Should business owners be forced to pay for contraceptives or pay a fine if they don’t in the new ever-changing Affordable Care Act? Wrong question.

The case before the Supreme Court “will determine whether Hobby Lobby, a Christian-owned craft store chain, and Conestoga Wood Specialties, a cabinet company, can be exempted from providing contraception coverage to female employees through federally mandated health insurance policies.”

Actually, religion shouldn’t have anything to do with this case. All business owners should be free to run their businesses the way they want.

Here’s the right question: Should the government force any business to pay for anything other than what was contracted when it hired an employee?

When I advertise for a job opening, I lay out what I’ll pay for a certain amount of work. The people who apply for the job decide if they want to work for me based on what I’m paying. Take it or leave it.

If I don’t want to pay health insurance, that’s my business. If a job applicant doesn’t like it, he or she can go elsewhere.

So now we have to go begging to nine unelected judges — four of whom are radical leftists who have never owned a business and have been on the dole all their lives — to tell us what we can and can’t do with our businesses. “You will pay for this or you will pay a hefty fine. And if you don’t pay the fine and comply with our decision, we will shut down your company or put you in jail.”

Justice Sotomayor asked the lawyers representing Hobby Lobby that if corporations can object on religious grounds to providing contraception coverage, could they also object to vaccinations or blood transfusions.

Wrong question. No one is stopping anyone from getting contraceptives, vaccinations, or blood transfusions.

No matter what treatment a person wants to get, a business owner should not be forced to pay for it – any of it! Businesses aren’t forced to pay for people’s food, clothing, housing, schooling, transportation or anything else. Food, clothing, and shelter are certainly more necessary on a daily basis than healthcare.

Some people might say that it’s not fair. A business owner might say that it’s not fair to force me to pay for something I don’t want to pay for. Maybe there’s a business down the street that will pay for what you want out of a job. Go there. No one is stopping you.

Start your own business and pay and cover yourself any way you like.

If people paid for their health insurance directly, the price of insurance and the cost of medical care would drop like everything else does when the government isn’t involved. To get the best employees, companies pay more and often add health insurance as an incentive to employment. That’s their business. The costs, of course, are passed on to consumers in goods and services.

Companies that don’t treat their employees well get crappy employees, their businesses suffer, and the better employees find employment elsewhere. If a company wants to keep good employees, the owner will have to pay more or his business will suffer.

The company where one of my sons works adds all types of perks to his employment package. They have the freedom to do that or not. It’s their business.

Justice Kagan commented that “women are ‘quite tangibly harmed’ when employers don’t provide contraceptive coverage.” Given this outrageous argument, a case could be made that a person is harmed if they are not provided with a home with central heating and air conditioning, private school education, an automobile, bus fare, organic food, grass fed beef. You name, and some busy-body bureaucrat will argue that people are harmed if they don’t have it.

Now every American has to make a case for economic freedom by appearing before an oligarchy of nine black-robed autonomous gods.