Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: Richard Mourdock supports firms' right to deny cancer coverage

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' IN-Sen: Oh boy. Mega-problem time for Republican Senate nominee Richard Mourdock:

Of particular interest to the candidate is a mandate that requires an employer to pay for certain services they may be morally opposed to'such as birth control'which Mourdock said he opposes.

But is that fair to the consumer, who may want their birth control covered?

Mourdock's example was an employer who decided to cover everything but cancer.

"Does that employer have the right to do it? I would say yes they do if they want to keep their health care costs down but it also means it's less likely you're going to want to work here. If that employer wants to get the best employees coming in the door he's going to offer the best insurance possible."

Yep, you read that right. Mourdock thinks employers should be able to deny healthcare coverage for cancer treatment. And his campaign obviously doesn't know how to deal with this serious screwup. At first, they refused to respond altogether. Then Mourdock decided to dig in deeper'way deeper. Careful, though, and watch what he's trying to do:

"Simply put, Richard was making the point that a company that discontinued insurance coverage of life-threatening ailments would immediately become an unattractive place to work," Conner told TPM. "In no way, shape or form does Richard support companies discontinuing such insurance coverage, and any attempt to say otherwise is a complete falsehood."

The question isn't whether Mourdock would support a company which denied its employees from receiving insurance coverage for cancer treatment. The issue is whether he supports their right to do so'and he most certainly still does. He's also damn right that any company which did so would "become an unattractive place to work"'but guess what? Countless Americans hold down jobs at awful companies because they have no other choice. So while Mourdock fantasizes, Mitt Romney-style, that such awful companies would quickly drive their employees elsewhere, reality dictates that if employers start treating their workers like shit, workers pretty much just have to take it.