Contraception is pretty damn important to a woman’s health
So our healthcare system is all screwed up for innumerable reasons like the fact that we have to get insurance from our employers. We have the whole thing rigged with middle-men and price controls and protectionism. On top of that it’s an unfair system that leaves too many people out in the cold. Maybe part of the problem here is the government getting involved in utterly ridiculous ways over the years – an ad hoc approach that has left a terrible tangle in its wake.
The other problem is that too many people think that we can get healthcare to people without government assistance, which I just don’t think is true. I’m fine with using markets to get the pricing mechanism working again, but I want the state to help people get basic access to care and to make sure nobody is without life-saving coverage and that nobody goes bankrupt.
It seems painfully obvious to me that a fundamental piece of a woman’s basic healthcare needs is her ability to have some modicum of control over her own body. Contraception is extremely important to many women (and their families) and having the ability to have access to contraception is a basic individual right in today’s world.
What about before there even was contraception? Well, women were much worse off in general back then, and the lack of an ability to have control over their own bodies was a big part of it (not long ago it was perfectly legal to rape your wife, for instance.) Women were also worse off before they had a right to vote – even when nobody had a right to vote. Rights are not always eternal. Sometimes they emerge with new systems of government, new notions about our humanity, new technologies. Sometimes people want to take them away.
In this day and age, we’ve basically put together a piecemeal social contract and a part of that contract is to protect individual rights. We’ve also agreed to protect religious freedom. Fortunately for religious freedom, nobody is forcing anybody to actually take contraception.
What’s happening in the current debate is that people are simply saying that the individual right of women is just as important as religious freedom. And as with something like the Civil Rights Act, these freedoms need to be weighed against one another to some degree. With the Civil Rights Act we decided that the right of all races to be treated equally in the public and private sector outweighed the right of white people to discriminate against black people. A similar debate is going on with regards to contraception.
The administration’s compromise in all of this was to tell insurance companies that they had to act in their own best interest and provide money-saving contraception to women. It’s a win for everybody even if the end result means that workers have one less thing that bosses can hold over their heads, and that the individual rights of women come before the rights of religious employers. Not everything can be a clean win. Not everyone is going to be happy. That’s just life.
I feel the same way about the ACA in general. It didn’t fix our problems with healthcare and it may make some of those problems more entrenched, but it does move us toward something a little bit more fair and it may eventually mean that workers won’t have to depend as much on their employers for health benefits. That’s a win in my book. When we can align worker rights and worker autonomy with individual rights I think we’re moving in the right direction.
Ditto that for sexual equality.
Oh yeah, this will raise the quality of dialog around here. I support the attempt, anyway.Report
Oh I’m sorry, was I supposed to be raising the quality of dialog around here? I forget my role in all of this sometimes.Report
“…having the ability to have access to contraception is a basic individual right in today’s world.”
Well, that’s self-evident. No need to discuss. Cannot discuss what is self-evident. It just is.Report
I have a basic individual right to have sex with this woman. She has the right to say no, but hell, her uncle is a Republican congressman so she should have that right abrogated.
Report
wardsmith – this is an entirely inappropriate comment. Keep it up and I’ll exercise my right to deletion.Report
Delete away, was being a smartass. Would have been funnier if my link had made it.Report
I agree that it’s inappropriate…to have such bad taste in women.Report
… and people wonder why I consider Nailin’ Palin conservative art.Report
my winger friends love nalin palin and the entire palin porn genre. my attempts to find out why this is or whether it undercuts her position as a goper intellectual heavyweight are met with claims that i must be a homosexual.Report
haha!
I know the guy who talked the studio into doing that film. He said that they initially refused because they figured Palin-looka-likes would be doing it all over the web. He pointed out that most wingers don’t have that type of internet access (or sophistication).
… after that, a friend of his came looking for a “Palin Wig”… guess what wig she got? uhhuh (they washed it before putting it on camera again).
Report
yikes!
i did notice that once palin dropped out of the race, the pailn porn genre dropped off of the email convos i have with those guys. i fully expect it to pick back up the closer we get to the inevitability of the palin/perry v. jeb/rubio cage match brokered convention.
maybe someday lil’ grifter bristol (aka Tit Shimmy h/t TBogg) will get a movie made about her DWTS brush with fame.Report
Because they want to do to the real Palin what the male actors in that film did to the stand-in. They’re not thinking any further.
I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard of the actress in that role before.Report
depends on what it is they want to do. make sweet love down by the fire to highlight ‘murican exceptionalism or defile? the email convos tilted toward the latter.Report
TVD,
yes, it is a right. And in at least one Industrialized Country, it is a right that people approach the way Americans approached alcohol during Prohibition.
Most people around here stand against the Drug War. Do you really want to start the same thing over Birth Control Pills???
My mind shudders at the consequences. There are plenty of folks who want to ban contraception right alongside abortion — and its a really stupid idea.
Report
Kim, Griswold v Connecticut [1965] makes Mr. Kain’s assertion true on its face. Whether “access” means I or the state or the Catholic Church must buy it for you is a whole ‘nother mountain to climb—indeed the difference between negative [the state can’t stop you] and positive [the state must ensure you get it] rights.
So let’s not go all turnip truck on this—contraception is not going to be banned, not even by President Santorum.Report
Japan doesn’t ban birth control pills.
That doesn’t mean that it isn’t still profitable to smuggle them into Japan.Report
Health insurance provided by your employers is not a favor granted by the employers because they are wonderful, generous people. It’s part of the compensation package, along with your salary. So in a way, that’s YOUR money (i.e. the employees’ money) that is being used to pay for the evil, sinful contraception, not the employers’ money.Report
Health insurance provided by your employers is not a favor granted by the employers because they are wonderful, generous people. It’s part of the compensation package, along with your salary. So in a way, that’s YOUR money (i.e. the employees’ money) that is being used to pay for the evil, sinful contraception, not the employers’ money.
Employers are also relatively constrained here, because if they start offering very strange or unreliable coverage, they will have difficulty attracting new workers. Everything has to be more or less the same.
This is also why we should just pay people in money, not in kind. If everyone’s take-home pay consisted of sandwiches, you can bet the sandwich market would be craptastic too.Report
And then we’d have to hear liberals bitch about how everyone in Europe gets better sandwiches at half the price.Report
It’s entirely possible for European healthcare systems to do better by lots of different standards than our own. I think some of them do, in fact, including France’s, but not the UK’s.
This isn’t the interesting question to me, however. What I’d like to know is how much more innovation there might be, how much more competition on price, and how much more access to treatment there might be with a greater role for consumers to choose health plans based on these factors.
