Conveniently Ethical

Fox News reports that Franciscan University has dropped student insurance coverage because of ObamaCare. Maybe it has. But I think the real reason is buried in the middle of the story, where two far-flung sentences should really appear much closer together:

"[T]he employee health insurance program will remain unchanged....the school says fewer than 200 of its students had been buying insurance from the university."

Pardon my cynicism, but I smell a rat here.

Why is ObamaCare acceptable for the employees but not the students?

Well, maybe because not enough students were buying insurance through the university.

You see, it costs, money to keep a university-run insurance program in place.
I would bet hundreds of dollars that Franciscan U turned at least a dime off of every insurance policy a student bought through the university.

But there were less than 200 students still doing that.

I'm just guessing here, but I would bet that running a student insurance program through the university would take at least a half-time secretary. So, if the revenue coming in didn't pay the secretary's salary and then some, FUS would not be turning a profit off the student insurance program.

What to do?

Well, ObamaCare is a great excuse to drop the expense of internally tracking the coverage. By announcing the drop of a program that wasn't making money anyway, FUS looks really good, and it saves them the expense of dealing with it.

After all, if this were really about not submitting to ObamaCare, wouldn't they drop employee coverage too? Isn't coverage for university employees going to require the same kind of payment for contraceptives, abortions and sterilizations starting August 1?

But, they DO NOT drop insurance care for their employees, because the employees would scream bloody murder. if they dropped employee insurance, which is an untaxed benefit, they would have to increase salaries to compensate. That would mean more money in unemployment insurance costs from FUS to the state and more city, state and federal tax due as well for both the university and its employees. We cannot have that.

Now, maybe I'm entirely wrong and FUS is really doing it for the reasons stated. Maybe they are all philanthropists at heart. But, I attended that campus, got my degree there, I interacted with the administration there. I really don't trust FUS, or any other "Catholic" university for that matter.

As I said, call me cynical, but I really, really doubt that this is FUS being the pure white hat they promote themselves to be.

Correction: 

As the wives of two FUS employees implicitly point out by their comments below, the FUS spokesman is actually a liar. If you read the transcript carefully, FUS spokesman Hernon first says that FUS "offers" student health coverage and FUS is dropping the coverage. Then when pressed repeatedly by the Fox News anchor, Hernon cryptically admits that FUS doesn't actually offer any coverage at all to the students.


So FUS is NOT dropping student health coverage, rather, it is just dropping the requirement that students pay for their own health coverage.

Which sounds a lot less impressive, when you get down to it.

But you would never know any of that if it weren't for the Fox News anchor basically beating the truth out of official FUS spokesperson Hernon.

I want to thank Laura and Justine for their careful attention to the lies the FUS spokesman was attempting to promulgate. I failed to read the interview closely enough. I'm sure Hernon will get out there and correct the record with all the news agencies that are reporting FUS is dropping student health coverage.

The could start by calling up LifeSiteNews, for instance, and telling LSN that their coverage is all wrong!  Cough, cough, cough.

UPDATE:

Yeah, like I thought. See this interview with Fox News.


Here's the money quote:

HERNON: Yes. We are going to be fighting, as we started in the summer, or early fall, fighting for religious liberty, and we'll continue to do so. For our employees the direct impact economically doesn't hit us as of today. But it does impact our students.

See? It's only worth acting on the morality with our employees when it hits their pocketbooks. If it isn't hitting their pocketbooks, then taking the moral high ground isn't really worth it. 

Oh, and don't you just love this?

And our students have been out there in front, really saying we cannot comply. 

Yeah, the students have been out in front.

The faculty - you know, the people who are supposed to be well-versed in Catholic principles, the ones who take the mandatum, the fully-formed adults - they've apparently been leading from behind. All those good Catholic FUS professors are content to sit on the sidelines, hugging their health insurance plans to their chests. And the administration is right there with them... with the faculty, that is. On the sidelines. You know. Waiting for the money to be a problem. After all, FUS has its priorities.

Yep, that's the FUS we all know and love.

UPDATE II:

And for those of you from Rio Linda, there is no state or federal requirement that forces employers to provide their employees with insurance.


Oh, and get this! Ave Maria University - famed in song and story as Tom Monaghan's personal jungle gym - saw how much free publicity FUS is getting out of dropping student health insurance and they want in too!


Tom certainly knows how to get free press when he can.
Of course, they aren't going to drop employee insurance any more than FUS did!
Silly of you even to propose it, really.


Anyway, just today (May 17, 2012) the wife of one of the professors at AMU took issue with my characterization of FUS above. She found it mean-spirited, don'cha'know.  Of course, she only unsheathed her claws after AMU started getting press for jumping on the NObamaCare bandwagon...


Ahhh... I love Catholics!


Everything I've said about FUS is doubly true AMU.

In good conscience, I never advise anyone to attend FUS, but I make it a point to tell everyone to actively avoid AMU.