Religious objections can release an individual or a whole community from traditional and legal obligations, which includes anything from the Pledge of Allegiance to military service.   In the area of medical care, parents can and have opted out of having their child immunizations. 

The wisdom of such actions can be debated, but when it comes to Obamacare, it's down right unfair:

"A professor and lawyer at Yeshiva University in New York complained last summer that exempting groups for religious reasons could run afoul of the Constitution. Marci A. Hamilton, who teaches at the University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, wrote at Findlaw.com in August, "If the government can tolerate a religious exemption, then it must do so evenhandedly among religious believers with the same beliefs. This is sheer favoritism for a certain class of religions, or even for one religion.""

The Amish population has been growing in the north country, as well as in New York generally. The state ranks sixth nationally in Amish population and posted the biggest net increase in Amish households - 307 - from 2002 to 2007, according to the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania.

Lawmakers reportedly included the provision at the urging of Amish constituents, although the legislation does not specify that community and the provision could apply to other groups as well, including Old Order Mennonites and perhaps Christian Scientists.