Actually, it’s not just the mandate, but also the costs that will drive Franciscan University to bail out of the health-insurance business. Before now, the Catholic institution required all students to carry health insurance; those who did not have them were required to buy insurance through the school. That’s not entirely dissimilar to the ObamaCare mandate, although of course attendance at the school is entirely voluntary.
Franciscan University put the HHS contraception mandate as its first justification, however.
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Franciscan’s refusal to comply with the HHS edict shows that this issue will not go away quietly for Obama among Catholics and members of other faiths less inclined to vote Democrat. As more Catholic institutions opt out, the issue will get more and more acute for Obama as bishops press hard for freedom of religious conscience.