As things stand, most people don’t really get a choice in their health care coverage. In this it’s unlike almost any other good I can think of, unlike any other form of insurance, and not to any particular socially necessary end either. (Progressives: Corporations pick people’s health care, not the all-wise government!)
Report
This isn’t the interesting question to me, however. What I’d like to know is how much more innovation there might be, how much more competition on price, and how much more access to treatment there might be with a greater role for consumers to choose health plans based on these factors.
From whence comes this over-arching reliance on consumers’ judgement? Does the company that sells the most cheeseburgers make the best cheeseburgers? (Substitute “cars” or “novels” or whatever in that question.)
Given our (the consumers’) evident susceptibility for 30-second ads that successfully sell us everything from crappy sandwiches to crappy politicians, what makes you think that our choices, en masse, for something as complicated and esoteric as health plans will work out well?
(Best cheeseburger I ever had: Nick’s – a little diner that used to be in the shadow of the Capitol Records tower in Hollywood.)Report
From whence comes this over-arching reliance on consumers’ judgement? Does the company that sells the most cheeseburgers make the best cheeseburgers?
That’s neither required nor implicit in what I’m saying.
All I am saying — and I don’t really think we’re so far apart — is that you could never have gotten that fantastic cheesburger at Nick’s if your employer had done all your meal planning for you. Things would be even worse if he had to plan in conjunction with some remote megacorporation (McAetna’s?) that ultimately cares not the least bit about your health… err… palate.
Right now you have almost no choice. Your employer almost certainly makes all the big decisions for you, choosing off of a menu that caters to his needs, not to yours.
I’m saying that introducing some choice on your part would probably be a good idea. That’s all. If a Nick’s is going to emerge, that’s how it will happen.Report
I think it IS an overreliance on “consumer choice”.
Consumer choice is fine for consumer goods. Healthcare isn’t a consumer good and can’t possibly be.
All the factors that make up informed choice when picking a car or toaster are absent when faced with a biopsy; you don’t really understand the field no matter how frantically you Google “Cancer, WTF-do-I-do-now??” and you can’t really comparison shop or make informed choices and you MOST DEFINITELY cannot “leave the marketplace”.Report
Here’s one case where the Libertarians ought to pick up the cudgels and whale away on the perversity of employer-based insurance of any sort. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you the concept of employer-based insurance arose in response to the WW2 restrictions on wages rises at Kaiser Steel.
Why do we tolerate it as a nation? The Law of Large Numbers reveals the idiocy of employer-offered insurance. A firm with ten employees pays about twice what a firm with a hundred; the rates are governed by the Pool of Lives. The one-off health care insurance policy is a colossal rip-off.
If all the employers banded together, they could break the backs of these highly-profitable Health Insurance Scams. That’s right, scams. Big Healthco plays games with the numbers, acting as if the millions they already insure are no sure guide to rates. Conversely, Obromneycare is another good way out of this mess: if everyone’s obliged to participate, rates also go down for everyone.Report
Obromneycare
+1Report
Big Healthco is nothing but a collection of unregulated banks. What other industry do you know which gets to collect money on a regular basis (accounting calls this an annuity), invest it all in other schemes, making enormous profits thereby — but Heaven forbid you should actually attempt to make a claim. First, they won’t actually pay anything until this Deductible is first paid, as nasty a bit of Newspeak as was ever composed. Thereupon, they’ll routinely deny your claim on the first pass, (EDI 837) which requires some interesting go-arounds, ask any medical facility claims administrator about this hideous process.
And they won’t pay anything a day sooner than whatever the law requires.
But should they pay, they’ll jack up the rates on everyone else in your life pool. They’re not insurance companies. They’re unregulated banking and investment institutions. We put up with their crap because we’re too stupid to realize there’s any other way of doing it as a society and so goddamn credulous we make fun of other countries for managing this stunt effectively. And should anyone attempt to reform this process, Big Healthco will spend billions to provoke these ignorant jackasses rise to their hind legs to bray “Soshalizum!”Report
BlaiseP,
Speaking as someone who works in Big Healthco — what other industry do you have a company voluntarily following Sarbanes Oxley?
They ain’t all rotgut bastards. not all of them deny all claims.
Some are bad apples, others aren’t.
And all non-profits are required to be banks/investment companies, I think — they’ve gotta show that they’ve bankrolled in case of a drop in market usage.Report
Kim: yes they are all bastards. I’ve done five BC/BS franchises and the Association. The rulesets which govern claims denial, there are more of them than the mitzvot, are all mine. I’ve done Celtic Life which offered COBRA coverage for a few pennies a life per month, only to give a go-away policy to those who attempted to pick it up: only the terminally ill ever took it, a pure profit proposition. I’ve never seen such a huge pile of inefficiency and waste and pernicious nonsense in all my life as Big Healthco.Report
Blaise,
Believe it or not, I know people who’ve done worse… Speaking as someone who has one of the best insurances in the country, they aren’t all bad (I think we’re in the top 10-15 hospital insurances in the country — that is to say, insurances that hospitals offer their staff).
Of course, we’ve kinda taken out the “insurance sucks hospital dry” concept around here. The insurance company is the hospital, you see — so a doublebilling by the hospital is seen as an inefficiency for the entire company — as is a claim denial (to the extent that it costs the hospital money, certainly not to the extent that it costs the customer pain/time!).
You know Highmark? They’re buying hospitals too around here.
I agree we ought to regulate these non-profits like they were banks…Report
Important thing to remember – birth control pills are used to treat a variety of maladies, especially cyst formation and other hormone-related illnesses.Report
Very true.Report
This is irrelevant to both the debate in general and to E.D. Kain’s post in specificReport
The debate is about whether birth control should be covered under health insurance. This seems very relevant.Report
Agreed. Actually, it seems more relevant that ED’s initial arguments, which appeared to be “birth control is important to women” and “access to birth control is an individual right,” neither of which implies that “birth control is health care.” Lots of things that are important and lots of things that are rights are not health care. Considering that, for most women, control over fertility is about autonomy and not wellness, the fact that birth control pills can be used to treat/prevent illnesses and ailments (a pregnancy is neither of these) is very relevant to this debate. Having some legitimate therapeutic purpose, it’s hard to see how you would go about seeing to that Church-funded health insurance paid for one usage of the drug, and not the other.Report
I’m curious as to how you make such a firm distinction between autonomy and wellness. Plenty of things aren’t ailments per se but are covered by health insurance (for instance, prosthetic limbs). If you don’t want to be pregnant, then becoming so is an avoidable medical problem.Report
Also, plenty of medical procedures that involve what people want or don’t want to be true about their own bodies (say, cosmetic surgery or lasik) are not covered. I would say that health care should being with some baseline status of health, and it should treat those deviations from that status that constitute illnesses of ailments. Defining illness or ailment is, of course, subjective. I’d say a good test is the “gut” one — are we comfortable calling the condition to be remedied an illness or an ailment? If so, then the remedy constitutes health care. If not, then it doesn’t.
