Friday, February 10, 2012
Human rights / Health Obama administration guarantees free contraception
Posted by Max Brantley on Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 10:16 AM
No involvement of a religious institution will be required. Nor will it be required of a business, such as a hospital, loosely affiliated with a church. Insurance companies will provide coverage directly. It will save money in preventive care.
Could a religious group possibly still object? You know they will. Because the critics prefer a policy that crams THEIR religion down YOUR throat. They are close to ridding huge swaths of the country of the availability of legal abortion and many of them have made clear that birth control is next. The newly hot Republican president candidate Rick Santorum has already expressed his disagreement with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that prohibited states from outlawing contraceptives.
The White House fix is the big news. But I urge you to refer back to my earlier post, loaded with interesting stuff. There's the fact that federal labor law — instituted in 2000 — has long prohibited all employers with 15 or more workers from discriminating in prescription coverage. If it covers drugs, it must cover birth control, not just Viagra. There's Mike Huckabee's wild demagoguery at CPAC, along with his rip of President Obama for not tithing. There's polling that even the original controversial policy was popular with a majority of the U.S. and of Catholics. Now the numbers should go to 60 or 70 per cent approval. Check it out.
Planned Parenthood backs this compromise, of course. Birth control means fewer problem pregnancies and many fewer abortions.
UPDATE: Dr. No Boozman doesn't like it and is looking for a solid reason that he hasn't yet found. But he'll find something. He doesn't want women to have birth control pills.
WHITE HOUSE STATEMENT
FACT SHEET: Women’s Preventive Services and Religious Institutions
Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, most health insurance plans will cover women’s preventive services, including contraception, without charging a co-pay or deductible beginning in August, 2012. This new law will save money for millions of Americans and ensure Americans nationwide get the high-quality care they need to stay healthy.
Today, President Obama will announce that his Administration will implement a policy that accommodates religious liberty while protecting the health of women. Today, nearly 99 percent of all women have used contraception at some point in their lives, but more than half of all women between the ages of 18-34 struggle to afford it.
Under the new policy to be announced today, women will have free preventive care that includes contraceptive services no matter where she works. The policy also ensures that if a woman works for religious employers with objections to providing contraceptive services as part of its health plan, the religious employer will not be required to provide contraception coverage, but her insurance company will be required to offer contraceptive care free of charge.
The new policy ensures women can get contraception without paying a co-pay and addresses important concerns raised by religious groups by ensuring that objecting religious employers will not have to provide contraceptive coverage or refer women to organizations that provide contraception. Background on this policy is included below:
Section 2713 of the Affordable Care Act, the Administration adopted new guidelines that will require most private health plans to cover preventive services for women without charging a co-pay starting on August 1, 2012. These preventive services include well women visits, domestic violence screening, and contraception, and all were recommended to the Secretary of Health and Human Services by the independent Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science.
Today, the Obama Administration will publish final rules in the Federal Register that:
* Exempts churches, other houses of worship, and similar organizations from covering contraception on the basis of their religious objections.
* Establishes a one year transition period for religious organizations while this policy is being implemented.
The President will also announce that his Administration will propose and finalize a new regulation during this transition year to address the religious objections of the non-exempted religious organizations. The new regulation will require insurance companies to cover contraception if the non-exempted religious organization chooses not to. Under the policy:
* Religious organizations will not have to provide contraceptive coverage or refer their employees to organizations that provide contraception.
* Religious organizations will not be required to subsidize the cost of contraception.
* Contraception coverage will be offered to women by their employers’ insurance companies directly, with no role for religious employers who oppose contraception.
* Insurance companies will be required to provide contraception coverage to these women free of charge.
Covering contraception saves money for insurance companies by keeping women healthy and preventing spending on other health services. For example, there was no increase in premiums when contraception was added to the Federal Employees Health Benefit System and required of non-religious employers in Hawaii. One study found that covering contraception lowered premiums by 10 percent or more.
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Comments (65)
Showing 1-50 of 65
This compromise looks like "the church" and the GOP picked a fight with 51% of the population and lost. Good times. There will be lots of wing nut tears over this.
And Santorum who, unlike Mitt, is consistent in his ignorance and bigotry.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/10/r…
combat-roles_n_1267851.html
He should tell that to Tammy Duckworth.
http://www.tammyduckworth.com/about/
like
dislikeStill an abuse of the idea of insurance. Still an affront to all the free men and women of these United States.
Keep crying those tears, Codi---all the way on your road to irrelevancy.
