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One of the more controversial aspects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) health care reform legislation (commonly known as Obamacare) passed by the U.S. Congress in 2010 is its requirement mandating that all Americans obtain health insurance or pay a monthly fine. One rumor which has grown out of this aspect of the PPACA is the claim that some religious groups, particularly Muslims (but also including Scientologists, Amish, and Christian Scientists), are specifically exempted from health insurance requirements of the PPACA: The fact is that the PPACA legislation does not specifically exclude any particular religious groups from its provisions. The bill contains a general religious conscience section which sets forth guidelines under which religious groups who have established conscientious objections to certain forms of insurance may seek exemption from its health insurance requirements: For members of religious groups to qualify for this exemption, they would have to be adherents of a religion or sect described in section 1402(g)(1) of the Internal Revenue Code, which governs exemptions from the payment of Social Security and Medicare taxes on self-employment income. In general, persons seeking a health insurance exemption must belong to a religion (or sect thereof) which has been in existence since 1951 and has an established history of spurning participation in insurance programs: How these provisions might be applied is somewhat subjective. Groups such as the Anabaptists (i.e., Amish, Mennonites, Hutterites) would likely qualify for an exemption from the health insurance requirement, as they have an established history of declining Social Security benefits and making their own provisions for dependent members (as described in the Amish FAQ): Whether Muslims could qualify for an exemption from the health insurance requirements is more difficult to define, as Islam is a much larger religion with practices that vary according to sect and region. Although Islam does have a tradition of barring conventional insurance products because they involve an element of uncertainty, gambling and the charging of interest, which are prohibited by the Koran, some Muslim groups make exceptions for insurance which is required by law (such as automobile insurance), and some Muslim groups do not have objections to medical insurance. Most likely, though, Muslims would not qualify for an exemption from U.S. health insurance requirements because U.S. Muslims do not have a tradition of spurning Social Security (which is viewed more as a form of caring for those who are unable to meet their own needs than as something which involves elements of uncertainty, gambling, and interest payments), and no Muslim group has ever qualified for an exemption under the guidelines which define which religious groups would be exempt from the health care law. The PPACA does not specifically deny special exemptions to Christians and Jews, but it is unlikely that either of those groups would qualify for a blanket religious conscience exemption, as neither of those groups has a history of disdaining or prohibiting the use of insurance among their membership. The bottom line is that the health insurance mandate provision of PPACA includes no specific exemptions for Muslims, and although it kicked in back in 2014, no Muslims or Muslim groups have since been exempted, or sought to be exempted, from its requirements. Despite frequent mention of the term in Internet-circulated rumors, the word Dhimmitude does not appear anywhere in the PPACA, and it has no application to U.S. health care legislation. The term is a French neologism coined by adding the suffix -tude to dhimmi, an Arabic word which which literally means protected and has historically been used to refer to a person living in a region overrun by Muslim conquest who was accorded a protected status and allowed to retain his original faith in exchange for payment of taxes.
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