrollment in the plan, listing the healthcare services the employer refuses to cover for religious or moral reasons.
But Miller responded that the amendment’s language was far too broad and could allow employers to discriminate in offering coverage for any reason they deem runs contrary to their religious or moral beliefs.
“This bill codifies the current status quo of the Affordable Care Act into Rhode Island state law. This includes the religious exemption at issue in the United State Supreme Court, known as Little Sisters of the Poor v. the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. That affirmed the Trump administration’s regulatory exemption for religious entities,” Miller said.
“The current administration has not reversed or amended the religious employer exemption and that exemption remains in law, and therefore, we are codifying what remains in law.”
Miller suggested that de la Cruz introduce her amendment as a separate piece of legislation as he believes it goes beyond what the Supreme Court ruled and what the Trump administration wrote in regulating what the Supreme Court ruled.
De la Cruz said that while Miller’s bill codifies federal mandates into state law it does not codify or even reference exemptions from the federal mandate that were promulgated in 2018 and upheld in 2020 by the Supreme Court of the United States after seven years of negotiation and litigation in the Little Sisters of the Poor case.
“This bill thus creates a Rhode Island State mandate and tramples upon the rights of the Little Sisters of the Poor in Pawtucket and other objecting Rhode Island employers by forcing them to participate in the deliberate taking of human life in violation of their conscience and their deeply held beliefs,” she said.
De la Cruz noted that some FDA contraceptive methods also have known abortifacient mechanisms which can act after fertilization to prevent a human embryo from implanting in a woman’s uterine wall, thus destroying life in the embryonic stage of development.
“It is shameful that the Senate of this state, founded by Roger Williams as a refuge for liberty and conscience, would seek for even a moment to impose such a mandate without these exemptions,” she said.
