Leaving aside the blatant assault on religious liberty that the Obama administration’s contraceptive mandate represents (a number of commentators have ably elucidated the assault on free exercise), the edict ought to offend all sensible Americans for its sheer economic and moral fatuousness.
In this case, “moral” refers to moral hazard — i.e., unintentionally encouraging bad behavior. But first, consider the economic argument the administration has advanced for forcing insurance companies to offer contraceptives and abortifacients free to all women.
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Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius explained that forcing insurance companies to supply a product for free would actually save the companies money:
This is a no-cost benefit, that the National Business Council on Health, that our actuaries, a variety of people in group plans say having contraception as part of a group insurance plan actually lowers the overall cost, doesn’t increase it, because, on balance, preventive services around family planning, avoiding what may be unhealthy pregnancies, avoiding the health consequences of that actually is a cost reducer.
Perhaps Sebelius should become a business consultant. Obviously the insurance industry was missing a chance to save itself money! But wait, maybe most of the women who will use birth control are already using it and paying for it either out of pocket (a month’s worth of condoms is about $15, and generic pills can be had for $9 a month) or through a co-pay. Assuming that this group consists of the vast majority of potential contraceptive users, the insurance company will certainly lose money by providing for free what had previously been paid for.
As for those women who don’t now use birth control but will if contraceptives are provided for free, we can guess that the potential “savings” in the form of avoided pregnancies will be very small. Some percentage of these women will have unintended pregnancies anyway, because the reason they didn’t use contraceptives was not that they couldn’t afford them, but that they were irresponsible. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, only 12 percent of women cited cost or availability as the reason for not using contraception. And even that figure is suspect. Considering 1) the price of condoms; 2) that Americans spend $110 billion on fast food every year; and 3) that no one who winds up unintentionally pregnant wants to admit that she was careless or stupid, the 12 percent figure deserves skepticism.
In any case, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association, 53 percent of unintended pregnancies are among women who do use birth control and report “contraceptive failure” (which often means failure to use them properly). So Sebelius’s fond prediction of insurance companies saving money on all those avoided pregnancies is unsound.
Additionally, when anything is free, demand for it will increase. So insurance companies will be shelling out more money for products that people may use — or simply stock in their medicine cabinet. To cover their added expenses, insurance companies will have to raise premiums — until the secretary of HHS decrees that they may not, in which case they will become unprofitable and go belly up. Presumably the HHS secretary will then forbid that as well — becoming King Canute.
The anguished cries of leading Democrats notwithstanding (Barbara Boxer declared that Republicans are trying to “take away women’s rights . . . their medicine”), pregnancy is not a disease. There are lots of real diseases, though, for which medicine probably does save money on net: anti-seizure drugs come to mind, insulin, blood-pressure-reducing medicines, and blood thinners. Come to think of it, why would a doctor prescribe any drug if not to ward off a serious illness or condition? When drugs reduce the incidence of serious diseases, it’s good for everyone, not least the patient himself. By the logic of the Obama administration, all drugs that reduce illnesses should be provided “free” by insurance companies. Before you knew it, insurance companies would be making so much money by providing free drugs that they’d be able to provide all other services for free as well. Poof! The solution to our health-care crisis.
This is the governing philosophy of the Democratic party: top-down mandates, “cramdowns” of renegotiated mortgages, creating an infinite cornucopia of newly discovered “rights” such as the right to birth control, forcing individuals to purchase private products, and forcing private companies to supply products free of charge. This is the world that Democrats build. It’s misconceived, uneconomic, unconstitutional, and doomed to failure.
It isn’t just Obamacare that must be repealed, it’s Obamaism.
Why can't I buy catastrophic insurance for under $50 per month?
I want insurance if my appendix bursts ... a catastrophic event. What's driving up the cost are all these primary care and foreseen items forced into the policy by the feds.
Good point. Many Americans don't realize that once upon a time health insurance policies were intended to limit the financial risk of getting sick by paying a portion of the cost of surgery, hospitalization and other costly healthcare services. Other medical costs, i.e., doctor visits, medication, etc., were the out-of-pocket responsibility of the patient. If the patient's healthcare costs reached an amount specified in the IRS Tax Code, a tax deduction option was available. What's so bad about that approach? It reduces the cost of health insurance, keeps healthcare costs reasonable because people - not wealthy corporations - are paying them, promotes healthy living and provides an additional financial safety net via the tax deduction option. Supporters of "free healthcare services" claim we'll go to the doctor more often if it's free, thereby preventing or mitigating the cost of serious illness. They fail to ignore the human element, i.e., we don't value that which is free, so if we don't have to pay for getting sick, we won't be motivated not to get sick.
"people say having contraception as part of a group insurance plan actually lowers the overall cost"
Of course, if they're going to take that approach, they should be sure to include the cost of fertility treatment for those women who use birth control during their years of peak fertility and then decide to have a baby at age 39.
(Obviously I don't mean that everyone who does this will need fertility treatment, but the odds are higher. A certain number of women who find they need treatment to have a baby at 39 might have been able to conceive naturally at 29 -- or might have needed fewer cycles of IVF at 29 than at 39.)
