Posted on 08/12/2011 7:57:43 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Obama administration forces the public to subsidize people’s sex lives.
To understand how the Obama administration is running America into the ground, consider the Department of Health and Human Services’ August 1 decree ordering, essentially, free birth-control pills for all women. Through this brand-new entitlement — announced the very day that Congress voted to “reduce” the national debt — Washington mandates more giveaways, not just to poor women, but to every woman in America, regardless of employment, income, or trust fund.
By Aug. 1, 2012, Obamacare will require insurers to cover BCPs. Further, HHS guidelines state that health plans may not “charge a patient a copayment, coinsurance, or deductible for these services when they are delivered by a network provider.” Thus, BCPs will be free to all women. This goody is neither focused nor means-tested. If Kim Kardashian and Katie Couric want BCPs, by Jove, they will get them free, too! Indeed, by hyperactively demanding such services for women regardless of means, Team Obamaa+ will squander scarce resources and, perversely, misdirect funds that could help needy women, just so that Paris Hilton can get her freak on, gratis.
Most federally funded, state-run Medicaid programs already finance BCPs for poor women, usually free or with co-payments as low as $1.00. This new regulation extends these gifts to middle-class and prosperous women.
“Women currently pay between $15 and $50 a month in co-pays for birth control pills — which equals $180 to $600 a year!” a writer named Serena complained July 30 on the Feminists for Choice website. Even the higher of those figures won’t bankrupt much of anyone, and 49 cents to $1.64 seems like a reasonable daily price for hot, pregnancy-free sex.
Why on earth is the Obamaa+ administration forbidding insurers to recover some of the expense for BCPs from well-heeled women? As with other benefits that insurers are compelled to offer — but now with neither co-payments nor deductibles to help absorb the burden — the government will lob the cost onto the shoulders of everyone who does not use those services. Free pills for women; higher premiums for all.
The HHS decree is based on the federal Institute of Medicine’s July 19 recommendation of free contraceptives “so that women can better avoid unwanted pregnancies.” Experts harbor doubts about this connection. “We intuitively think that eliminating the co-pay for birth control will help alleviate the rate of unintended pregnancies, but this may not be so,” says Dr. David Friedman, assistant clinical professor of gynecology at Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Medical Center. “If the abortion rate reflects the rate of unintended pregnancy, then populations with free birth control, like those on Medicaid, should have lower abortion rates. But the opposite is true. Although the Medicaid population made up only 18.92 percent of New Yorkers in 2009, they had 39.75 percent of abortions. This lends pause to the notion that eliminating co-pays will have any constructive effect on preventing unwanted pregnancies.”
Obamacare’s perks go far beyond the pill. According to the HHS guidelines, insured women can demand all of the following — free of co-payment and independent of income:
• Well-woman visits to doctors, including preconception and prenatal care
• Human-papillomavirus tests
• Counseling for sexually transmitted infections
• Counseling and screening for HIV
• “All Food and Drug Administration approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity.”
• “Breastfeeding support, supplies, and counseling. Comprehensive lactation support and counseling, by a trained provider during pregnancy and/or in the postpartum period, and costs for renting breastfeeding equipment.”
• “Screening and counseling for interpersonal and domestic violence.”
Kirsten Moore, president and CEO of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, dreams of better contraceptives — possibly available over the counter. “Imagine a safe, effective, daily birth control pill regimen available on store shelves alongside condoms and cough medicine,” she wrote on Sunday for AOL Healthy Living. “What if there were a Sunglass Hut for contraception?” Au contraire, Obamaa+’s mandate is likely to decelerate rather than turbocharge the pharmaceutical conveyor belt for new and improved contraceptives.
“When the Health and Human Services Department is monitoring and perhaps indirectly dictating health-insurance premiums, the government will impose significant pressure for drug companies to keep higher-cost pills ‘affordable,’ since the government will pay for them,” explains Dr. Merrill Matthews, a resident scholar at the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas. “That trend would discourage contraceptive innovation because pharmaceutical companies could not recapture their R&D costs.”
This new policy is designed to address an alleged American crisis called being female. As Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D., Md.) put it, “We are one step closer to saying goodbye to an era when simply being a woman is treated as a pre-existing condition.”
But what about men? Where are the free condoms? Why must males pay for HIV tests, while women soon won’t? Female tubal ligation will be free of co-payments. Men who get vasectomies had better bring their wallets.
Also troubling: Obamaa+’s new mandate will force pro-life Americans to pay part of the cost of birth-control pills, some of which act as abortifacients that kill embryos by stymieing their attachment to the uterine wall. These rules likewise will compel gay Americans to underwrite BCPs, which benefit only practicing heterosexuals. Social justice, anyone?
