Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.Two things have happened at Creighton University in the wake of the national discussion on birth control.
The Rev. Timothy Lannon, Creighton's president, sent a campuswide email reiterating the university's position against contraception and sterilization and objecting to Creighton's being forced to have a role in providing them under President Barack Obama's health care law.
And third-year law student Jennifer Piatt, who thought her tubal ligation in July was covered under Creighton's student health insurance and said as much in a World-Herald story, learned that the procedure was not covered.
Piatt, a 30-year-old who is not Catholic, does not have a religious objection to sterilization, which she sought to have done after giving birth to her third baby. She and some other Creighton law students spoke out in favor of the federal health care law, which requires most employers to pay for full preventive health services, including contraception for women.
The Obama administration in January reaffirmed its position on that aspect of the health care law, which goes into effect in 2013. Under that plan, churches would be exempt from paying for services they objected to, but other religion-affiliated organizations, such as Catholic universities and charities, would have to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives and sterilization.
A number of religious groups — led by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops — cried foul, saying the legislation did not adequately provide exemptions for employers who believe that certain aspects of health care, such as contraception, are immoral. Obama on Feb. 10 offered a compromise: religion-based institutions could be exempted from directly paying for contraceptive coverage. Instead, insurers would cover the costs.
On Thursday, Lannon sent his email that praised and condemned portions of the Affordable Health Care Act.
Lannon said the legislation has "admirable purposes ... including its goal to offer quality, affordable health care to millions of Americans."
"As a Catholic, Jesuit institution," he wrote, "Creighton believes strongly in the protection and care of all people."
Lannon also said he did not believe that Creighton should have to pay for services "that the Catholic Church teaches are immoral," and he said the university's student and employee health care plans do not cover sterilization or contraception.
He said the Obama compromise "makes little difference" in that Creighton would still have to offer such coverage, even if the university didn't explicitly pay for it.
Piatt read Lannon's memo and thought: Could I be wrong?
Because she had never received a bill or an insurance statement regarding her sterilization, Piatt assumed that the procedure had been covered along with the cost of delivering her son Hassan.
Piatt called her insurer who — after some investigation — concluded that her July 18 tubal ligation at Bergan Mercy Medical Center was denied as an exclusion to her student health care plan.
Piatt then called her Omaha doctor, who hadn't received notice of the denial and therefore hadn't sent a bill. Piatt said the timing was strange but didn't think she was being penalized. She said she thought a coding error had slowed the paperwork.
She and her husband, a graduate student at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, are hoping that Medicaid will help cover what Creighton did not.
Regardless, she said, she has no regrets.
"I didn't want to take birth control pills," Piatt said. "And I didn't want to have any more babies."
Contact the writer:
402-444-1136, erin.grace@owh.com
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