The plasticity of these boundaries is an issue, though, as demonstrated by the recent dust-up over Komen and Planned Parenthood. I would wager that part of the reason PP offers things are more clearly “health care” (like referrals for breast cancer screenings) is to gain the rhetorical advantage of being able to group its more controversial services under an intentionally ambiguous heading of “women’s health services.” In other words, it associates things that we all agree are health care (being free from breast cancer) with things that we don’t agree are health care (being free from pregnancy,) for the purpose of implying that they’re all the same.Report
I don’t think unanimity should be the standard for what counts as health care. HHS made the right call in requiring contraceptive coverage (setting aside the issue of religious freedom for now, as you seem to be broadening the argument to whether it should be covered for anyone). Contraceptive use is extremely widespread, has a significant cost, and helps avoid a medical condition that people frequently don’t want. To exclude it from coverage altogether because of the moral disagreement of a small group of people (people who actually morally disapprove of contraception) is giving way too much deference to the concerns of a few over the needs of the many.Report
I’m not suggesting unanimity be the standard, either. I’m just saying that we’re going to make a distinction, and one intuitive criterion to make that distinction would be around issues of illness, which are subject to greater consensus about definitions.Report
I don’t think that works, though. I consider both A and B to be health conditions that are worthy of being covered under insurance; you consider only A to be such a condition. Given that, it’s not intuitive at all, to me, to “compromise” on only covering A.Report
I’m going to do something I probably shouldn’t and take this seriously, because I think you honestly misunderstand my post, and for reasons that I give a damn about correcting.
“The debate is about whether birth control should be covered under health insurance. This seems very relevant.”
The debate is about birth control. Not “alternate pharmaceutical uses for the hormones delivered by birth-control pills”. Unless you think that we should use the Medical Marijuana excuse to get around the restriction (I’m not trying to avoid pregnancy, I just have a hormone-related illness!)Report
As I understand it, using the pills for either reason is identical–that is, it would be impossible to ban their use for pregnancy-prevention but allow their use for cyst-prevention. So yes, non-birth-control uses of the same product are absolutely relevant as to whether that product should be covered by health insurance.Report
“it would be impossible to ban their use for pregnancy-prevention but allow their use for cyst-prevention.”
This is almost certainly false.
My wife had a terrible eye twitch that did not respond to any treatments. Eventually, the docotr told her the only way to get rid of it was with botox. It wasn’t easy. We needed the correct diagnosis, and we had to appeal to the insurance company. Eventually, it got covered. It would NOT have been covered for cosmetic purposes.
This is fairly standard. The doctor cannot prescribe Lipitor because you think it’s delicious with roast beef. It would not get covered. But he can cover it for coronary issues, in which case it will be covered.Report
It’s not irrelevant. The Catholic Church isn’t opposed to all uses of birth control pills, so it’s worth thinking about 1) the extent to which a mandate to purchase these pills requires, from the Church’s standpoint, proximate material cooperation with evil and 2) whether these other uses give an opening for Catholics to follow the mandate in good conscience. Now maybe these “morally licit” uses don’t provide such an opening–that, I assume, would be the conclusion of the bishops–but the uses are nonetheless relevant to a moral analysis.Report
I’ve been following all the debate over this only generally (awfully busy in rl) but I would note that if this is a hill the GOP/Bishops/Conservatives decide to fight on I suspect they’re going to die on it. Contraception is enormously supported by the public in general and women specifically and while one can try and make it a religious freedom arguement it requires more words, explanation and logical leaps than your average voter is going to be willing to indulge in. Politically putting this to bed is a no-brainer.Report
No-brainer meet no-brain.Report
Well….. I can’t blame the Bishops for fighting it. Of course they would, it’s their job, did we really expect anything else from them? The GOP, on the other hand ….Report
Are they being denied access?
I thought that they were just not having the money to pay for it automatically withdrawn.Report
I’m pretty sure the issues is having healthcare plans that do not cover it. Which does indeed result in a lack of access.Report
Is it available without a healthcare plan? If so, I don’t see how “access” is denied.Report
Yeah, are we going to have a long, drawn-out argument about the definition of “access” or should we preempt that by agreeing to disagree?Report
Well, it certainly seems to me that if I am not preventing you from doing something that you could do if you chose to do it, then I am not denying you access.
The three phrases here:
1. I am going to give you X
2. I am not going to give you X but if you want X, you can buy it
3. I am going to prevent you from buying X
Off off the top of my head, only 3 qualifies as me denying access. I honestly don’t understand how 2 is a denial of access even if 1 was a cultural expectation.Report
Can you find a reason why a poll tax denies access to the vote using this rubric?Report
Unless I can instantaneously teleport from my workplace to the polling place, and time travel so that I return at the exact instant I left, then voting is going to cost me money, in terms of time to do it and fuel (or bus fare) to travel there.Report
So a poll tax doesn’t deny anyone access to voting? Is that your position?Report
If you say that “voting has a cost” denies people access to voting, then you’re making cost be an issue. So unless you’re going to subsidize people’s trips to the polling place, then you support a de facto poll tax.
Unless you’re going to argue that black people all have jobs that give them as much ad hoc time off from work as they need to vote, and guarantee that they’ll be paid for the time it takes them to get to the polling place and back.Report
So we should try and minimize this cost by (for instance) extending early voting, and/or making election day a national holiday. I don’t think many liberals would have a problem with that.Report
Please do not mistake tolerance for support.
There’s precious little I can do to repeal opportunity cost, although Mr. Miller proposes a few ways of reducing it that I would support.Report
There’s a difference between unavoidable costs and actively working to increase costs for the same act. C’mon.Report
I believe that the poll tax were found to be Unconstitutional because a vote was deemed a Constitutional Right.
This does raise an interesting question, though.
Does Medicaid cover Birth Control? (To be honest, I’d be shocked if it didn’t.)
Report
That’s not the question I asked. Does the poll tax deny anyone access to the vote? Whether voting is a constitutional right hardly matters when you answer that question.