From behind the sarcasm, this argument emerges in this piece: Catholic hospitals and charities should be permitted to deny women access to birth control. Shall we take a vote, gals?
The Catholic Church has every right to fight this ruling. If you are a woman who wants to practice birth control, don't be employed by the Catholic Church. Pretty easy isn't it.
I am a Catholic woman who has used birth control in the past for medical reasons, not birth control. I work for an employer who provides said birth control free of cost. If I worked for the Catholic Church I would know that I would have to pay that cost out of pocket because it wouldn't be on my insurance plan.
See how that works?
You seem to think this whole argument is about birth control. It is not. It is about the federal government getting into the business of the Church. Liberals are always the first to say "seperation of Church and State" except when it limits what you want to do. Then it is "all bets are off" Funny how that works.
Liberals seem to confuse "refusing to pay for" with "denying a right". I have a right to free speech. That doesn't mean the government (i.e. my fellow citizens. The government doesn't have ANY money until it takes it from a citizen) needs to buy me a radio station...
"Not giving out for 'free'" is not the same as "not allowing you to obtain."
Are these employees so poor that they cannot pay $9/month for a generic pill? Really? And do the insurance covered doctor's visits give them access to an Rx for the pill?
But I guess the government is "denying me access" to $1,000,000 because it isn't giving it to me, right? Or forcing my employer to give it to me?
The problem with the left is that all that they have is deceipt and delusional thinking.
No, Spenser. Denying access to birth control is DENYING ACCESS. No one--not the Catholic Church, not anyone--is denying women access to birth control.
They just have to pay for it. Not a tough distinction to see.
And when was the last time the GOP attempted to repeal OBoehnerCare?
As far as replacing Obama, the GOP just wants the power that this administration has collected for the Executive Branch, not to undo the methods it has emplaced.
Why can't Romney win over the base?
Because Tea Partiers CAN tell the difference between **** and Shinola!
As Carlosincal mentioned, it is inevitable that costs of prevention are paid with unavailability of coverage for treatment of disease and injury. My dental coverage works exactly that way. I had a severe life threatening emergency abcess for which they would not even pay for the oral exam to look at the abcess because I had already had the preventive oral exams. Anesthesia (besides incredible pain, I could not open my mouth due to a lockjaw like condition and my throat was closed from the swelling) - also not covered. Two of three incisions to drain the abcess that extended from my jaw across the floor of my mouth and to my throat - not covered. X-Ray - not covered because I had "preventive" X-Rays a month earlier. Remove foreign body - not covered. Tooth extraction - covered. Rembursement of $250 on contracted fee amount of $1500.
Just saying that they are lying about this preventive care argument and that they know they are lying.
The notion that preventative coverage reduces costs has been the main "private sector" justification for more public sector spending on health care. The accounting is bogus, but it doesn't look that way at first blush, e.g., a simple screening test to check for some common kind of cancer is cheap, and when it finds cancer, it pays for itself by making the subsequent cancer treatment cheaper and more successful because it was found early.
The problem with the accounting is that it doesn't account for everything. I once worked with a guy who would point out a flaw in the design of a software application, saying that it would be way more expensive to fix later on when it would require being fixed, and then say "I told you so" when it happened. With 20/20 hindsight, his predictions seem to be accurate. But for every one where he got to say "I told you so", there were a dozen others that never came up. It would have been way more expensive to follow his advice 100% of the time that it was to just wait and see which items become problematic.
Similarly, preventative healthcare tries to prevent everything, but in most cases (a single case being an individual receiving some kind of test or other screening) prevents nothing. There is no good way to determine which preventative practices will actually prevent anything for a particular individual, so we try to fund all such practices for all individuals, thus making the cost of "prevention" outweigh any savings achieved. Even when prevention is successful, it at most delays the inevitable: we all eventually die, and unless it is a swift death, it can be quite expensive.
This isn't to suggest that there isn't a happy medium with preventative care, or that it's not a nice thing to have. Rather, it means that "cost savings" is a bogus motivation for funding it.
Insurance companies will have to pay for contraception…no worries, the cost will just be transferred to us customers and likely by decreasing payments to Doctors.
Think about that one, if Doctors salaries decrease to that of a school teacher, who is going to work like a dog to become a doctor? Ah but there is a good governmental fix… nationalize doctors, clinics and medical schools, then doctors will be government employees…not a bad deal at all…get paid 200K a year to shuffle papers and tell patients to go stand in someone else’s line.
"...they will become unprofitable and go belly up. Presumably the HHS secretary will then forbid that as well"
Actually, the intent all along has been to design a system that wouldn't work, then when everything collapsed, the government comes in and picks up the pieces with single-payer. And the IRS comes to check that you are eating your government-supplied broccoli and using your government-supplied contraceptive.
The Coach is probably right. The reason that the insurance companies aren't kicking is they know they will be thrown a bone later (or they are terrified of the Administration, probably both). The next thing to come is the cancellation of maternity insurance. Why should the insurance companies be responsible? After all, they are providing pregnancy control drugs for free. If you get pregnant, that's your fault!
P.S. I dislike the term birth control because most of those drugs are intended to avoid pregnancy, not birth. Birth control is abortion.
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