How slooooow can the courts goooooo?

Obamacare mandated that health insurance has to cover abortions, and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, New York objects that this violates their religious principles. Considering how much the courts of have shifted in the last few years to protect religious principles, you might think this would be too obvious to waste time on. Oh, ha ha, I'm such a dreamer!

For nearly a decade, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany has challenged New York's law mandating that insurance policies cover abortions. A cert petition was first filed in April 2021. But in November 2021, the Court GVR'd the case in light of Fulton. In May 2024, the New York Court of Appeals found that Fulton changed nothing.

In July 2024, the Diocese petitioned for cert a second time. The case sat on the docket for nearly a year. On June 5, the Court decide Catholic Charities Bureau. On June 9, the Court scheduled the Diocese petition for the June 12 conference. The Diocese urged the Court to summarily reverse in light of the Wisconsin case...

Today, nearly a year after the most recent cert petition was filed, and more than four years after the first petition was filed, the Court GVR'd the case in light of Catholic Charities Bureau.

And all because the government loves them some one-size-fits-nobody solutions which don't actually solve anything except how to expand government. Used to be, a century or two ago, that people paid their own medical bills. Of course, that meant the poor didn't get much medical help, but medical help was so primitive that they weren't missing much.

Then came the mutual aide societies, with their funny hats and secret handshakes. There's a good book on the subject, From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State, https://www.amazon.com/Mutual-Aid-Welfare-State-Fraternal-ebook/dp/B00ZVEH1EI. They hired doctors with a flat rate retainer for routine coverage, and cheaper rates for unusual coverage.

Then came professional doctoring, the American Medical Association, and they hated those arrangements. Said it cheapened the profession, having doctors work cheap. Got the states to require doctors be certified according to AMA diktat, and that was the end of cheap medical coverage.

Then came WW II and its wage controls in the face of higher demand for military industrial workers, so employers hit upon the clever idea of offering non-wage benefits, like medical coverage. The government knew its wage controls weren't working, they knew the employers were thumbing their noses at the spirit of the law, patted them on the back, and said, You Go! and recognized the insurance as a tax write-off to the employer, not taxable income to the workers. Thus was born medical insurance tied to employment, and the tax system encouraged expanding it to cover routine physical exams, regular dental cleaning, and other predictable care which is not what insurance is meant for.

And then came Medicare (for pensioners), Medicaid (for the poor), Part D prescriptions (for pensioners), Obamacare (for the poor), each one adding new bureaucracies and new paperwork and new one-size-fits-nobody laws and regulations.

How much simpler it would be for people to get their own insurance, particularized to their own circumstances, and make it their own tax write-off instead of the employers'. And if the government wanted to actually help the poor instead of tangle them up in red tape, they could subsidize people's individual insurance directly instead of creating government insurance which requires men to get abortion coverage and women to get prostate cancer coverage.

I really hate government.