As to the second: Medicaid is a state-run program. The individual states choose whether or not to extend coverage. I believe 22 of them cover it. If your position is that making access to birth control a requirement of Medicaid would be superior to all this, I won’t disagree.Report
I’m sure that the poll tax did deny people the vote. I believe that that was the point of it… and given that voting was an established Constitutional Right, we had a significant issue there.
Which seems different from asking people to pay for synthetic hormone pills (or depo shots or norplant impants).Report
If same-sex marriage is a Constitutional right, then obviously birth control should be as well.Report
Ah, I knew it was only a matter of time before you would find a way to let us all know that you don’t think discrimination is a big deal.Report
What’s next, you’ll ask him when he stopped beating his wife?Report
Would criminalizing a behavior prevent access? I mean, you can still do it… you just might go to jail.
Is preventing access only the case if someone follows you around and physically restrains you any time you try to access something?Report
It seems odd to say that I am prevented access from Snickers bars.
But there we are.Report
Does someone follow you around and hogtie you when you get near that chocolately, peanuty bar of goodness?Report
Is that what is happening to women???
Let me be clear: I oppose that.Report
If the majority of the public thought you should have access to “free” Snickers bars, and Congress passed a law requiring your employer to provide them, and your employer refused, I would call that denial of access.
This is precisely why I asked about the poll tax instead of something like Snickers bars: because I suspect what motivates your position here is the belief that birth control isn’t very important. Let’s have that debate if that’s the actual debate we’re having.Report
The vote is free like in speech.
You’re talking about birth control which would be free like in beer.Report
Wait, are you now saying I shouldn’t have access to free beer? You’ve finally gone and made this personal.Report
Autonomy with ones own body seems closer to free speech…Report
For the record, if we wanted to somehow make Birth Control a public utility, I would support that.
Imagine how much poverty we could eliminate!Report
If it’s not covered on your plan, then you have to pay full price, which can be the difference between $10-30 and $80-100 – per month. Depending on your financial circumstances, that can result in a lack of access.Report
Is that really the same thing as “denial of access”?
There are a great many things that I realize I do not have access to that, before, I thought I merely couldn’t afford.
Report
Yes. you are specifically denied access to the runway, without going through TSA, if you are unwilling to shell out the $500 for a plane (and a lesson).Report
It seems to me that “we will send people who have authorization to shoot you dead if you try this” is different than “pay for it yourself”.Report
So pay for it yourself is okay if it’s $10, but not if it’s $500? I unno, I’m not really staking a position here. Just pondering…Report
Obviously we wouldn’t mind if it cost $10/month and they took $3/week out of everybody’s paychecks, right?
So we agree that there is a price point at which we do not see this as a “rights” issue, correct?Report
I suppose this is true of all meds. If my insurance doesn’t cover the chemo that costs a few hundred k, they haven’t denied me access, just coverage. If I can’t afford the doctor to prescribe the chemo and my insurance doesn’t cover, do I still have access to the meds?Report
@Chris, Chemo doesn’t cost “a few hundred K”, the entire /regimen/ costs that, and that includes the oncologists, the labs, the testing, the monitoring and so on. Not to mention that nastier cancers in stage 4 are simply not worth fighting in the vast majority of cases and the “few hundred k” is obviously wasted (not to mention the deleterious effect on the patient’s quality of life in the meantime).
I think we’re in the weeds concerning the cost of the pill. Assuming the ob/gyn only costs $60 or so co-pay, the medicine is the least of it. More to the point is whether there truly is anything left “sacred” to a church body? The state has been encroaching on this ground for decades, they certainly aren’t going to stop here. If Obama’s secret polling shows that his numbers with women have actually gone up because of this, expect to see much much more.Report
More to the point is whether there truly is anything left “sacred” to a church body?
Of course.Report
I think you missed the point.Report
“More to the point is whether there truly is anything left “sacred” to a church body?”
They’re still free to discriminate against women in the work-place, against homosexuals in general (as to places of worship, not semi-public places) and to rape young children.
I’m sorry, was that last too inflamitory for you?Report
Not a bit Jeff. Don’t you agree that it is a “right” that all women are entitled to 42 DD breast augmentation at least?Report
If people can interpret making it illegal to not buy insurance as “fixing healthcare”, then I can certainly see how they’d call not subsidizing something “denial”.Report
i find it instructive that a large percentage of Catholic women find their health and ability to choose how to protect their health to be more important than church dogma.Report
Instructive about what, and to whom? The “dogma” in question constitutes the professed belief of the Church, and many of those beliefs are protected by the First Amendment. Maybe their belief shouldn’t be respected in this case, but if not, it wouldn’t go be because some portion of the adherents of a Church do not follow that directive, even if that portion is “large.” As a matter of fact, observant Catholics break the Church’s dictates all the time — moreover, the Church knows about it and expects it to happen. That’s why masses often include penitential rites, and why most parishes offer Reconciliation services every week, while excommunications remain rare in most locales.Report
instructive as to whether the church’s dogma is the tail or the dog. its the tail. instructive as to the wisdom of imposing a dogma that is not respected (to use your term) by the practicioners of the religion.
your observation regarding adherence to dogma is central to my point (how goldbergian of me!) they know it, expect it to happen, but argue that the dogma is sacrosanct. only when they need it to be.Report
As to your first point, the Church has the right to declare what its dogma shall be, regardless of whether or not any particular definition would be unwise, given what 51% of its adherents believe, The Church is not a democracy, and its undemocratic declarations still have Constitutional protection — the popularity of those declarations, even among their own members, not withstanding. That’s the difference having a right to practice a religion and being granted a privilege to do so (the former can’t be revoked, no matter if someone else doesn’t like what you do with it.)
From a moral perspective, If the Church is to have a purpose at all, apart from merely being a barometer for the sentiments of its adherents, it should stake out clear moral principles and stick to them. Any organization that claims to represent eternal truths can do no less.
On your second point, I don’t understand what you mean by “sacrosanct.” Accepting that people sin, and offering them forgiveness for it, does not imply that you actually think that sinful behavior is acceptable — just the opposite, in fact. And we don’t usually force the Church to positively promote/subsidize anything else that they consider sinful, and with good reason.Report
from a practical perspective, staking out clear moral principles which do not reflect the views and practices of its constituency is a losing proposition. further, using the existence of the clear moral pricinciples that few follow or care about as a lever to undo policy which affects more than just the church or its consituents is an even stupider proposition. i hope their ideological purity is enough because eventually it will be all they have.
i’m about to get kicked out for discussing the practical perspective, aren’t i? oh well.Report
Also worth noting – the Catholic Health Association – the arm of the Church that actually runs hospitals, clinics, etc. is just fine with the compromise.
