<p>Raised- <em>felony charges for mothers, too, as mothers also abandon their children</em></p>
<p>geeps20: Many inconvenient truths must be labeled un PC because it is such a great tool for silencing those ‘other’ voices.</p>
<p>alh: I’m raising both my hands for that mandate. And…no federal funds for anyone until both parties involved have been identified. Case and point…relative had a one night stand. A child resulted…he had absolutely no clue…until 8 years later when the state sent him a bill for back child support. The mother had not given out the name until it became financially beneficial to do so. Oh…and mom has 2 more kids by similar donors. Offspring of this union is now in a relationship - and has a child. The parents have decided not to marry because they get better support through the state if they don’t.</p>
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<p>Here’s hoping those two goals can co-exist.</p>
<p>alh, a couple of years ago, my kids ran in and said, “Mom! Mr. X is on TV! He’s a wanted fugitive!” I told them the news anchor must have been talking about someone with the same name, since it was common. They insisted they were right, so I rewound the TV and it WAS Mr. X! He was on the list of “Top Deadbeat Dads” in our state. He really was a wanted fugitive. Shocked the heck out of me, since he was always a “nice guy,” I thought. He served a LOT of months in jail. He was a successful businessman before this. The last I heard, he was trying to get a job at Home Depot.</p>
<p>I’m a CPA. People routinely escape the IRS. </p>
<p>S2 is a police officer. Non-payment of support in my state is a felony. People go to jail for it.</p>
<p>"“Without cost-sharing” means that the patient doesn’t have to incur any costs."</p>
<p>No, false again. The patient if paying a premium DOES incur costs. Of course, when children get immunizations, they don’t pay - their parents do. (The reality, though, is that there is no ADDITIONAL premium, as BCPs save insurance company costs. But that’s not why they are mandated.) </p>
<p>“Can we get a show of hands in support of felony charges for abandonment of children by fathers?”</p>
<p>I’m NOT raising mine. Our criminal justice system does a terrible job with people accused with felonies, and convicting fathers of felonies simply means they won’t be able to get decent jobs to pay for child support. We need to look to restorative justice approaches (if felony charges will push fathers into such approaches, I’ve got no problem with it.)</p>
<p>^great point mini. How about garnishment of wages? Other ideas?</p>
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<p>I wonder what the insurance companies have been doing with all of those millions of dollars of co-pays for contraception that they have been charging over the years.</p>
<p>Simple. As you yourself noted, the overwhelming majority haven’t been charging over the years.</p>
<p>“So, where is the federal mandate for felony charges against men who abandon their children? I have never heard one politician discuss the need for stricter legislations and stricter penalties for non-payment of child support.”</p>
<p>You haven’t been listening. Just try googling “deadbeat dads” and you’ll educate yourself. But, again, it’s very difficult for politicians to address this issue honestly, because it involves implicit criticism of those who make different “lifestyle choices.” And, in many cases, finding the deadbeat dads doesn’t do much good if these lifestyle choices lead to prison and/or extended unemployment. </p>
<p>“As for your argument about why people are starving in Detroit, I’d look first at the loss of manufacturing jobs and the offshoring of manufacturing jobs before I looked at the moral fiber of those who got trapped in the structural unemployment scenario which has made Detroit a ghost town.”</p>
<p>Virtually no one is actually “starving” in Detroit or anywhere else in this country. Indeed, low-income people are far more likely than those with higher incomes to be suffering from problems associated with obesity and poor food choices than with an actual shortage of calories. And the loss of manufacturing jobs doesn’t explain why men and women decide to have sex with partners who are not interested in being spouses and parents. THAT is the root cause of poverty and its attendant suffering among children in this country.</p>
<p>[Hunger</a> in America: 2012 United States Hunger and Poverty Facts](<a href=“http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/us_hunger_facts.htm]Hunger”>http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/us_hunger_facts.htm)</p>
<p><a href=“Hunger and Children in America: a Slow and Steady Starvation - ABC News”>http://abcnews.go.com/Health/US/hunger-children-america-slow-steady-starvation/story?id=14328390</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/23/us/cnnheroes-hungry-children/index.html[/url]”>Report: 1 in 5 U.S. children at risk of hunger - CNN;
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<p>Reputable source?</p>
<p>And no, people aren’t starving in Detroit. I don’t know where anyone claimed that. They ARE suffering from a lack of fresh fruits, vegetables, and grocery stores.</p>
<p>“No, false again. The patient if paying a premium DOES incur costs.”</p>
<p>Then the feds must be lying, because they have insisted that these services be provided with no cost-sharing, and that insurance companies absorb any costs that religious employers decline to pay. </p>
<p>"(The reality, though, is that there is no ADDITIONAL premium, as BCPs save insurance company costs. But that’s not why they are mandated.)"</p>
