I'll bet that you didn't know that Clinton's health-care plan will force the LDS Church and Catholic Church to pay for their employees' abortions. And I'll bet you didn't know that the options recommended by the Utah Health Care Policy Options Commission could also do the same.
Family planning in the standard benefits package could have abortions paid for by policyholders or mandated to employers.Under the guise of "providing access to some form of basic health care in an environment that contains cost," UHCPOC-proposed mandates may force employers and participants who are outspoken in their opposition to abortion to fund them.
Like Clinton/Shepherd, the UHCPOC can ignore Utah's overwhelming opposition to abortion as a public policy decision. If abortion is a choice, it is a private choice and in no way should be funded by or forced upon those who oppose it.
Even setting up a "commission" to dictate standard benefit procedures leaves the door wide open. Accommodation, the watchword of politics, will have commission members from militantly "pro-choice" groups as the first and most outspoken members.
The report of UHCPOC is symptomatic of the disease of governmentitis, the addictive notion that government is the solution to all problems. For most families, government is the problem.
The entire premise of government in health care must be rejected out of hand. State or federally, it is nothing more or less than the camel's nose under our shrinking tent of freedom.
Allen Elggren
Salt Lake City