{"id":1639,"date":"2013-01-13T12:21:19","date_gmt":"2013-01-13T11:21:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/?p=1639"},"modified":"2013-01-13T12:21:44","modified_gmt":"2013-01-13T11:21:44","slug":"when-is-a-fine-excessive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=1639","title":{"rendered":"When is a Fine Excessive?"},"content":{"rendered":"

CNN has an interesting story<\/a> about a Christian organization that is seeking to avoid fines for not providing coverage for the “Day After” pill or (I think) RU-486.\u00a0 Let us not argue about birth control\u00a0 or abortion.\u00a0 My issue here is the amount of the fine, which is $100 per day per employee for whom the employer refuses coverage.\u00a0 Why isn’t that fine excessive?\u00a0 To begin with, let’s look at the cost of such services.\u00a0 The cost of the drugs are relatively low.\u00a0 According the Planned Parenthood<\/a>, the cost for the pharmaceuticals are between $10 and $70. For an insurance company this is really a non-issue, and that leaves the moral issue, because it’s not an ongoing expense.\u00a0 In fact, it may even be lower than some people’s co-payments or deductibles.\u00a0 Now we need to add this to an insurance risk pool cost, and the price for insurance probably drops to well less that $0.10 per year<\/strong> .\u00a0 After all, how often does anyone need such services?\u00a0 Maybe once in their lives?\u00a0 Maybe never.<\/p>\n

If we break this down, then, to compensatory versus punitive damages, let’s postulate an\u00a0 government program that allows doctors and pharmacies to be reimbursed for the cost of the procedure.\u00a0 Let’s call the program, oh…. Medicaid.\u00a0 Let’s say that costs, from a risk perspective, $1.00 per year.\u00a0 The Supreme Court has already said that punitive damages in civil cases should not exceed a factor of 10.\u00a0 Why then, should the fine for this behavior not by $10 per employee per year instead of $100 per employee per day?<\/p>\n

In fact, why not let employers opt out on conscience grounds and let them pay a slightly higher premium of $2.00 per employee?\u00a0 In this sense, the government would stand to profit from an employer who REALLY has qualms.\u00a0 Of course, one would also have to ask why that company would feel so comfortable paying the government twice what it would pay the insurance company, when at the end of the day the same service would be performed?<\/p>\n

Put simply: what is the societal interest in penalizing a company 100,000 times the cost of a service in this case?\u00a0 Is this such an egregious omission?\u00a0 Are employees unsafe?\u00a0 Would the service otherwise be unavailable?\u00a0 What is the issue?<\/p>\n

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CNN has an interesting story about a Christian organization that is seeking to avoid fines for not providing coverage for the “Day After” pill or (I think) RU-486.\u00a0 Let us not argue about birth control\u00a0 or abortion.\u00a0 My issue here is the amount of the fine, which is $100 per day per employee for whom … Continue reading “When is a Fine Excessive?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,17,4],"tags":[472,238,471],"class_list":["post-1639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-complexity","category-economics","category-politics","tag-government","tag-healthcare","tag-penalties"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1639"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1641,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639\/revisions\/1641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}