It may be planning to gut one of the ACA’s most popular provisions, in order to cater to the retrograde beliefs of a corner of the Republican base. If any Republicans are wondering why the American public doesn’t trust them on health-care issues, this wouldn’t be a bad place to start.

So what are they about to do? While the administration’s preference would obviously be to get rid of the birth control requirement entirely, it would have to pass a new law in order to do that. So the administration is getting as close as it can by creating a giant hole in the requirement and inviting employers to walk through it. While up until now the argument always centered on employers (particularly religious organizations and some “closely held” private companies) who claimed that their religious beliefs demanded that they not permit their employees to have access to birth control through those employees’ health plans, the Trump administration now wants to allow any employer to be exempt, if that’s what the boss wants.

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So in the language of the proposed regulation, the phrase “religious beliefs or moral convictions” is repeated multiple times. A “moral conviction” can be anything, up to and including “You’re all dirty sluts.” As the draft says, “The rules cover any kind of employer.”

Before we go any farther we have to make one thing clear: When your employer-provided health insurance plan includes certain benefits, that isn’t a favor your boss is doing for you out of the kindness of his heart. Those benefits are part of your pay just as much as your salary. It’s what you get in exchange for the work you do.

And while some small number of people with enormous influence in the Republican Party have decided that birth control is really no different from abortion and they’re both evil, most Americans don’t agree. Not only that, this particular insurance requirement is extremely popular. In a March poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation, for instance, 54 percent said that it was very important that the requirement remain in place, and another 24 percent said it was somewhat important, meaning fewer than one in four Americans are on board with the administration’s position. Tens of millions of women are benefiting from the requirement right now; according to one study, it enabled women to save $1.4 billion in birth control costs in 2013 alone.

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Now, a bit of context. The birth control benefit requirement never applied to houses of worship, but after other kinds of religious organizations objected to it, the Obama administration offered an accommodation. It said that the organizations wouldn’t have to provide the coverage; instead, they could just write the government a letter stating that they were opting out, and the government would make other arrangements with insurers to make sure women got the coverage they needed. But some groups, most notably the Little Sisters of the Poor, claimed that just signing a letter was an unbearable burden on their religious freedom. After all, it made them complicit in a system in which a woman might have sex and not be punished for her sin with a pregnancy.

Meanwhile, in the Hobby Lobby case, the Supreme Court said that closely held private companies could also opt out of the law’s requirements. Like a religious organization, they could inform the government of their objection, and then the government would take steps to provide their employees with coverage. In the case of explicitly religious organizations, the court ordered the government to refine the system it was putting in place to accommodate their objections, but that work remained unfinished when the Obama administration left office.

Now the Trump administration proposes to trash that accommodation entirely. Any employer can opt out, and their employees wouldn’t get the coverage at all, from the government or a third party. The only thing that would be required of the employer is to inform the employees that they won’t be getting any coverage for birth control.

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So now it’s up to your boss.

And this, I think, is what Republicans don’t get about how people think about their health care. They talk a lot about how dictates from Washington are bad, but people are perfectly content with dictates from Washington when what’s being dictated is that people ought to be treated well. The ACA provision outlawing denials of coverage for preexisting conditions is a Washington dictate, and everyone loves it; the effort to repeal the ACA is being tied in knots because the public is so adamant that they want to hold on to it. The question most people ask themselves isn’t “How much is Washington in control?” but rather, “Am I getting treated fairly?” And when Washington makes sure they get treated fairly, they’re quite happy about it.