Taylor Alison Swift is an American singer-songwriter. She is known for narrative songs about her personal life, which have received widespread media coverage. At age 14, Swift became the youngest artist signed by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house and, at 15, she signed her first record deal.
Her 2006 eponymous debut album was the longest-charting album of the 2000s in the US. Its third single, "Our Song", made her the youngest person to single-handedly write and perform a number-one song on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. Swift's second album, Fearless, was released in 2008.
Buoyed by the pop crossover success of the singles "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me", it became the US' best-selling album of 2009 and was certified diamond in the US. The album won four Grammy Awards, and Swift became the youngest Album of the Year winner.
OSF HealthCare, a Catholic hospital system out of Illinois, has restricted the employee health plan benefits it offers to LGBTQ employees.The health care system changed its policy by narrowing the insurance plan’s definition of “infertility” from any person unable to get pregnant to “the inability for a married couple of opposite sex spouses to conceive.” According to Bloomberg News, OSF HealthCare has characterized the policy shift as attempting to “assist married opposite sex spouses” in conceiving a child.OSF HealthCare operates around 147 medical facilities in Illinois and Michigan, with over 24,000 employees.
By amending the definition of fertility, only straight people — more accurately, employees in opposite-sex relationships — will be able to have their fertility treatments covered by their employee health care plan.Given the Catholic Church’s stance on homosexuality and marriage, it is not surprising to see religious institutions or religiously-affiliated employers adopting policies that exclude LGBTQ individuals from benefits typically offered to married couples.Critics were quick to denounce OSF HealthCare’s new policy, arguing that an employer is not denying treatment to some of its workers due to “objections to the treatment they are seeking” — as it might in the case of an abortion or gender confirmation surgery — but merely due to their LGBTQ identity.Peter Romer-Friedman, an attorney who is representing a same-sex male couple who claims they were denied coverage for in vitro fertilization under New York City’s health insurance plan, told Bloomberg that he believes OSF HealthCare’s actions are a clear “violation” of federal workplace discrimination.
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