<p>Cf, with government mandated bc coverage, co-pay or not, you have lost some individual liberties. If you are a 63 year old widow on a small fixed income, you have no choice but to pay a premium that includes the cost of bc. If you srr</p>
<p>…(sorry)…a devout catholic, will forever have to live with the idea that your premium helped pay for the ‘murder’ of the unborn. Even if I dont agree with that belief, I respect it.</p>
<p>It’s one thing to assert the need to reduced “unwanted pregnancies” in the abstract. It’s quite another when you consider the many actual human beings who might well have been “unwanted” when conceived. Such as nearly every adopted child, for one thing.</p>
<p>Not every “unwanted pregnancy” is necessarily a pathology to be dutifully prevented. And there are plenty of children born to what most would agree are unsuitable mothers who were neither unintended nor unwanted; at least, not initially. In some communities, having a bunch of kids out of wedlock (by different dads) is normative.</p>
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<p>I think that’s essentially what the “exchanges” will be. That’s for individual coverage, though, not group coverage. But it’s going to be a godsend for those of us with preexisting conditions. For years, my family has been hammered by Blue Cross, because they know they’ve got us trapped. It will be wonderful to make them compete for our business.</p>
<p>“you have lost some individual liberties”</p>
<p>We lose individual liberties with many kinds of benefit mandates. We have collectively chosen to require payments for schools, police, fire, national security, social security, etc. We don’t have the individual liberty to not pay for these benefits. Some want health care added to the mix (i.e., the healthy must contribute to cover future sickness), some don’t.</p>
<p>Here is an assessment of how Switzerland does it.</p>
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<p>Yes, we are subject to thousands of government mandates. All the more reason not to blythely acquiesce to more.</p>
<p>Those who vote are not blythely acquiescing to anything.</p>
<p>I agree, vonlost. If you want to live in any state, you give up individual liberties. There is no other way: no modern state or country functions with voluntary contributions.</p>
<p>We don’t have the freedom or individual liberty not to pay taxes. If I disagree with the country’s foreign policy (let’s say a taxpayer who opposed the war in Iraq) I still don’t have the individual liberty not to subsidize a war I disagree with.</p>
<p>Yes, but we can pick and choose which individual liberties we are willing to give up. We are talking about an optional medication - birth control - that is not required to save anyone’s life. I think the decision to mandate it is a little more tenuous than whether we should educate our populace or defend ourselves from an invasion.</p>
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<p>Yes, for me that is it. I am not convinced that we are fixing a problem that exists, or taking the best approach to fix it, but mandating by federal law that all Americans pay for free birth control for anyone who wants it.</p>
<p>Iraq was an optional war, too. But I still had to pay for it, even though I objected on moral grounds.</p>
<p>So is that an argument for or against adding on more objectionable mandates?</p>
<p>Or is that an argument for or against adding on more desirable mandates? I like education, police, fire, etc., mandates.</p>
<p>There is also the question of which mandates should be federal and which should not. I find it hard to reconcile the contraception mandate with what I know of the Constitution. I’m just not completely comfortable that the federal government should be involved to that degree.</p>
<p>It’s an argument that we can’t allow people to avoid paying for something (that they would otherwise be required to pay for) just on the basis of their moral disapproval.</p>
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This is not a reason to prevent people from trying not to get pregnant. Ever do any genealogical research? Our ancestors had babies by the dozens. In fact, it is very likely that NONE of us would be here today were it not for the extreme reproduction of our ancestors (as in somewhere in our ancestry there is someone who was child #8+ to their parents, which would include 2 of my great grandmothers).</p>
<p>It is meaningless to talk about people who “might have been”. The ones who are here are the ones who made it.</p>
<p>This is interesting: Re the Va. law that looks like it’s about to be signed by the governor, requiring ALL women to have a transvaginal ultrasound before having an abortion…a female delegate (senator?) tried to attach an amendment requiring MEN to have a heart stress test & a rectal exam before getting a prescription for Viagra. It was voted down, of course, but the point was made. </p>
<p>Sauce for the goose…</p>
<p>Now back to your regular discussion on government mandates.</p>
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<p>This is very popular line of thinking among the anti-legal abortion crowd. Having attended Catholic high school, I heard it over and over and over.</p>
<p>How do we get from no-copyament or no mandate for employers to provide free birth control to forcing women to have babies? Seems quite a stretch to me.</p>