It’s official: Ave Maria University will no longer make available health coverage for students, according to a statement by Ave Maria President Jim Towey.
In making the announcement, available on the university’s website, Towey cited both moral objections and skyrocketing costs that are consequences of President Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the associated HHS contraception mandate.
The university is also dropping the requirement that students be insured. The new policy goes into effect August 15, 2012.
Ave Maria announced that the college was recently informed by its insurance carrier that the provisions of Obamacare would require an increase in the maximum benefit per injury or illness (from $50,000 to $100,000) and that students would not only face a 66% increase in their premiums (from $839 to $1,392) but an increase in their deductibles (from $100 to $250 per policy year).
On top of that, the HHS mandate would require the university to provide coverage for contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilization procedures, which Towey called “an affront to our core values.” (Matthew Archbold @ Cardinal Newman Society)
This of course follows the news last week when the Franciscan University of Steubenville did the same.
20 comments
Hmmm, looks like the insurance companies will collapse if they keep this nonsense up and then the US will have to do what the rest of the Western World does and have the government assume the role of insurer making it cheaper and more efficient and covering every citizen regardless of wealth, age or “per-existing condition”.
I know, I know, that will be a nightmare! It’ll be like Europe and Canada where people’s life savings aren’t wiped out by illness, where families will get to keep their homes and get help for a chronically ill child and yes, where women will get cheap contraception and decide, for themselves, when to have children.
An awful world indeed, let’s hope your god finally comes back, gets Revelations started and destroys it all before it happens!
Whoa there, Nelly!. As much as I think OHIP is great and I thank God for it, don’t for one second think that it is wonderful to have government bureaucrats decide how much a procedure is worth, all the time. It isn’t as bad as some Americans think, but it isn’t as great as others think either. It has it’s problems.
The Doctor’s always have the right to just not do procedures if the pay scale is too low, unless it is a life saving procedure. Yet there are alot of procedures that are not life saving but not exactly elective.
A case in point, which is just in the News. The Ontario government routinely changes / resets the procedure fees. Recently the anesthesiology fee for conscious sedation was reduced from 120 CAD to 60 CAD. Anaesthesiologists are free to just not be available for the elective surgeries that would require conscious sedation. The most common surgery that requires conscious sedation is cataract surgery. Now cataracts are not life threatening, but opthamologists can/will not perform the surgery without the sedation, and yet the anaesthesiologists won’t do it for 60. This results in opthamologists no longer being able to offer the surgery.
And private insurance won’t necessarily cover it either, at least not for a few years until they can change there policies.
Before you tell me to get my facts straight I am Canadian, Ontarian, Torontonian, so I know about OHIP (Ontario Health Insurance Plan)
I too am Canadian and have lived with OHIP all my life and think it’s great. Is it perfect? No, there are flaws but what I do know is that it’s a million times better than what the Americans have.
>don’t for one second think that it is wonderful to have government bureaucrats decide how much a procedure is worth, all the time
And it’s better to have some scumbag insurance guy decide that their year’s end profit is more valuable than your life? Your kid gets sick and they have their “medical experts” go through your policy to find the loophole that gets them out of paying? Oh sorry, MS is a “per-existing” condition, we feel awful about taking your money and giving no service back in return! Truly, we’re crying all the way to the bank.
Insurance companies exist to make money, that’s it, that’s all, they do not care about their client’s beyond the cheques clearing. If they can figure out a way not to pay they will.
A government on the other hand wants healthy people because healthy people vote and they vote for the people that keep them healthy, it’s a great bit of symbiosis. It also allows for “bulk” buying which is always cheaper.
The current American system is fine if you’re very rich or very poor, if you are middle class or above or below? One illness and your future and your children’s future is hobbled at best.
So of course the insurance companies are going to fight reform tooth and nail, they don’t want people being healthy, they want people giving them money.
It’s stunts like these being lead by your allegedly pro-life and pro-family bishops with which they hope to derail it.
I can’t help but wonder if they’re overplaying their hand with these increases, I don’t know if Obama and his people are that clever in manipulating them into it but it would be cool if they were.
Canadians should be involved in Canadian affairs, not American issues that don’t affect them. Oh my but Obamacare does affect the Canadians because it will eventually drag our health insurance to the level of Canada’s where death rates from cancer is higher, etc., etc. Where many, many people cross the border to get superior and quicker care than they would recieve in the Canadian system. So please paid spammer Canandian Salvage, you have no dog in this fight.