As long as we have a system where employers provide health care, what medical care a woman receives is between her and her doctor, not her and her boss. Period. End of story.
Report
Mr. Knapp, the Catholic Health Association is not the end of story. Sister Carol Keehan is a longtime Obamite tool and her org doesn’t speak for the Church by a longshot.
http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/what-did-catholic-health-associations-sister-carol-know-and-when-did-she-kn/Report
99Report
Boyo, I wouldn’t leave leading comments like that….Report
Sister Keehan’s taken a different interpretation of healthcare policy than the bishops, and also taken positions contrary to theirs, but I wouldn’t call her an Obamite tool. After all, she opposed the HHS mandate before the accommodation.Report
Sr. Keehan undercut her bishops during the Stupak charade as well, Kyle.
http://www.examiner.com/obama-administration-in-new-york/association-of-catholic-hospitals-breaks-with-catholic-bishops-on-healthcare
Now she’s given approval to BHO’s phony compromise although the bishops haven’t. “Obamite tool” is accurate.Report
We should definitely side with the men who endorsed and encouraged the molestation of children here and not the icky nun and her icky apparent disloyalty and her icky lady parts that at least have something to do with the medicine that we’re discussing.Report
Adults side with ideas, not persons, sir.Report
Except that you keep pointing out that nobody should side with Sr. Keehan (a person) because she’s allegedly loyal to Obama (a person) and should instead stick with Bishops (all of them persons).Report
No, Sam, I said Sr. Keehan cannot speak for the church in disagreement with Mr. Knapp
the Catholic Health Association – the arm of the Church that actually runs hospitals, clinics, etc. is just fine with the compromise.
The CHA is not exactly an “arm” of the church. The bishops are, but hey even they’re not the Pope and do not speak ex cathedra.
She can say what she wants, of course. Perhaps God agrees with her, not the bishops. But Sr. Keehan has overstepped in the past in similar fashion, inserting herself in the Stupak controversy.
Now that’s the part I’m not good with. I saw Rep. Stupak on CSPAN and he seemed a really decent guy. I think he got fooled by Obama and I think Sr. Keehan is a useful idiot with all that entails. I wouldn’t give you 2 cents for her and her opinions, and she really has no place in this controversy or the Stupak one.
I’m not quite siding with the bishops on the contraception issue, either, only that they have a 1st Amendment right to resist the state’s coercion. I hope that clarifies things, Sam, and why dragging in the pedophilia scandal just clouds the waters.
First the Obama administration managed to alienate both its liberal supporters and its religious critics by pushing and then pulling back its HHS contraception mandate. Now the White House has succeeded in hitting the political sour spot yet again by producing a compromise designed to placate the Catholic bishops…without consulting the Catholic bishops.
Sr. Keehan needs to butt out. She has no standing here.
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/02/14/white-house-flubs-contraception-compromise/
Report
I apologize for “clouding the waters” with details that bring into question the Catholic Bishops alleged moral standing although I would argue that you are attempting to do exactly the same thing by referencing Sr. Keehan’s previous positions. You’re painting her as a disloyal soldier in the Catholic army and dismissing her opinion as a result; I’m arguing that we can dismiss the opinion of elderly virgins who actively encouraged the molestation of children. What we’re doing is, in other words, no different.Report
It seems to me she has all the standing in the world to speak for herself, whatever clout that entails. Who says she need to butt out? I suppose the bishops can say that, if they believe it. You think you have standing to determine that, Tom? I’d love to see where she claims to speak for the Church.
As the expert quoted in the Register report suggests, it’s the Church needs to get its house in order (as I’ve been suggesting it’s trying to do).
This whole exchange stemmed from a misreading of Mr. Knapp’s initial comment, in which his statement that, “As long as we have a system where employers provide health care, what medical care a woman receives is between her and her doctor, not her and her boss. Period. End of story.” was made pursuant to his own views, on his own authority, whatever its worth. He wasn’t saying the validity of that statement had anything to do with Keehan’s views or public positions. Again, I’d love to see a cite to where Carol Keehan claims to be speaking for the Church. Whether she’s crossed any lines drawn for her by her church in giving her own views and what should be done about it if so – and whether she needs to butt out – is really not for us to say. Who are we to say that?
None of this is to say she isn’t an Obamite tool. (Obama does get to have, you know, people on his side, after all; allies.) But if she’s an Obamite tool she’s still an Obamite tool with all the right to speak as far as anyone here can dictate. If the USCCB claims to have or believes it has some claim on some part of her right to say some things publicly, they’ll have to say so themselves or figure out a way to enforce that or something. And that still wouldn’t mean she wouldn’t have the right to breach that restriction and speak as far as we’re concerned. That’s their affair.Report
Yes, the good Sister, who represents a group that actually delivers healthcare, should butt out.She has no standing to discuss healthcare for women.
The male Bishops, who are celibate and unmarried, should absolutely be the leading voice in the discussion about healthcare for women.Report
+1 to that.Report
+2Report
You have the wrong premises, Lib60. This is between the church and the state and really has nothing to do contraception itself. It’s the church’s religious liberty at stake here under the First Amendment and the bishops speak for the Church, at least far more than she.
And the whole “females have greater weight” arg is bogus, and has no weight anywhere except places like this.Report
And the whole “females have greater weight” arg is bogus, and has no weight anywhere except places like this.
Every time you say something like this, I get to remember what a clown you are. Thanks.Report
Tom – which of your treatments can we give women dominion over?Report
+1 to that last paragraph.Report
Well put Alex.Report
As ubiquitous as it is, I would’ve thought the pill would be available as cheap generic by now. Why is it still expensive enough where women even need to use insurance to pay for it?Report
Because not everyone has access to Wal-Mart, I guess.Report
I don’t have a walmart within city borders. getting to a walmart is possible this year, but may be completely impossible next year, using public transportation.Report
As I’ve explained to you multiple times in multiple threads, every women’s reproductive system is different and as a result, not every woman can use the cheap birth control bills you can get from Walgreens/CVS/Wal-Mart/Target.Report
And the ones who can’t, use condoms. “oh my god how can you SAY THAT” the same way that I can say that rationing is going to be part of any healthcare price-assistance system. Unless your argument is that everything everyone might need should be covered by the system.Report
DD,
this assumes that every woman wants to be fully conscious/have sex with a condom-clad male. Judging by the hordes of people heading to frat parties…
I’m relatively okay with the use of PlanB as a substitute for hormonal regulation.
But saying “use condoms” is actively removing agency from the woman — and in a lot more situations than you might expect.Report
I’m well aware that “use condoms if you can’t afford the pills you want” limits the options of the woman.