Is irrelevancy before or after this President gets crushed in November?
The right's greater loss in all of this is the incremental move toward single payer universal health care.
And that's a good thing.
Should be road to perdition. As additional proof, the Grizzly Mom is the keynote speaker at CPAC. Honestly, is there anyone more irrelevant than Palin. Does anyone other than the certifiable 27% care what she has to say?
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/…
And if you don't already know, this is what Santorum has in mind for women in the future.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chastity_belt
A Star Looks Worn.
Huckabee's CPAC speech. "We are all Catholics now."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/10/m…
And speaking of taking care of our own as the ACA helps to do:
The day after President Obama’s reelection team included Bruce Springsteen’s new single “We Take Care of Our Own” in the list of songs Obama will use on the campaign trail, the Boss released a sing-along-friendly music video for the song.
http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/02/10…
Once you've watched Huckabee's CPAC rally, here's another rally where "we're all Catholics." That creepy deja-vu feeling comes from the gestures.
Turn down the sound if you like.
The gestures.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6E4H2nHmuo…
Yes yes....a tiny step closer to universal health care for all! I'm busy hatching a plan to get mag to go suck up some free birth control pills. She doesn't need them for 2 major reasons I won't discuss here, but I see an income stream in the works.
I takes the pills and sell them to my neighbors at a price just below what Walgreens sells them for. Instant cash! And the chance to get to know my more attractive neighbors a little better. Plus I'm helping to deny Wal-Mart of a future low low wage employee!
Don't be surprised if you get an attractive email offer from BC Pills, my new Facebook persona.
Codi, it's called bravado, and it won't win elections for you. Look it up.
Norma, watched that link. Ugh! I'd say the entire slate of CPAC speakers are infected with bravado. They've got nothing else.
Should be 'paid for through insurance premiums' instead of 'free.'
TANSTAAFL
Planned Parenthood backs new contraception policy.
SGK for the Cure?
Guess.
http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/healt…
Brilliant move.
Once again American women are reminded that conservatives hate your health care choices just because you are women and The Catholic Church reminded everyone why a Traditional Catholic would be a bad choice for President.
So basically you can live in the 21st century with the Democrats or go back to the 50's when a married women needed her husband permission to take birth control.
All around good week for The President.
(I mean seriously, who knew that in 2012 women using birth control and their access to it would be such an issue.)
Here's a story about what is happening to "Catholic" hospitals:
To grow, Catholic hospital system pares religious ties
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/stor…
And that atheist who heads the Catholic Hospital Association, Sister Carol Keehan, is happy with the compromise. How will the bishops deal with her.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entr…
Gyl, you would be at home with medieval scholars arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. And why don't you spell it out. I suspect more than half the readers here don't have a clue what TANSTAAFL means. I had to look it up.
No great revelation there, however. Everybody with a brain knows TANSTAAFL. Those of us with a brain AND a heart are willing to pay for birth control for every woman who can't afford it---and yes, even those who can afford it through their insurance policies.
Norma, Heil Huckabee doesn't have the same ring to it, ya know. Hitler was catholic, I still don't know why the church has excommunicated him post mortem. After all, if they can say they were wrong for how they treated Galileo 400 years after the fact, then why can't they unforgive that monster? As an amateur astronomer, I'm still waiting for them to admit they were wrong about Giordano Bruno:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Brun…
I just tried to email a "Thank you, Mr. President" note to the Whitehouse and couldn't access their email. I suspect they are over loaded with both pro and con. I will try again later and you should too.
Here's a snicker worthy comment from a Whitehouse official:
"We are actually more comfortable having the insurance industry offer and market this to women than religious institutions," said the White House official because they "understand how contraception works"
Actually that is not the entire quote. Here's the rest, but it doesn't make the truncated quote any less true.
"...to prevent unintended pregnancy and reduce health care costs. "This makes sense financially."
Ref the cost issue, insurance companies should be happy to be handing out contraception for free.
A Google search reveals that an average pregnancy and delivery cost is about $8000. A c-section is about twice that. Annual costs for birth control pills range from $120 to $600.
A woman could be provided with between 66 and 13 years of birth control for the cost of one pregnancy or twice that for a c-section.
If you think that obamacare will be a permanent fixture then you need to track what is going on in Greece in particular and Europe in general. Substantial cuts in their healthcare system are part of the austerity package that they must agree to in order to secure another loan to prevent bankruptcy. Regardless of obama's political fortunes in November, unsustainable costs of healthcare will lead to national bankruptcy without drastic reform of that system. We will be faced with the Greek choice of austerity and all of the 'weeping and wailing and knashing of teeth' will be of no avail.
