Green Party leaders and candidates strongly condemned the Supreme Court's Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores ruling, and said that the decision should motivate more people to demand single-payer national health care and abolition of corporate "personhood."

"The Supreme Court's ruling lays bare the need to separate health insurance from employment status and exposes the absurdity of affording corporations the same constitutional rights as natural persons," said Isa Infante, Green candidate for Governor of Tennessee (http://www.isainfante.org).

"The ruling grants business corporations the 'religious freedom' to impose the beliefs of owners on the lives of employees and tamper with their medical care on the basis of the owners' beliefs. We hope that the anger provoked by the ruling leads people to join the Green Party's call for Medicare For All and a constitutional amendment affirming that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights," said Ms. Infante.

The Green Party of the United States supports making replacing the current for-profit health insurance system (maintained under the Affordable Care Act) and employer-based coverage with a single-payer program that establishes quality health care as a basic human right.

Greens called single-payer more urgently needed in the wake of the ACA's failure to contain medical costs, projected to rise 6.8% in 2015 ("well in excess of the rate of inflation"; see http://pnhp.org/blog/2014/06/25/disturbing-pwc-report-on-employer-medical-cost-trends), and a Commonwealth Fund report published June 16 on the high cost and low quality of U.S. health care (http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/us-healthcare-most-expensive-and-worst-performing/372828/).

The Green Party also supports passage of an amendment rescinding the legal status of corporations as persons that possess the same rights and protections of the U.S. Constitutions that humans enjoy (http://movetoamend.org).

Greens agreed with the widespread criticisms of the 5-4 Hobby Lobby ruling handed down on Monday, including Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's sharply worded dissenting opinion. The ruling denies women who don't share their employers' religious beliefs access to coverage under their health plan for contraception, interfering with the right of women to make medical decisions for themselves in consultation with their physicians and placing a financial hardship on many women.

The ruling also applies the First Amendment's guarantee of religious freedom to for-profit corporations that exist for nonreligious purposes and that employ and sell its wares to people regardless of their beliefs.

Read the complete release here: http://www.gp.org/press/pr-national.php?ID=716