TITLE: Memorializing the United States Congress to enact comprehensive legislation to protect religious liberty and individual conscience rights of all participants involved in accessing or providing health care.

SUMMARY: Memorializing the United States Congress to enact comprehensive legislation to protect religious liberty and individual conscience rights of all participants involved in accessing or providing health care.

FULL TEXT:
WHEREAS, Religious liberty is a cornerstone on which our nation was founded, and the right of individual conscience has also long been held sacrosanct in this country; however, neither are adequately addressed in the provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010; and WHEREAS, The PPACA fails to make appropriate allowances for the religious, moral, or ethical beliefs held by patients, groups, employers, individual health care providers, health care facilities such as hospitals, insurance providers, or purchasers of health care insurance; and WHEREAS, Religiously affiliated hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, and other health facilities provide a substantial and indispensable portion of health care services and are governed by specific religious and moral codes central to their mission as health care providers; moreover, health insurers strive to provide flexible and diverse products to meet a wide variety of needs, and they must be able to tailor their products to the religious, moral, and ethical beliefs of their prospective customers; and WHEREAS, While tremendous structural change is taking place in the American health care system, it must not compromise the right of participants to follow their beliefs; now, therefore, be it RESOLVED, That the 82nd Legislature of the State of Texas hereby memorialize the Congress of the United States to enact comprehensive legislation to protect the religious liberty and individual conscience rights of all participants involved in accessing or providing of health care, favoring no set of beliefs over another and ensuring that all may participate in the health care system in a manner consistent with their beliefs and conscience; and, be it further RESOLVED, That the Texas secretary of state forward official copies of this resolution to the president of the United States, to the president of the Senate and the speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States Congress, and to all the members of the Texas delegation to Congress with the request that this resolution be entered in the Congressional Record as a memorial to the Congress of the United States of America.