<p>I have no personal objection. It just can’t work unless you force everyone to buy insurance. Given the choice, many people will gamble with their health and buy the new IPad instead. If lots and lots and lots of young, healthy people don’t buy health insurance, the insurance could never be affordable, without significant government intrusion. Either you allow people to wait until they get sick and buy insurance, making it almost impossible for the insurance companies to make a profit or you say “tough luck” to those who wait and they get no insurance. Again, we’re back to where we were before the ACA was passed.</p>
True, but they weren’t asked when the mandate was decided.</p>
<p>If an employer wants to provide no co-pay BCP, that’s up to them. I worked for firms that provided coverage to domestic partners long before it was required, which I always thought was wonderful. But requiring specific employers to provide no co-pay coverage of specific drugs is governmental micromanaging to an extent that really bothers me.</p>
<p>zoos, I too wish insurance wasn’t tied to employment. I think we’d be better off moving from tax-deductible employer-provided insurance to a Swiss-style system where everyone bought insurance individually and people who couldn’t afford it got premium support. But I don’t see a way to get there, politically.</p>
<p>Not sure how you can make that claim without data support. Maternity costs are really not that expensive in general. Yes, a preemie is hugely expensive, but actuarially, in an outlier; a standard birth is a standard birth with standard, and very predictable costs. The ‘unwanted/unplanned’ child is typically healthy with a few vaccinations – which require a copay? – and not a user of insurance for many years. Again, actuarially. (Healthier kids is the main reason that US life expectancy continues to climb.)</p>
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<p>So, your argument 07dad is that the government mandate IS for population control, correct? Is that the argument that HHS and supporters of the mandate are making?</p>
<p>It would surprise me to find out that the White House announced the compromise without running it by insurance companies first. The last thing they’d want is to announce the plan and then have insurance companies come out against it.</p>
<p>Not speaking for 07Dad, but as to me, I absolutely do want to “control” the population of babies their mother didn’t want, in the sense that I want to make it as easy as possible for the mothers not to have them. I don’t know if that would result in a lower population overall. Maybe preventing a young woman from having a child she doesn’t want will result in her having two wanted children later. Maybe not. </p>
<p>But I absolutely do have the goal of reducing unwanted pregnancies. Are you asserting that it’s good and desirable that women have unwanted children in order to keep the birth rate up?</p>
<p>It doesn’t seem to me that the administration dotted their Is and crossed their Ts with regard to the mandate or the “compromise” but as you might imagine, I’m not inclined to give the administration the benefit of the doubt on this!</p>
This is what I like about you. Clear, concise and honest. No straw men, no muddying the waters.</p>
<p>And I agree with you on this too. Every baby should be, if not eagerly wanted (I had a pregnancy in my 30s that wasn’t exactly what I anticipated), then accepted with love and appropriate preparation.</p>
<p>I agree with this; but the question presented is whether it is the government’s role or right to force all Americans (including objecting Catholics) to spend their money to provide birth control pills to everyone for free.</p>
<p>“But I don’t see a way to get there, politically.”</p>
<p>Funny, I sense both “sides” here wanting the separation. :eek: Maybe everyone thinks it won’t happen because everyone thinks it won’t happen, yet most want it to happen.</p>
<p>zoos, thanks for being so clear and honest yourself.</p>
<p>It occurs to me that we may be arguing about something very tiny indeed. Is your objection here the no co-pay clause? That is, would you be perfectly fine with requiring health care plans to cover contraception, with whatever co-pay the insurance company requires for other routine care and drugs like diabetes check-ups and insulin?</p>
Yep. That’s exactly it. I think plans SHOULD cover contraception. Just not in a manner that is more favored than any other drug. Small point, true, but it just seems like governmental overreach to me. It also seems like a bit of pandering and a bit of showing the Catholics (I am not Catholic) who’s boss.</p>
<p>And even further than that, if a particular employer CHOSE to offer contraception without a co-payment, that would be peachy keen with me.</p>
<p>But Catholics who object would object just as much if the insurance companies were required to provide contraception, but with the usual co-pay. I’m sure that claremarie would be no happier if the White House had announced that all insurance policies have to cover contraception in just the way they cover insulin. Claremarie’s position, as I understand it, is that Susie the nurse and Maria the kitchen worker at St. Mary’s Hospital should have to pay full price, no insurance coverage, for both the gyn’s appointment to get the script for birth control and the drug or device itself.</p>
<p>By the way, claremarie, I apologize for repeatedly misspelling your name upthread. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.</p>
<p>“But I absolutely do have the goal of reducing unwanted pregnancies.”</p>
<p>Unwanted or unintended? Remember, half of all pregnancies are “unintended.” </p>
<p>Ironically, the ultimate backer of this mandate was conceived by an unmarried teenager who hastily married the father, and then turned to her parents to help raise the child when her husband abandoned them. And the late Steve Jobs was also the product of an unintended and extremely inconvenient pregnancy.</p>
<p>Population control is different from wanting to reduce unwanted pregnancies. The only reason I support the mandate is on the chance that it will reduce unwanted pregnancies and reduce abortions. If population control were the issue, I’d want to control how many kids people have. While I do think the Duggars are pathological, I’m not ready to force them to quit having babies.</p>
<p>As to what the HHS and administration has as its reasons, I don’t know or care. </p>
<p>I originally brought up the Swizerland model because I have thought it was workable. The government negotiates to get the best deal for the citizens, the insurance companies are not allowed to make any profit on the basic required coverage and get their profit from the supplemental coverage that the individual can elect and must pay for himself.</p>