If I can’t afford the supplies for my insulin pump, then I need to go back to long-acting combination shots, which means that I need to eat on a very specific schedule or my blood sugar crashes. This strongly limits my options for life, both in that I need to ensure I have a supply of food on my person at all times, and in that I need to plan my entire day’s schedule in advance.
Is it society’s obligation to ensure that I receive all the needed supplies for my insulin pump, so that I get the same options as a non-diabetic person?Report
Yes. Next question?Report
+1Report
Jesse, why is that? Why aren’t insulin injections good enough?Report
Because paying for the second-best solution to a problem is idiotic when the best solution is easier, simpler, and has a better cost-benefit ratio? This isn’t a decision between experimental cancer drugs that cost $50,000/shot or regular chemotherapy where both solutions have the same chance of working.Report
So it’s your contention that better should always be provided if available, at no increased cost to the end user over an acceptable solution?Report
Yes, I believe the best possible health care should be available to every American, regardless of income level, based on the decision of doctor’s and health care professionals through a single-payer health care plan.Report
“based on the decision of doctor’s and health care professionals”
Meaning that no, I don’t have an inherent right to an insulin pump. I have an inherent right to whatever “doctors and health care professionals” think is “the best possible” thing. And “how much does it cost” is going to be a part of how those people determine what’s possible.Report
Society, not being an actual moral being, cannot actually have obligations in any meaningful sense.Report
If corporations can be people, societies can have obligations.Report
On that note…has anyone asked Romney in response to that remark whether unions are people?Report
In other words, government monopoly grants (aka “patents”) hold prices up for most. Figured as much.Report
Or because different women have different needs, healthwise. But yknow, whatever – it’s not your body so why be anything but glib?Report
Because different birth controls affect different hormones differently. It can be somewhat dangerous to use the wrong one, or it can be ineffective, or it can have other side effects. Unlike condoms, it’s not really a one size fits all (anti-pun intended) solution.Report
My wife can’t use birth control. At least none of the ones available to her through her insurance. Her family has a history of blood clotting issues and most, though not all, pills complicate this. She was on them for a while with no ill effect, but decided it wasn’t worth the risk. Plus, being married now (just past the 6 month mark), it’s not like we have sex anyway.
She does explain that she has more problems with acne since coming off the medication. The pill’s effects are wide reaching.Report
We should obviously therefore ban your wife for unconstitutionally denying a woman’s right to birth control. (bah-DOOMP)Report
Technically, she has no reported problems with clotting… just her family. If you want to ban her family, be my guest!Report
Threadwinner, right here folks.Report
50 years from now we’ll look back and this thread and laugh sourly.Report
Or maybe cry bitter tears…I’m not as optimistic as you, Pat.Report
I’m not a very optimistic guy in the short range. Long term, yeah. But I’m an ex-mathematician, “long term” is… well, pretty long.Report
I can’t get enough of seeing a thread populated overwhelmingly by males debating something that they’ll never take. It is amazing the degree to which men assume that women’s health is something that they should have a say in, as if women are sitting around denying men various forms of health care via legislative fiat.
That’s before we even get to the fact that birth control is used to treat a wide variety of maladies which men know literally nothing about (like painful and irregular menstruation, the creation of cysts, etc). Or the fact that a bunch of ridiculously elderly virgins (the Catholic Bishops) are being allowed to speak about this issue as if they have a clue in the world what they’re discussing. For people concerned with liberty, which many of the commenters here claim to be, you certainly seem to prioritize the liberty of people who have no goddamned idea what they’re talking about than the people who would be genuinely affected by this legislative nonsense.
Meanwhile, if the same thing was proposed for medication you required for whatever reason, your heads would explode at the injustice of it.Report
I got my vasectomy. I am therefore allowed to have opinions on birth control.
I can provide the note that I got from Planned Parenthood stating as much later, if you’d like.
(The “proof of vasectomy” demonstration was embarrassing, I’ll have you know. The note made it worth it, though.)Report
NB: I think that give out those notes if you make a donation to them, as well. That makes you a “citizen in good standing” instead of a non-person.Report
How much did that vasectomy cost you out pocket?Report
This is one of those weird things where, I presume, men who agree with X are not questioned whether they have standing to have an opinion on X… only the men who disagree with X.
I’m of the opinion that if men who disagree with X shouldn’t have an opinion on X (and I’m okay with that idea) then men who agree with X are *EQUALLY IRRELEVANT*.
(This falls under my “meta-opinion” rule which states that even if I am not allowed to have an opinion on X, I am allowed to have an opinion on whether I am allowed to have an opinion on X.)Report
My opinion conjoins your position, because I’m not proposing to make health care decisions for women. Only those opposed to contraception are.Report
I’m *PRO* contraception!
I look at you people and I wish there had been a lot more of it!
The question is whether I am pro-contraception to the point where I think that the government should force people to take it and I am not.
I think that people should make the decisions to take contraception *THEMSELVES*, without my input one way or the other.Report
This is in no way the question. The government is in no way forcing anyone to use contraception.Report
In that vein, I’d like to ask if anyone has argued in support of preventing women from taking contraception.
Because arguing against the positions I’ve seen people argue as if they’re arguing that women should be prevented from taking contraception seems about as off-base as arguing against the position supporting policy is one that will force them to take it.Report
Not including it in a healthcare policy serves to prevent its use. Not as much as an outright ban, but that is not at issue here.Report
If you’re not for it, you’re against it?
Report
Wait… Are you suggesting those that don’t want it offered in insurance plans aren’t against it? I thought the whole deal (by those that sounded the trumpets) was that it was a moral infringement of something they thought should be forbidden.Report
Given that almost all of the people who happen to be up in arms actually take it in the privacy of their own homes? I think that there is something else going on.
I think the problem is one of whether the Catholic Hospitals that heretofore had not been forced to provide such can continue to not provide such (and allow their employees to buy it in town).
(Unless, of course, we’re talking about places that threaten their employees who chose to use birth control with termination… was that an issue at any point? For the record, I consider that a violation of privacy.)
Report
Then, they’re really for birth control? If they have no truck with it, what is the issue?Report
For my part, it’s that I see the difference between
I have no problem with the middle one but I do have the problem with the first one being painted as being identical to support for X or that the last two are effectively identical.
I support letting people take medicinal marijuana (or recreational, hell!) if they wanted.
I object to being forced to pay for it. And I object to my being okay with letting people do it if they want to with their own money as being painted as being identical to support for prohibition.Report
Oh, I get that. I just don’t get why you think the the bishops opposing this aren’t doing it because they’re anti-contraception.
