The new birth control mandate has caused uproar from both sides of the spectrum. Church officials argue that employers should not be required to cover birth control products. The other side contends that women should be covered to promote maternal and child health.
I’m not going to comment on either side of this social debate. However, the economic debate seems to be fairly one-sided.
This isn’t an argument about spirituality, fairness or women’s rights. The debate should be focused on costs, and why anyone in this country should be forced to cover contraceptives as “insurance.”
Insurance at the heart is meant to cover large, unexpected expenses. In exchange for a premium, insurers agree to protect you if your house burns down or if you get into a car accident. Risk-averse consumers are happy to pay a premium on their home, even though they know the chances of it burning down are extremely small, because it’s worth it to ensure they have a home if that tragedy were to ever occur. Both the insurers and the consumer benefit from their arrangement.
However, there’s a good reason your health insurance company doesn’t charge an additional $50, and then agrees to cover Band-Aids. Small, regular and predictable expenses are never covered by insurers, and for good reason. The only result would be less competition in the market for band aids and thus higher prices for consumers. Furthermore, you’d be required to fill out a ton of paperwork every time you wanted a Band-Aid. It’s better for insurers to cover unstable expenses and let the private market handle the predictable ones.
The government argues this mandate allows women to get access to birth control products. Was their some sort of ban on access to these products before? I can get birth control, just like I can get Band-Aids, now because I have a few bucks in my wallet and supplier willing to trade with me.
The focus of this discussion shouldn’t be about access, but insurance and costs. Free pills and condoms sound great, but somebody has to pay the tab. Perhaps it seems your employer is picking up the check, but to cover his increased expenses, he may raise the price of his products or services, or pay you less in salary. Either way, the money has to come from somewhere, and if you follow it enough, you’ll see the consumer always ends up paying.
At a time of fiery debate about public policy and social welfare, let’s turn the focus from religious fanatics and feminists groups to sensible economists. All of these discussions start with money. Let’s make sure this debate ends with it, too.
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The article rhetorically asks if there was a ban on access to contraceptives before the government mandated its access. The answer is yes, when a woman has to pay ninety dollars a month for hormone pills (birth control pills) with a non-disposable income to prevent ovarian cysts from twisting and destroying her ovaries and reproductive abilities. The health insurance companies fail to provide women with an affordable prescription that would noninvasively help them, but have no problem paying for the emergency surgery costing thousands of dollars that is much more harmful to a woman’s general and reproductive health. Do you still want to talk about financial sensibility?
The new birth control mandate is a healthcare issue above it being an economic one. Your article focuses on an aspect of health not finance. Economic principles and the business culture have permeated into healthcare. As a result, the fundamental standards that should ensure illness prevention and the people’s welfare have been largely removed and replaced by the business model of saving money at the cost of a person’s compromised health and freedoms.
You would not even flinch to argue my response if you were a 50 year old male with erectile dysfunction and I replaced “birth control pills” with “Viagra” (a drug covered by insurance companies) in my response. Its very interesting that there seems to be such a political uproar on the new mandate of birth control pills when males make up the majority of the House of Senate. Its also interesting that the median age of the senators is 62 and there is 65% chance in males over the age of 65 to have erectile dysfunction. I don’t mean to digress from the issue, but no one needs to do the math to understand why Viagra, a drug specifically for males was mandated by the government with no fiery debate, but a drug for females has created such heated discussions.
Insurance companies spend the most money on hospital care (31%) and physician and clinical services (20%) and the least amount of money on primary preventions such as the birth control pill. What I inferred most from your article is that you wanted the reader to focus on the increased costs of the new birth control mandate, as if the costs would be so dramatic that you would no longer be able to pay for those precious Band-Aids. These costs associated with the new birth control mandate would be relatively diminutive in comparison to the majority of our health care payments. Of all arguments (if any) to make against the new mandate, I think you missed the point.
You cannot buy birth control like you buy Band-Aids. Take it from me, Mr. Orlich. When your insurance does not cover birth control, the costs are close to $100. This is absolutely a question of access to women’s reproductive health services, much of which the GOP is trying to limit (most recently: the Ultrasound bill in Virginia).
The point is that not every woman has a “few bucks in” her wallet (also, please direct me to the place where you got the pill for the price of Band-Aids). The mandate will increase the quality of life for women who need contraception the most: Women in poverty. These are the women that need to be able to make autonomous decisions about the extent of their family size. If you must be completely utilitarian, making contraceptives widely available will actually -save- money. If a woman has a child (consensual or not) and cannot afford to care for it, you better believe that will tax the federal government one way or another.
Having control of your body is a basic human right, and that applies even to women. Since when was it okay to place a price on someone’s quality of life?