Outlier, I don't know why having the pharmacy send the insurer a bill and the insurer tack the bill onto the premium plus admin costs at both stops gives you the warm fuzzies. If you had a brain and weren't trying to score political power points you'd be going after the FDA to make the pill available OTC. There would be a bit less resistance from socons and more from gynocologists but it would actually reduce costs instead of shuffling them around.
There are many good reasons why hormonal birth control should not be available OTC, Gyl. Aside from the obvious reasons that I don't expect you to understand, it also leads to regular pap smears and check-ups for women using it and that is a good thing from both a health and a cost-saving perspective. I know you libertarians want an economic system where there are no rules save "caveat emptor", but that is never going to happen because of the awful consequences.
Get back in your Mom's basement with your copies of Rand or Rothbard or whoever your guiding light is.
SHolmes: "unsustainable costs of healthcare will lead to national bankruptcy"
And that is why ACA must be kept in place and improved. Repealing it would add $230 billion to the deficits over the next 10 years according to the Congressional Budget Office:
http://www.ombwatch.org/node/11447
I am disappointed. I was hoping that the compromise would be along the lines of the insurance companies offering two policy coverages, one for non-catholics that included coverage for contraception, etc. at competetive rates and a second policy for catholics that excluded the coverage of contraceptives at the higher rate for the contemplated extra cost of of their medical care. I would have loved to see the squirming of the church leaders when the catholic women rose up.
" If you had a brain and weren't trying to score political power points you'd be going after the FDA to make the pill available OTC. "
You are obviously not a woman and probably not an adult or you would understand that while BCP are safe, they are a medication that you need to take under a Doctor's care.
"no woman’s health should depend on who she is, or where she works, or how much money she makes [...] period”)---President Obama in his birth control/healthcare seminar. He's got our backs on women's health and we should have his. Here's the whole thing if you missed it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=playe…
How long before the Obama haters on the left are complaining because there is not a smoking crater where Cardinal Dolan used to be? Eleventy dimensional chess: how does it work? It wouldn't surprise me if this "compromise" was in the works long before the red hat brigade and the talibangicals staged their hissy fits.
ARkie: I suggest that you talk to the Administrator of Medicare because he also agrees with the CBO that its costs are unsustainable and will lead to bankruptcy of the system. That of course does not include SS and Medicaid. How does your logic conclude that the system left as is will be sustainable with the addition of 77 million baby boomers? Even Clinton concluded that it must be reformed to be viable and that did not include the concept of obamacare.
SHolmes: Huh?
First of all, did you read the link? CBO says that ACA will save money over the next 10 years.
As far as Medicare goes, ACA will reduce spending by $500 billion on that program over the next 10 years.
http://www.healthcare.gov/law/resources/re…
And the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees have this to say: "Projected Medicare costs over 75 years are about 25 percent lower because of provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (the "Affordable Care Act" or ACA)."
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/TRSUM/index.html
This is not to say that there aren't long term funding issues, but the point I am making in response to you original comment is that the ACA ("Obamacare") is doing something about addressing these issues.
And do you have sources for your claims?
The $500 Billion that you refer to in 'savings' to Medicare was taken from the Medicare Advantage program to fund obamacare. It is not 'savings'. The so called 'projected' savings are based on assumptions provided by the obama administration to the CBO in their calculations. One of those assumptions does not include the cost of the 'doctor fix' to Medicare that has been granted in just about every year. They are not allowed to question those assumptions and must use them to determine costs. Medicare bankruptcy will occur by 2020 long before your 75 years. Obamacare adds costs in that it adds people to coverage in addition to the 77 million baby boomers. Again, how does your math conclude that unsustainable increases in costs won't bankrupt the system?
Holmes, this point has been made over and over and over again by eLwood and others on this blog, but just in case you missed it, here it is again.
The $500 billion savings in Advantage was taking away the excess premiums that Advantage insurance companies were getting. The program, passed in the Bush II administration, was an experiment to reduce Medicare costs. It was supposed to cost less than other insurers. Instead it ended up costing 14% more. It was a gift to those insurance companies no matter what the intention was. The "taking away" was just saying we are not going to pay you more than other providers for the same coverage. No one lost medicare coverage. I repeat NO ONE LOST MEDICARE COVERAGE.
