<p>CFang,
I am very much in favor of contraception. I am very much against the government mandating what type of medical care private business must cover. I’d rather live in a world where all I have to do is avoid the Catholic church in order to find contraception, than live in a world where the government gets to decide how I spend my money.</p>
<p>“An 18 or 19 year old girl is an adult who can get her own job with insurance coverage if she is not happy with her parents’ coverage.”</p>
<p>Do most minimum wage jobs include a health insurance benefit?</p>
<p>^Some do. My D worked a summer job with a clothing retailer that offered medical coverage after 3 months of employment.</p>
<p>Thanks, Bay. So then I assume you are equally opposed to the ACA requiring insurance to cover, with no co-pay, mammograms for women of mammogram age and free vaccinations for babies and children?</p>
<p>I don’t want to dismiss your beliefs, but I note you’re making a completely different argument than clairmarie. You think the government shouldn’t be requiring businesses to provide certain health care, however justified you think that health care might be, whereas clairmarie thinks companies should be able to avoid certain laws to which they have moral objections.</p>
<p>CF,
Yes, you understand my position.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>She was lucky, and that’s a good thing. Of course, there’s nothing to prevent that employer, or any employer, from reducing or eliminating medical benefits any time it wants to. Where would that leave its employees?</p>
<p>Do we really want a country where our medical coverage depends on luck?</p>
<p>OK, then, zoosermom and Bay. I think the contraception issue in particular is a bad one to advance your arguments as I understand them. </p>
<p>Ignore the ACA for now. Just consider insurance. We know, from the Hawaii results, that requiring insurance companies to cover contraception doesn’t impose a net cost on them. True, responsible, thoughtful women would use contraception even if they had to pay for it. But, unfortunately for you as a policy-holder, irresponsible unthoughtful women also have insurance and have sex. And because of their irresponsiblity and unthoughtfulness, they don’t use contraception sometimes, and then they get pregnant when they don’t want to. </p>
<p>Now, as I understand it, clairmarie wants those women not to have sex at all, but if they do have sex, she wants them to get pregnant. But I don’t agree with that, and I don’t think you do either. I want it to be as easy as possible for women who don’t want to get pregnant not to get pregnant. If those irresponsible women are more likely to use contraception if they don’t have a co-pay, then I don’t want them to have a co-pay. It saves me, another policy-holder, money, and moreover, it prevents unwanted pregnancy. Win-win.</p>
<p>I think at least one and maybe both of you have said, “But if it’s such a good idea, why don’t insurance companies do it without government compelling them to?” Maybe because if they did, people like clairmarie would make a big squawk about it! But if the government requires it, then the insurance companies are off the hook. Notice that insurance companies don’t seem too upset about this new regulation.</p>
<p>Won’t insurance companies just pass the cost back to employers via premiums? Is that why they are not upset?</p>
<p>Do you really think a $5 co-pay is the main holdback to irresponsible women not taking contraception as required for it to be effective? I don’t.</p>
<p>I guess I missed the Hawaii results. Was contraception free there? If so, did that then result in lower birth rates and lower abortion rates?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>They would look for another job that offered better benefits. One of my D’s co-workers was a single mother who told my D the only reason she worked there was because of the medical insurance. I suppose she could have not worked at all instead, and her child would then qualify for government benefits, right?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Then of course they will offer it as part of a competitive and logical marketing plan.</p>
<p>sryrstress–did not find anything on Hawaii but:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Sorry that the charts will not copy.</p>
<p>Seems public provided access to reliable birth control lowers the birth rate and the abortion rate.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That is one interpretation. Another is that free-market forces and high-quality health care lowered the birth rate and abortion rate.</p>
<p>Cardinalfang, one of the things I’m saying is that there are finite resources (i.e., money) and birth control for employed families shouldn’t disproportionately utilize those resources. I think people with employer sponsored insurance should have the same co-pay for birth control pills as any other prescription drug. Simultaneously, I think birth control pills should be over the counter, and I also think that condoms are better options for individuals and for society.</p>
<p>I don’t think that birth control pills should have favored status. I see and respect most of you who hold other opinions. But mine is that there is so much other need that a good case can be made that many other drugs are more important than BCP and providing them “free” takes money from something else. If one is sexually active and there is employer sponsored insurance, then sacrifice something else to make that co-pay. I believe that the mandate isn’t about money or health, it’s an act of pure pandering.</p>
<p>What??? The more healthy and capitalist you are, the less fertile you are?</p>
<p>What??? The more money the government spends on you, the less fertile you are?</p>
<p>zoos, I share your concern about allocating scarce resources. But I’m convinced that in this particular case, we’re not allocating any scarce resources to contraception because <em>it doesn’t cost the insurance companies any more than not offering it.</em> And that’s why the insurance companies didn’t let out a peep when presented with this compromise.</p>
<p>Bay offers the well-reasoned rejoinder that if offering contraception costs no more than not offering it, why don’t insurance companies already do it? Just because in fact it’s cheaper doesn’t mean that buyers (i.e. businesses purchasing health insurance for their employees) knew it was cheaper. </p>
<p>Suppose you’re a Silicon Valley high-tech company, or some other company trying to attract the best employees. You offer great benefits to your employees: good food, health clubs inside the building, and good insurance. So your human resources company goes to negotiate with XYZ Insurance. “We’ll want free contraception.” </p>
<p>“No problem,” says XYZ cannily. “That will cost you a slight increase.” If XYZ and other companies don’t publicize that it doesn’t cost them anything, they can charge for it.</p>
<p>Cardinalfang, something costs more than nothing, you know? Also, I think it’s important for people to take responsibility because part of the problem with our economy is that so many actually believe they can get a free lunch.
But you know what? Reasonable people can disagree reasonably and I really appreciate that you converse, question, and, yes, disagree so reasonably. It’s great that you don’t bash, attack or ridicule.</p>
<p>I’d like to get employers OUT of health care. Give us the money they’re paying now, and let us contract directly with the insurance companies, with all of us in one gigantic pool. We can choose from the various carriers and offerings, free market. Much simpler, eliminates this problem.</p>
<p>vonlost,
In places I worked, it was always an option to opt out of an employer-sponored health plan, and you could and still can obtain coverage on your own. The benefits are better due to scale if you go with the employer group plan, however.</p>
<p>It would require a wholesale change to the system to make that kind of change work at a similar cost. We’d have to all want it. Why don’t we? I said one gigantic pool, as the group.</p>
<p>Bay, you’re right that the benefits are better (and premiums lower) with an employer plan because that’s a group plan. If you leave the employer plan, you become a risk pool of one. The whole point of insurance is pooled risk, and the bigger the pool, the better for everyone. Except, of course, the private insurance companies who seem to be in control of the entire health care system.</p>