Thursday, May 17, 2012
Associated Press
CINCINNATI
A Catholic university in eastern Ohio is dropping its student health insurance program partly because of a new federal health care rule requiring religious-affiliated institutions’ insurance plans to provide contraception coverage, a university official said Wednesday.
A vice president with Franciscan University of Steubenville said the school felt it had no choice.
“We cannot teach one thing in class and then be forced to pay for things that we find morally objectionable,” Michael Hernon, vice president for advancement, said in a telephone interview. “We have been offering this insurance for ages, and we are upset that we had to come to this decision.”
Religious-affiliated institutions around the country have protested President Barack Obama’s move to require those organizations, including schools, to include contraceptive coverage in their insurance plans. The president later said the religious-affiliated institutions didn’t have to pay for that coverage but their insurers must.