Oh, and just to be clear, by making Advantage in line with other programs, that is $500 billion that will not be given to them in the future, freeing it up for other programs. Without this, we would be spending $500 billion more in the future.
I said the gynocologists wouldn't like it outlier.
I'll let you get back to your worship of state power. Do try to remember that this is only shuffling the costs around a little bit. No copay for a slightly smaller increase in premiums. Hope making other people pay a bit for what you want makes you happy. All the psychological benefits of giving without any of the costs.
And your conclusion is that Medicare and Obamacare are sustainable? We have a $15 Trillion public debt. We have $63 Trillion in unfunded liabilities debt. We are running $1 Trillion deficits each year since obama took office. These deficts are projected to continue for the next ten years. We have 77 million baby boomers who will be hitting Medicare. We have another approx. 27 million who will be added via obamacare. SS is now running a deficit in funding---more money going out in benefits than is being received in taxes. Where is the viability of these programs? How is bankruptcy avoided? How are we to avoid Greece's fate?
"I said the gynocologists (sic) wouldn't like it outlier."
What does that have to do with the risks of making birth control pills available OTC?
"Hope making other people pay a bit for what you want makes you happy."
What makes me happy is making selfish bastards pony up for their share of the costs of living in a civilized society.
You could always move to Somalia or some other libertarian paradise, Gyl.
"go back to the 50's when a married women needed her husband permission to take birth control"
Worse. We are talking of a ban of all contraceptives. That is what was recognized as unconstitutional in Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965. As recent as 1965! And Santorum is on record saying that that ruling should be overturned and states should have the right to again ban contraception. Not that this would be likely to happen nowadays, but still. This is the American Taliban in action. Somebody who wants to prohibit contraception counts as a serious contender for a presidential nomination. Not in Iran, not in Afghanistan, but in America, the home of the free. One doesn't know what to say.
Sholmes: Read these.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/2…
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/2…
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/opinion/…
Holmes, I did not argue that our medical care system is sustainable in its current form. One of the reasons I think President Obama tackled health care reform right out of the gate is because he knows, as most of us do, that costs have to be controlled.
We are going to have to grow up as a nation and have a serious discussion of health care in general and quit harping on women's issues. I'm sick and tired of my health care and that of my female friends and family members being used as a political football. The more serious and expensive issues are things like preventable diseases (obesity related for instance) and end of life costs.
Horror's! There I've said it. The dreaded and imaginary death panels. Tea baggers and others got so upset at the idea of even discussing the issue with their doctors that I have no hopes of them acting like adults in the conversations we need. Posters on this blog get real ugly about Michelle Obama trying to bring an awareness of what a healthy life style looks like. I give her kudos for navigating that minefield. She's the best.
Arkie: Keynesian economics is not credible. Krugman is the king of Keynesians. If Keynesian economics worked then Japan's economy would be flourishing instead of a basket case. Try reading some of Art Laffler's stuff.
I have an idea. Let's start a movement to convince Santorum that Monty Python's "Every Sperm is Sacred" should be his theme song, played at all of his little medieval pep rallies.
Either that or convince the anti-Santorum demonstrators to sing it from their perches outside. This is straight out of Saul Alinsky.
Holmes, would that be the Laffer that wrote his economic plan on a dinner napkin? I guess trickle down has worked pretty well for you. A lot of people I know only got pissed on.
So the Nobel Prize Winning Economist isn't credible?
OK. How about Dick Cheney?
"You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter."
http://www.ontheissues.org/2004/Dick_Chene…
You can't make this stuff up. The Onion is going to be put out of business. Bryan Fischer of some right wing talibangical radio show tweets that the Whitehouse compromise is bogus and---GET THIS---tramples on the religious liberties of the insurance companies.
Max: Dr. No Boozman doesn't like it and is looking for a solid reason that he hasn't yet found. But he'll find something. He doesn't want women to have birth control pills.
How about the fact that only sluts need to use birth control?
Also, too, does anyone find it odd that they are all screeching about religious liberties---even those of insurance companies---and they walked all over the rights of Muslims who wanted to build a community center several blocks from ground zero which would have served the entire community, not just Muslims?
I understand now. It's "Religious liberty for me, but not for thee."
"I see righter already made his disappointment known." Outlier, I am sorry you missed my point. The point being, I wanted the administration to put the church leaders in a position of adversley affecting the catholic women only and see if they could stand the unholy hell that the catholic women would surely unleash upon the didlers! Just for the record, I am an avid supporter of women's rights.
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