They may have a point, and they may be right, and maybe the government has no right to make them pay for it. But this whole it’s not an anti-contraception thing? I’m not seeing where you’re getting that from.
Like your own example, there are a lot of people i know that take prescription drugs that are anti-medical marijuana. You can wrap any theoretical argument for why one might be pro drug and not want people prescribing medical marijuana that isn’t anti- medical marijuana; but that doesn’t change the fact that those that fight it do so because they’re against medical marijuana.Report
@ Tod,
The bishops and their supporters among the laity are morally against birth control, yes, and that antagonism undoubtedly fuels their opposition to the mandate, but the pressing issue for them is being forced to materially cooperate in something the deem immoral. Why? Because, according to their way of thinking, this material cooperation is itself immoral.Report
And if they’re fighting to make birth control illegal, expect me on the front line.
From what I understand, they weren’t doing something yesterday, they were told that they had to start doing it tomorrow, they said “no, we don’t want to change”, and we’re acting like they’re changing a policy when, really, they’re just not changing it the way we want them to.
They aren’t preventing their employees from taking birth control but just saying that they don’t want to change their policy from what it was yesterday. Talk to a guy on a military base and ask him if his FSO has the same opinion on MMJ.Report
The “material support” nonsense is a logical nonstarter. The moment you hire someone who doesn’t match your preferred moral standards, you’re providing material support to their lifestyle. End of story. No amount of attempted contortions by the Bishops or the Church can actually change the fact that they’re working from fallacious logic.
If they are truly actually concerned with “material support” they would have invasive checks for lifestyle choices they consider immoral in all their employees. To complain otherwise when the issue at question isn’t actually forced provision, but the taking away of a tax shelter (let’s not confuse the two) isn’t a free exercise or conscience question. It’s one of them wanting the state to privilege their beliefs over others. It’s nonsense. And the more mincing I hear about this “material support” stuff, the less sympathy I have for their position.Report
Some days I wonder if Hideyoshi wasn’t right about Catholicism…Report
It’s not moral nonsense, Nob, but it may help your understanding of the Church’s position to know that it recognizes that not all forms of material cooperation with evil are immoral. I think you’re running on the idea that the Church condemns all material cooperation with evil, but that’s not the case. Paying taxes and voting, for example, entail material cooperation with evil, but the cooperation here is remote enough and the reasons for doing these acts proportionally good enough to justify them. Proximate material cooperation with evil, which I take it is how the bishops view having healthcare policies that cover contraceptives, would, however, be immoral in this analysis.Report
The moment you start making proximate value judgments about the “degrees of separation” between you and the moral support for “evil” (scare quotes intentional, because I don’t see a lot of evil about contraception) then you’re in territory that admits you’re on shaky logical foundations and morally bankrupt.
But let’s take a big hypothetical here.
Should a Catholic institution hire an LGBT person who serves as the breadwinner of a single earner household?
Or a single Jewish woman living with her unemployed boyfriend and having lots of premarital sex?
In both cases the “proximate material support” for what the Bishops would consider sinful and immoral behavior would be substantially greater than providing health insurance which may or may not be used for birth control and doesn’t matter a wit because every other plan available on the market has to cover birth control, too. By paying people and allowing them to even have a particular lifestyle, it’s a very DIRECT material support.
Would they argue then, that they should terminate all single people living in sin with their significant others from Catholic institutions? What if they’re also gay?
The fact that they don’t, either shows a lack of moral clarity (which isn’t surprising from an institution that regularly covers up sexual abuse of minors) or inconsistency. Either way, we’re reduced to the argument that the “proximate material support” argument is nonsensical and just conveniently used to bash women’s reproductive health rights.Report
The acts of hiring people to do jobs not related to their lifestyles do not entail proximate material cooperation with those lifestyles.
Now, if I were a school principal and I hired a known bigot to teach children a subject matter that pertains to his bigotry, and he instructed the children to be bigots, then I’d say you’d have a case for accusing me of proximate material cooperation with bigotry, even if I didn’t intend for the students to learn bigoted ideas. I’d be morally culpable, no?Report
That didn’t hold up very well, EDK, esp since use/demand is already @ about 99%.
There are other facts here that must be contended with before one has a genuine rebuttal, such as religious freedom under RFRA. I don’t think you can make “compelling interest” stick and you need to.
The birth-control coverage mandate violates the First Amendment’s bar against the “free exercise” of religion. But it also violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. That statute, passed unanimously by the House of Representatives and by a 97-3 vote in the Senate, was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1993. It was enacted in response to a 1990 Supreme Court opinion, Employment Division v. Smith.
That case limited the protections available under the First Amendment’s guarantee of free exercise of religion to those government actions that explicitly targeted religious practices, by subjecting them to difficult-to-satisfy strict judicial scrutiny. Other governmental actions, even if burdening religious activities, were held subject to a more deferential test.
The 1993 law restored the same protections of religious freedom that had been understood to exist pre-Smith. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act states that the federal government may “substantially burden” a person’s “exercise of religion” only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person “is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest” and “is the least restrictive means of furthering” that interest.
Report
The entirety of the Catholic hierarchy believes women shouldn’t take birth control. Much of the Evangelical movement believes that birth control usage should be prevented by law (see “personhood” amendments). So yes, the people opposed to this legislation do so at least in part because it would make it (much more) difficult for women to gain access to birth control.Report
Much of the Evangelical movement believes that birth control usage should be prevented by law (see “personhood” amendments).
Um. Those are about abortion.
Which, if you want to call it “birth control” I suppose you’re technically correct but please understand that I am spectacularly unmoved by the framing.Report
They are not entirely about abortion. Because they declare that the moment of conception is the point at which life begins, much birth control that prevents implantation would be banned under those amendments.
I wonder, frankly, how many of us really understand the varieties of birth control and how they ACTUALLY work. My guess, including myself, is not many.Report
“It is amazing the degree to which men assume that women’s health is something that they should have a say in.”
It’s the state that has made health care a part of public policy, and this is a republic. If the question is, “In a republic, should all citizens have a say in public policy?” my answer to that would be an emphatic “yes.”Report
Oh right – it’s the nation’s fault you’re proposing to make health care decisions for women, not your own.Report
Um, yes. If you don’t want health care to be a matter of public policy, then privatize it completely. Then, neither I nor any other man would have a say in the agreements reached between a woman and her doctor.