Thanks to Obamacare, Americans “with cancer, a heart ailment, or a major injury will face co-pays and deductibles, but anyone who wants to go on the Pill or rent breastfeeding equipment won’t incur any personal cost — and nobody will be free to decide otherwise,” Jeffrey Anderson laments on WeeklyStandard.com. “This is what politicized medicine looks like.”
— New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
New tagline.
I’m flattered!
You have to hand-type it in to keep the apostrophe from flaking out. Very unpredictable, one’s apostrophes.
Bring him here. We can always find reptiles.
Seriously, it’s quite disturbing to see so many people on FR applauding free birth control, as though the government is handing out roach motels, or something.
Before the advent of AFDC, 80% of children born to black mothers had married parents. Now it’s reversed - 80% are illegitimate. Why is this? First, such misbehavior is rewarded - supported - by the goverment. As parents or owners of animals, we all know that if misbehavior is rewarded, what happens? Why, more of the same!
Second, is a culture promoted the most vicious of immorality on all levels, as noted by savagesusie.
And now?
You don't know whether to weep, or to smash something.
We do have reptiles in our woods, but Frank isn’t going to find them - he’s far too loud!
I get it...
It’s amazing how much has changed in just a few generations. IMO the government supporting or paying for illegitimacy is equal to the cesspit culture - like a right and left hand, and Tax-chick’s comment says it all. Communists/leftists want families destroyed; a chaotic and helpless and immoral populace is much easier to control.
When I read it (in 9th grade? That would be 1964-65?) I was filled with instinctive dread at the thought that such a world could come into being. In fact I can almost say my beginnings as a culture warrior are rooted there. But nowadays, I fear the kids just don't get it. I don't feel confident that they know for sure whether Brave New World is a grim prophetic dystopia or a blueprint for a better future.
Please excuse my gloom. I will feel better when I sort my laundry and mop my kitchen floor.
Thanks bigheadfred. I’m not gonna check for Michelle pix, and you can’t make me. ;’)
The most effective birth control the government could offer would be to remove the wealth transfer to those who scam the system by having as many children as possible just for the free money.
“There is nothing wrong with responsible people who use birth control.....”
There are all kinds of well-known serious side effects associated with birth control pills. But what about all of the unknown ones that we don’t know about yet? They haven’t been around that long to have really been studied. And to think that the government is encouraging young girls to gobble down these unnecessary chemicals throughout their childbearing years (40 years or more for some) and forcing taxpayers to pay for it is unconscionable.
I wish somebody could explain the thinking in wanting to force democrats to have more kids than they normally would, my own view is that there are too many of them now...
A classic line of proponents of universal health care -”When free health care comes around, then I could feel safe and comfortable asking for the best health care, with the best doctors there are int he best hospitals providing the fastest services possible, and the best pharmacists ensuring I get the drugs I need. I would feel safe asking and demaning this because I would not be paying for it.”
Can’t say I care, it is not anyone else’s responsibility to pay for anyone’s child birth or birth control.
Indeed from the point of view of our civilization we should be banning birth control due to our low birth rates effects on our future economic prosperity. To Say nothing of our survival as a federation.
Insolently nobody has to pay 6k to 8k for a delivery, there is still such a thing as home delivery and other private options. The fact that our hospitals milk parents to be to pay for the risks our lawyers forced them to assume is anther aspect of Government induced economic price control failure.
For Women: 1st kid out of wedlock, WIC, then daycare, welfare, and job training. 2nd kid out of wedlock, mandatory tubes tied to recieve benefits. No benefits for subsequent pregnancies.
For Men: Failing to either marry the “baby mama” and maintain a joint household or maintain child support payments = jail time or a $3000 payment to recieve a free vasectomy. $1000 cash payment for convicted felons to recieve free vasectomy. Mandatory jail time for <1 bastards sired. (jail time waived upon recieving vasectomy)
For both sexes: If rules for benefits are broken, local food banks will provide 1 weeks worth of rice and beans, multivitamins, water, bread, cheese, and fruit/vegetable juice per individual and dependants per week. No more WIC debit cards, you show up and wait in line to get your food boxes. Arpaio type yurt/tent cities provided for homeless. Modern ID technology (biometrics) used to verify each recipient, including citizenship status and to prevent multiple ID’s. Mandatory drug testing after 1 year on public assistance. Congress passes laws to end anchor baby citizenship and to prevent illegals from recieving govt benefits. Impeach any judge that throws either law out. (yes that includes SCOTUS)
Costs for HHS will fall like a rock. Illegal immigration will mostly end. Then a sensible LEGAL immigration system can start replacing population loss with people that actually have skills and WANT to become Americans.
THEY COULD HAVE CHOSEN ABSTINENCE!
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