You failed to read the beginning of the sentence you quoted where I said
As much as I think OHIP is great and I thank God for it, don’t for one second think that it is wonderful to have government bureaucrats decide how much a procedure is worth, all the time.
Insurance Bureaucrats or Government Bureaucrats, really are either qualified to judge the value, appropriateness, or necessity of a medical procedure??? I’d say neither qualify.
I was pointing out one of it’s flaws. Tell me how my criticism is not accurate. It is one thing to approve and champion something, anything, it is another to gloss over it’s flaws and failings.
Bottom line: I would not want to have the American System, but by the same token, I would prefer OHIP be improved, without devolving into a two or three tiered system. Can we agree on that statement?
>Canadians should be involved in Canadian affairs, not American issues that don’t affect them.
I’ll set the irony aside considering that America’s favorite pastime is meddling in the affairs of other nations and point out the obvious, I’m commenting on a blog post, hardly affects policy so not rally involved.
What? Do you think posting stuff on the Internet is getting involved in the real world?
>Oh my but Obamacare does affect the Canadians because it will eventually drag our health insurance to the level of Canada’s where death rates from cancer is higher, etc., etc.
Oh not just Canada but actually EVERY Western Nation.
So Americans paying for insurance that the insurance company will do their best not to honor affects cancer rates how?
> Where many, many people cross the border to get superior and quicker care than they would recieve in the Canadian system.
Oh in some cases this is true, America is the heart of cancer research and treatment but in reality it’s only the very rich Canadians that can afford to do so.
But overall people don’t lose their lifesavings while saving their lives.
I’m guessing that’s one of those points I will make over and over again and no one will acknowledge much less rebut.
And the cross border thing works both ways, for instance we had to get photos on our OHIP cards because so many Americans were showing up with borrowed ones. We used to do that for American friends, lend them our health cards so they could get treated for stuff, always thought it crazy that Americans wouldn’t take care of their own. It’s bizarre how your patriotism ends at your tax dollars.
Yet you’ll spend billions to kill Iraqis. Truly bizarre.
>So please paid spammer Canandian Salvage, you have no dog in this fight.
LOL! That is true but what is also true is universal health care is better for the majority but you and truth don’t seem to get along.
>wonderful to have government bureaucrats decide how much a procedure is worth, all the time.
You don’t and the bureaucrats that do shape policy have medical experience.
>Insurance Bureaucrats or Government Bureaucrats, really are either qualified to judge the value, appropriateness, or necessity of a medical procedure??? I’d say neither qualify.
I’d say that with the right training and experience they do, I’m more interested in motives, the insurance company’s is profit not people, governments are the exact opposite.
>I was pointing out one of it’s flaws.
And I agree, of course it’s flawed, any system that has so many moving parts is going to be.
>Bottom line: I would not want to have the American System, but by the same token, I would prefer OHIP be improved, without devolving into a two or three tiered system. Can we agree on that statement?
Absolutely. There already is a two tiered system that the very rich enjoy, private clinics tucked into residential homes and fast tracks to American treatment centers but that’s always been the case in everything, life is easier in many ways for the rich.
I’m not worried about them or that, what I worry about are families being devastated financially by a sick kid or parent. That’s when we need to make sure that their bills are not a problem.
American insurance companies circle Canada like sharks, they want in so badly, it drives them nuts the idea of people being covered and them not making a cent.
Sid, you can’t compare a National OBAMACARE with Canadian Health Care. Your’s would be a federal system. In Canada Health is the provincial portfolio, so different provinces have different systems
The Survival Rates across the US is not equal It ranges between 78 and 90 % depending on cancer and region.
Whereas in Canada the rates are between 79.3 and 85 percent based on region and cancers studied.
Honestly, when you force me to defend Salvage it, it means your argument is pathetic.
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/MedExpress/20080716/cancer_statistics_080716/
By the way the disparity in the States is also race based.
“The disparity in survival rates crossed racial lines in the U.S., as well, with white patients having a five-year survival rate of 84.7 per cent and black patients having a survival rate of 70.9 per cent.”
In short those who have insurance survive longer, those who don’t don’t.
Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/MedExpress/20080716/cancer_statistics_080716/#ixzz1vhjMNJLs
A recent study of survival rates for four very common cancers(rectal, prostate, breast, and colon) listed the USA, Japan, and France as having the highest survival rates. The US was number one in Breats and Prostate survival rates. Canada has great doctors and long wait times. The US system needs some changes, but not a government take over. If we’re so bad why do people from all over the world come to MD Anderson in Houston for cancer treatments. There is a disparity between blacks and whites…why do you think that is? The Canadian system is not a free market based system, it is a government controlled system. The British health care government run system has more “employees” than the Chinese military has soldiers, that’s scary. Once you get to that point you will never be able to vote it out. If we go down the road to a single payer government run sysytem then even Salvage won’t be able to cross the border and get prompt first rate medical care.
See? Sid you just skip over the points.
Or.. you do know that there is more to health care than cancer right?
It’s not the quality that is the problem in America, it’s the access and the cost. Working families can be devastated by a medical crisis.
>The British health care government run system has more “employees” than the Chinese military has soldiers, that’s scary.
Huh? How is that “scary”? You mean the Uk spends a lot of money taking care of their people? That sounds…. awful.
Not everything needs to be “free market”, you really think it’s a good idea to make healthcare for profit? You don’t see the inherent problems there? Why do you think every other capitalist nation has universal healthcare?
The only people in America that benefit from private health care are insurance companies and other extremely wealthy people, it does everyone else little good.
And here in Canada I have yet to meet a poor doctor so they do get well paid and if they want to be richer they can always go south and take your money.
“Absolutely. There already is a two tiered system that the very rich enjoy, private clinics tucked into residential homes and fast tracks to American treatment centers but that’s always been the case in everything, life is easier in many ways for the rich.”
So the rich are sneaking around getting better care hidden in some other rich person’s home…..sounds like a lot of fun.
“Where you going honey?”
‘shhhhh”, I’m going to Fred’s house to get my cataracts out.”
“It’s just like in America. He’s got sedation meds and everything!”
Well, here in the USA, I’m glad not to have to sneak around to get the great medical care we get. Yuck.
>Well, here in the USA, I’m glad not to have to sneak around to get the great medical care we get. Yuck.
“We” get? No, not all Americans get it, that’s the problem.
But hey, you got yours so who cares right?
I guess while Mr./Ms. Salvage is sitting across the border in Canada reading a copy of USA Today and watching Michael Moore’s “Sicko” he/she is fully aware of all that is going on in the USA. Many countries do have universal healthcare, like Spain, Greece, Germany, etc. Countries that are getting closer to admitting they are bankrupt. Nut that’s another topic. This article is about a Catholic University deciding to stop providing coverage if the government is going to mandate what must be covered. May God bless Ave Maria University for taking a stand based on principles and religious freedom.
We have medicare, which is not perfect, but adequate, with private health insurance that people purchase themselves ( not their employer). Private insurance is encouraged by tax incentives for those over a certain income. Australia is possibly the only country in the western world not going broke, and without people dying on the pavement ( well, often) or going broke for medical treatment.
Salvage: Re: prayer curing. Knowing full well you will dismiss this here you go:
http://www.catholicregister.org/home/item/12823-healing-hands-opened-up-devotion-to-brother-andr%C3%A9
Tell me how the man, who was the kid is lying. How none of it is true. and it is just hysterical healing.
Oops this comment belongs on the post below. Ignore it here!
> reading a copy of USA Today
Copy of what? That a “newspaper”? I get all my news from Google rather than a single source.
>and watching Michael Moore’s “Sicko”
Yeah, I saw that when it came out, it was okay.
> he/she is fully aware of all that is going on in the USA.
Yes, American culture is so radically different from Canadian and news from the States so limited!
>Many countries do have universal healthcare, like Spain, Greece, Germany, etc. Countries that are getting closer to admitting they are bankrupt.
Ha! Ha! Yes! They are going bankrupt because of their health care system! It has nothing to do with unregulated stock market shenanigans! What the people of those countries need now is to lose their guaranteed health care and have the people pay insurance companies to refuse to pay out when the brain tumor shows up.
> This article is about a Catholic University deciding to stop providing coverage if the government is going to mandate what must be covered.
Sure.
May God bless Ave Maria University for taking a stand based on principles and religious freedom.
Yes, the freedom to make people only use drugs and live lives that your god approves of.
Odd how your god doesn’t voice an opinion on the issue itself, not even writing on the wall.
May God bless Ave Maria University(and all religious groups and institutions) for taking a stand based on principles and religious freedom.
Sid,you said it all,period.