<p>Well, to begin with, the feds also insist that this mandate is in the best financial interests of recalcitrant employers and insurers, who haven’t figured out that they will SAVE money by paying for certain costs that have, until now, been borne by the patients. Because, of course, the assertion that employers/insurers will SAVE money by PAYING for the entire costs of birth control pills rests on the extremely shaky premise that all of their patients have been foregoing birth control pills and risking expensive unintended pregnancies because they are unable/unwilling to pay for them, and that now these expensive unintended pregnancies will be prevented. If there is any actual evidence that women with employer-provided health insurance have been giving birth to unwanted children solely because they were unwilling/unable to come up with the co-pay for birth control pills, I haven’t seen it.</p>
<p>[Tell</a> Us Detroit News Network | tellusdetroit.com | News, sports, features, blogs, photos and forums from Detroit and Michigan](<a href=“Error 404 - Not found”>Error 404 - Not found)</p>
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<p><a href=“The%20reality,%20though,%20is%20that%20there%20is%20no%20ADDITIONAL%20premium,%20as%20BCPs%20save%20insurance%20company%20costs…”>quote=mini</a>
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<p>mini: do you have any actuarial studies/research to support your claim?</p>
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<p>I am not sure how the subject came around to this, but just stepping in as a Detroit resident to say this is DEFINITELY true and I’ve seen it firsthand and there are articles in the paper about these sorts of problems ALL THE TIME. It’s actually a big problem that there are a lot of inner-city folks who qualify for bridge cards and can’t use them because they can’t afford cars to get to the grocery stores that take them in the suburbs, and our public transit is too sparse to adequately alleviate this problem. Detroit is awful for any kind of shopping, really, but the necessities are hard to come by without leaving the city proper. And I wouldn’t be surprised if some people ARE starving. </p>
<p>(romani-- I moved to the D! lol. Quite the departure from our hometown, let me tell ya.)</p>
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<p>No, I never said that; I said the overwhelming majority have offered birth control coverage, over the years. I also noted early on in this thread, that all of the private plans I have ever subscribed to (about 5), including my current one, has charged a co-pay for bcps.</p>
<p>"Then the feds must be lying, because they have insisted that these services be provided with no cost-sharing, and that insurance companies absorb any costs that religious employers decline to pay.</p>
<p>Again, who are you talking about? The insurance companies absorb costs, and pass them along in the form of premiums. (Which is exactly what they do now, which is why the Obama Administration had no problem whatsoever with the compromise, and neither did the insurance companies.) </p>
<p>There are no “premises” here. There’s more than a decade of experience. Likely 90% of employees and their families, as well as Medicaid and Medicare clients, vets, and active military, and federal employees, and state employees and schoolteachers already have a package of preventive health services (including BCPs), as have those receiving BCPs from Catholic organizations and even Catholic churches with priests and nuns and weighty Catholics on their boards. My wife’s employer - the largest Catholic health system in three states - ADVERTISES their inclusion (without copay) - of preventive health services (including BCPs). No premises are needed. They already have the evidence they think they need. </p>
<p>“mini: do you have any actuarial studies/research to support your claim?”</p>
<p>Don’t need it, though all the health insurers have it. (you can look at back issues of Health Affairs - you’ll find plenty on this issue.) Don’t need it because health insurers who voluntarily offer the package of preventive health services (like my wife’s employer the Catholic health system) do so without raising their premiums. </p>
<p>But it isn’t mandated because it saves money. Saving money was not, and is not the goal. Improved health through the delivery of preventive health services is.</p>
<p>You might be surprised to know, Deitz, that I agree with you. I believe both parents should be identified and both should be responsible.</p>
<p>I recognize that imprisonment of a deadbeat parent does as much good to get the debt paid as imprisonment of a debtor. However, if this parent refuses to pay and is willing to hop states, lie, hide his/her wages, they aren’t going to pay, anyway, and I don’t care if they have to go to prison, frankly. In the case where a parent has abandoned a child and the other parent has neglected a child, BOTH parents should be charged with neglect, in my opinon, as well.</p>
<p>Claremarie: If the most important thing is to prevent abortion, then why not just make sure sexually active women have access to a year’s worth of appropriate BCP’s, at a time. It has been shown that this act prevents pregnancy in the upper 90% range, as does nothing else. </p>
<p>Nothing reduces poverty and mortality rates among women like easy and affordable access to birth control, as has been shown in so many studies, I wouldn’t even be expected to cite it in sociology paper.</p>