The Public Is Split On The "Hobby Lobby" Decision, But Most Think It Will Be Abused By Employers In The Future

Frankly, I am a bit disappointed with the results of this survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation (who usually does among the best polls on health care issues). It seems that Americans are split over whether the recent Supreme Court decision saying Hobby Lobby doesn't have to include the providing of contraception in its employee insurance policies.

The costs for these contraceptives for female employees was not paid for by the company, but by the insurance company (who saves money by including free contraceptives). That means the company is allowed to deny this to their female employees simply because of the religious views of the company owners. I would have hoped that the American people wouldn't want religious views of a company owner to trump the health care of the company's employers -- but sadly, it seems nearly half of the public has been convinced that this is a religious issue.

Making these results even more strange is that while the public is split on whether the "Hobby Lobby" decision was a good one or not, a significant percentage of the public (58%) believes that other employers will seize on this decision and use it to deny other coverages to their employers. How can anyone think this is a good decision, when they are convinced that it will be used to abuse workers in the future?

The Kaiser Health Tracking Poll was taken between July 15th and 21st of a random national sample of 1,507 adults, and has a 3 point margin of error.