The decision, which is still being considered before it is finally included, would require all health insurers to provide contraceptive services without co-payments. The decision includes an exemption for religious employers. However, Catholic groups believe that the exemption is “too limited” and would thus require many Catholic groups to provide services that are banned by the Catholic Church.

Catholic bishops and some Catholic groups have been condemning the decision. They have  asked that the exemption be open to more objectors, or that the decision be stricken in its entirety.

Now, the St. Petersburg Times reports that if the decision is not changed, Bishop Robert Lynch says ”the Diocese of St. Petersburg would drop health insurance for its approximately 2,300 employees, and instead give them money to find coverage themselves.”

Officials in the diocese believe that they would be one of the groups that would not be included in the exemption.

According to the Times, “Frank Murphy, spokesman for the Diocese of St. Petersburg, said church operations such as Catholic Charities serve people of all faiths. And not all employees are Catholic, including many teachers at diocesan schools.”

The Times reports:

“For the first time in my adult life, I foresee the possibility of some form of civil disobedience, and I am extremely uncomfortable at even the hint of such a thing,” Lynch said during Wednesday’s annual Red Mass at Tampa’s Sacred Heart Church, attended by two dozen judges and about 300 lawyers.

…

On his blog (blogs.dosp.org/bishoplynch) Lynch noted that diocese employees have a “generous” health care plan, one that does not cover contraceptives, the “morning-after” pill, or drugs like Viagra.

He also expressed fear that because the diocese is self-insured, that might disqualify it from the religious exemption. But a federal health official said Thursday that isn’t the case.

In his homily, which appears in full at his blog site, Lynch told the jurists of conflicts between church teachings and the laws of the land. “I have such a fear at this moment in time,” he said.

“As employers, we would be forced to provide in health care plans services and procedures which clearly are contrary to our beliefs and teachings,” he said.

“If they fail to shift in their present positions,” he said of federal officials, “then 2,300 employees of the Diocese of St. Petersburg will lose their health care coverage which they have come to treasure and rely upon.”

For many women, steep co-payments levied by their health insurers have deterred them from purchasing family planning services such as birth control pills in the past, a problem exacerbated by the country’s economic troubles.

A recent Kaiser Health Tracking Poll conducted by Public Opinion and Survey Research Program showed that two-thirds of Americans agree with the federal government’s recent decision to include birth control in its list of preventive services.

Furthermore, according to research conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, about “98 percent of sexually active Catholic women have used contraceptive methods banned by the church.”

Recently, the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General discovered that Medicare Part D paid for erectile dysfunction drugs for seniors in 2007 and 2008, costing the government $3.1 million, out of approximately $133 billion for those years, according to the OIG.

Funding these types of “unnecessary” erectile dysfunction medications, such as Cialis, Viagra, Levitra and others goes against Medicare policy, and the Office of Inspector General blamed the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for the error, which in turn blamed software.

From the report (PDF):

“According to CMS officials, the software edit in place in CMS’s Medicare Drug Data Processing System during our audit period enabled CMS to identify and reject PDE data that sponsors submitted for ED drugs prescribed for the treatment of sexual or erectile dysfunction. However, according to the officials, the edit did not prevent CMS from accepting PDE data for some ED drugs in CY 2007 and most of CY 2008 because the Part D program used an incomplete list of excluded drugs as the basis for the edit.”

In response to the reports recommendations, the CMS has said it will try to get money back from insurers and prevent the problem from occurring in the past — though it has refused to work with the Food and Drug Administration to develop a list of drugs that do not be paid for by Medicare.

The best amendment so far is a proposal from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) “prohibiting coverage of Viagra for child molesters and rapists.”

Why just Viagra, and not everything in the erectile-dysfunction family? Because he knows it won’t pass, and because Viagra would create a much better jingle than Sildenafil. You can already see the ads on the campaign trail: “Democrats voted to sustain the steady flow of Viagra to child molesters — with taxpayer dollars!”

More amendments after the jump:

• David Vitter (La.): To repeal the government takeover of health care. (#3553)
• Vitter: Prohibiting use of funds to fund the Associate of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). (#3554)
• Coburn: To require that each new bureaucrat added to any department or agency of the Federal Government for the purpose of implementing the provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act be offset by a reduction of 1 existing bureaucrat at such department or agency.  (#3557)
• Coburn: To help the President keep his promise that Americans who like the health care coverage they have now can keep it. (#3559)
• Coburn: To require all Members of Congress to read a bill prior to casting a vote on the bill. (#3566)
• Robert Bennett (Utah): To protect the democratic process and the right of the people of the District of Columbia to define marriage. (#3568)

For some U.S. operatives in Afghanistan, Western drugs such as Viagra were just part of a long list of enticements available for use in special cases. Two veteran officers familiar with such practices said Viagra was offered rarely, and only to older tribal officials for whom the drug would hold special appeal. While such sexual performance drugs are generally unavailable in the remote areas where the agency’s teams operated, they have been sold in some Kabul street markets since at least 2003 and were known by reputation elsewhere.

“You didn’t hand it out to younger guys, but it could be a silver bullet to make connections to the older ones,” said one retired operative familiar with the drug’s use in Afghanistan. Afghan tribal leaders often had four wives — the maximum number allowed by the Koran — and aging village patriarchs were easily sold on the utility of a pill that could “put them back in an authoritative position,” the official said.

You also don’t have to worry about the dangers of Cialis illicitly making its way to the Taliban, unlike, say, M16s or shoulder-fired missiles. This is a really good idea, isn’t it? Directly responsive to immediate and, uh, deeply felt needs of an important and unpersuaded-but-persuadable population. If you’re an impotent tribal elder, are you going to threaten your E.D.-drug supply? And people say CIA is hidebound and uncreative.