Yesterday, a federal court struck down a Washington state law that required pharmacies to dispense drugs such as Plan B and ella (which are widely regarded as abortifacients or abortion-inducing drugs). Several pharmacists had sued the government arguing that the state law infringed on their religious beliefs in violation of the First Amendment. The court agreed. Read the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty's press release here.

Having read many comments on this decision from people who have argued that pharmacists should be forced to violate their conscience in order to keep their jobs, I would respond thusly:

Should government have the power to tell any business what products it must sell and dictate the manner in which those products should be sold? Setting aside the idea of religious faith for a moment, do we want government to have the power to dictate the specifics of how every business has decided to serve its customers. Should a business be forced by government to spend its resources to purchase and stock  a product regardless of whether there is customer demand?  At stake here is also the principle of economic liberty and personal autonomy. A business should be free to decide what products it will choose to sell and which it will choose not to sell. 

In most cases, businesses will make those decisions based on economic principles - a profit-motive and supply and demand (both of which should be viewed as noble considerations, not vilified as seems to be common in the current political culture). But in cases where a business person is concerned about more than profit and their values lead them to make a decision that is not driven by economics and in fact may run counter to the "best" economic decision, that business owner must be free to follow the dictates of their conscience. 

Otherwise, we run the risk of letting government micro-manage every aspect of our economy, to dictate matters of supply and demand, to set prices, to govern the inventory decisions of each and every business. We have tried this in the past and with spectacular failures as a result. FDR demonized utility companies and pushed for government intervention and control - it drove America further into the depression. Nixon tried the same thing with price controls on oil and it lead to an energy crisis. 

Ultimately, government should be the last entity to make these kind of decisions. Their track record is so poor we would be better off letting each business owner make their own decisions and letting the free markets reward business. This is a far better method for allocating capital resources (and birth control) than any government mandate. 

UPDATE: Senator Jim DeMint has an excellent article in The Washington Examiner about the broader issues of ObamaCare and individual liberty. Read his commentary here.

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Earlier this week, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear an extra 30 minutes of oral arguments on issues related to ObamaCare. The additional time will be devoted to hearing about the Anti-Injunction Act, a federal law that generally requires courts to avoid ruling on issues of tax law unless and until a taxpayer has actually been impacted by the law (i.e., has paid the tax or been assessed a fine or penalty). This brings the total time for oral arguments to 6 hours, to be heard over 3 days.

Read more about this specific issue here.

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Earlier this week, AHEC wrote about a federal appeals court decision that denied people the right/ability to opt-out of Medicare. Instead, the court's decision traps people into a health care system they may not want. New legislation has been introduced on Capitol Hill to give Americans the option to forego Medicare if they chose.

Read more about this bill at FreedomWorks website, here.  This is not just common sense, it is good government.

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Avik Roy of Forbes Apothecary has commented on the Burr-Coburn Medicare reform plan calling it the best reform plan introduced to date.  According to his column, their plan achieves each of six important principles for reform: "(1) preserving benefits for people aged 55 and older; (2) making sure that retirees share more of the costs of their care, and thereby a stake in prudent consumption; (3) means-testing; (4) indexing the Medicare retirement age to life expectancy; (5) aggressive fraud prevention; (6) allowing seniors to shop for value in insurance plans."

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A federal court ruled recently that citizens who are eligible for Medicare cannot voluntarily give them up. Read a brief summary of the case here.

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Michael Cannon of Cato breaks down the facts that the federal government currently lacks the funds necessary to set up federal exchanges. As he explains, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is unlikely to provide extra funding to HHS to allow them to set up the exchanges. Without the exchanges, ObamaCare cannot take root - especially when so many states are unwilling to set up the state-based exchanges.

It looks as if Oregon is another state that will not be setting up a state ObamaCare exchange. Read more here.

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FreedomWorks has filed an amicus brief in the mulit-state lawsuit challenging ObamaCare. You can read the full brief here.

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Last week, The Daily Caller published an article with a new analysis from the architect of ObamaCare. According to the article:

"Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Jonathan Gruber, who also devised former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s statewide health care reforms, is backtracking on an analysis he provided the White House in support of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, informing officials in three states that the price of insurance premiums will dramatically increase under the reforms."

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Charles Krauthammer has a wonderfully written piece tackling the hypocrisy of the Obama Administration on the issue of contraception. He concludes the article, saying: 

"The contradiction is glaring, the hypocrisy breathtaking. But that’s not why Obama offered a hasty compromise on Friday. It’s because the firestorm of protest was becoming a threat to his reelection. Sure, health care, good works, and religion are important. But reelection is divine."

Read his article here.

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