What you can’t do is say that I have a responsibility to pay for health care, but no right to say what health care entails. Either it’s a public matter, or it isn’t,Report
And, while we’re at it — the nation isn’t the state.Report
Umm, no. Nobody forces you to believe that you should make health care decisions for women. Nobody. You’re voluntarily deciding that your opinion about women’s health is important enough to voice; I’m arguing that perhaps you ought to leave women’s health to women in the same way that men’s health is left to men. There is no medical treatment that is specifically men-only which women create entire movements to gain dominion over.
That you’d actually go so far as to declare (or at least imply) that contraception doesn’t count as health care indicates the degree to which you’re committed to not understanding women or women’s health. And who exactly is forcing YOU to pay for it? What model are we arguing about? Are you a Catholic priest? Are you a Catholic bishop?Report
I’m sure it doesn’t matter to you, but I’m actually supportive of contraception and abortion rights. And, I was discussing this very matter of what constitutes health care with another commenter above — my position is that the right to access contraception and abortion are important, but that doesn’t make them health care.
One solution to this whole mess would be for the state to provide these things, independent of health organizations of any kind. Then, of course, we would have to have a public debate about that. Unless we’re willing to stipulate that having access to these things constitute Constitutionally-protected rights (which may be the right thing to do, in the end) then they are subject to ordinary legislative processes and ordinary norms of democratic debate. If not, then I don’t see why there should be a special rule that certain segments of the population are simply excluded from the discussion (unless, of course, they “really care” about women’s health, or have “really thought about it,” in which case they’ll have the “right position” in the discussion, anyway.)Report
Charles, I know what you wrote. Here it is:
Considering that, for most women, control over fertility is about autonomy and not wellness, the fact that birth control pills can be used to treat/prevent illnesses and ailments (a pregnancy is neither of these) is very relevant to this debate.
I have no idea what you’re basing this claim about autonomy versus wellness on. I assume its your own biases, but maybe you have some data that indicates that the majority of women taking birth control are simply doing so to remain not pregnant and not for any other reason (like endometriosis or anything else mentioned here, things I’d wager you know absolutely nothing about). Even if they are though, you do understand that pregnancy can pose legitimate health risks to the mother, right? That there are women who will miscarry. That there are women prone to ectopic pregnancies. Yet even for them you declare based that the taking of contraception isn’t “health care.”
I have never proposed a rule that excludes men from this discussion. I have simply observed that there is something awfully disconcerting about men taking a position of dominion over women and women’s health care when there is no example worth discussing of women en masse doing the same thing to men.
Do you take any medications on a regular basis?Report
I understand completely that there are plenty of good rationales for declaring either access to abortion or contraception to be health care. And I never said that they aren’t health care — the whole reason I considered the therapeutic aspects of these drugs to be interesting was precisely because I thought that to be more relevant to the question (are these things health care?) than the mere fact that people find these things to be important. And, ED’s OP brought up the issue of whether these things are health care implicitly, because he seemed to be arguing that they are health care, by virtue of the fact that they are important to women. I may have misread that, but that argument seemed odd, and that’s where my concern was coming from.
My point is that having introduced these issues into the public sphere, we’re going to make some distinction, as part of a democratic process, and that an alternative process (e.g., some expert-approved, technocratic definition of health care, that allows elected officials to duck these sorts of question) is untenable. A more tenable solution to these issues would be the one I mentioned above, which would be to argue that access to these things are (or should be) protected Constitutional rights. And, again, I might be in favor of that. Failing that, though, they are matters of ordinary legislation — I care about these matters because I’m a citizen.
I also have to say that I don’t really care for having my motives impuned based on that fact that I have an opinion on something, or even that I hold a particular opinion on a subject. Nor do I care to be insulted and declared to be stupid, ignorant or mentally ill based on the fact that I like to push on the philosophical foundations of some of the claims that are being made in the public discourse about this. People can disagree in good faith, and that’s what I’m doing.Report
I can’t get enough of seeing a thread populated overwhelmingly by males debating something that they’ll never take.
I can’t handle it anymore, honestly. And I can’t even believe that this is a controversial topic in 2012.Report
I try to stay out of these. I know full well that I practice the ultimate form of birth control: I’m gay.
In light of that, I wouldn’t dare legislate against contraception. The truth is, I adore contraception. Knock yourselves out.Report
If you worked for a Catholic hospital, would that be forcing the church to pay for birth control?
(Not that I want to imply you pay for sex, although you’re married so you kind of do.)Report
…Ryan, you owe me a new keyboard.Report
Dear god, tell me it’s because you spilled a drink on it.Report
+1
(To this whole sub-thread, really)Report
“I can’t get enough of seeing a thread populated overwhelmingly by males debating something that they’ll never take.”
What’s your opinion on Viagra?Report
That it should only be prescribed after men have 12 separate proctology exams using no fewer than three fingers at a time.Report
You’re trying to get them hard, not make them gay.Report
So our healthcare system is all screwed up for innumerable reasons like the fact that we have to get insurance from our employers.
This isn’t entirely true.
You can get insurance, on your own, by buying a policy from an insurance company.
The problem is that employer based health care has become an ~expected~ part of employee compensation. And because insurance companies can make a lot of money on group rates, they find ways to spread costs out over that group and thus offer policies at a lower price to them than they would to individuals, making it more expensive to go it alone than through your company.
However, as the laws currently stand you can still get insurance on your own….
Report
Fair enough.
Your expected utility for pursuing health insurance outside the framework of employer/employee relationship is quite a bit lower, which is more or less Erik’s point 😉Report
Yep and ultimately more fixable.
I believe that if we’re going to talk about the market deciding how to finance healthcare reform then we should let the market decide. And that means divorcing employment from insurance. The idea that employers MUST provide it is not tenable long term (and might not be constitutional in its own right). There’s a better fix in trying to get more exchanges and groups and to get the insurance companies to provide more private plans.
Sadly I don’t have an concrete solutions other than to beat the drum that what we’re doing now isn’t working and the plan we’re following won’t fix it either. It just keeps kicking the can…
Report
Well, the contraception mandate is literally a plot by the Devil to undermine morality. Obama just wants to silence the Church’s voice. The power of evil, the devil, is certainly looking everywhere where the power of evil can make a difference. And that’s why Christians have got to stand up and violently oppose this. We cannot let darkness overshadow us.
How do I know this? A Bishop told me so. “Violently oppose this”. From a Catholic Bishop. I guess that whole “turn the other cheek” thing is just a suggestion.
ShariaCatholic law trumps all.Report
I wonder why we don’t just let the people who know the issues best make decisions we all have to abide by, with no exceptions. Like with healthcare — if we just pick 12 healthcare experts and let them make all the decisions, then it won’t be so confusing.Report