All student health care plans covering female college students in the United States must include coverage for free voluntary sterilization surgery, the Department of Health and Human Services announced late Friday afternoon.
Women of college age who do not attend school will also get free sterilization coverage whether they are insured through an employer, their parents, or some form of government-subsidized plan.
Can't have them going around and re-pro-DU-cing, can we now? After all, feral college women ....well, ....you know.....
don't think too much of "college women," do they?
ReplyDeleteCan't have them going around and re-pro-DU-cing, can we now?
What an inane post! This is voluntary sterilization, a common and popular means of birth control world-wide. Very few young women use it, but some do. This is all about a woman's health needs and choices and has nothing to do with the government encouraging it, only making it more available.
I wasn't quite clear on how you got "free" pills; I'm even less clear on how you obtain "free" surgery. Presumably some fairly skilled surgeon's time is involved, and he's going to need to be paid for that.
ReplyDeleteSo "the college" (which means the other students, who are paying their health service fee) or "an employer" (which means the other employees) or "their parents," or "some form of government-subsidized plan" (which means all of us) is going to be paying for this free surgery.
What could justify charging me or you or anyone else for a surgery that is 'all about a woman's choice'? The only thing that could justify it is if population control is a public good, the kind of thing that benefits all of us.
If that's the case, though, we're not talking about a private choice, but a public good. If we're deciding that these issues are now going to be public matters for the government to decide, then there's no reason the next President can't have HHS change the rule to favor some other outcome. The power to rule that every insurer must provide free birth control is the power to rule that no one shall provide it.
Jim,
ReplyDeleteContraception is not healthcare.
Please stop repeating obozos lie.
We are not buying.
These links are for you.
1. One More Soul,is a non-profit organization dedicated to spreading the truth about the blessings of children and the harms of contraception.
http://onemoresoul.com/category/contraception/sterilization
2. Couple to Couple League: Natural Family Planning
http://www.ccli.org/
3. Why Is Contraception Immoral?
http://onemoresoul.com/downloadable-pamphlets/why-is-contraception-immoral-2.html
Grim, guess you have no clue about how insurance works. I'm sure I use health services that most other people insured by my insurance company don't use. I had a vasectomy (which by the way was MY CHOICE). It was covered 100%. I take meds that many others don't. I, like most people, belong to a "group" that pools premiums that cover all of us for a variety of services that many will NEVER use. That's the way it works. Nobody expects to use EVERY service that an insurance company covers.
ReplyDeleteGreg said,
Contraception is not healthcare.
Then why don't women get their BC pills or IUDs at Kragen Auto Parts or JC Penney? They go to the doctor who recommends the appropriate methods and they go to the pharmacy or clinic to get what they need.
Of course contraception is health care.
Millions of woman, their doctors, their employers, their insurance companies, their drug companies and their pharmacies ARE buying.
I'm not the least bit interested your link on the blessings of children. I've raised two of them. I'm familiar with the blessings.
And I'm not interested in the "harms of contraception." Contraception has been used in various forms by millions for decades, if not centuries. I trust doctors and women to decide for themselves the "harms" or benefits of contraception.
I'm not interested in natural family planning. It doesn't apply to me or any other family who chooses other methods of contraception.
I'm not interested in the least in why you or somebody else thinks contraception is immoral. I don't. Millions, if not billions of families across the planet use birth control and aren't interested why you or anybody else thinks contraception is immoral.
Jim,
ReplyDeleteYou're about the 18th liberal to tell me that I obviously don't understand insurance. The thing is, though, I do understand insurance -- at least, I understand how it worked when it was a business, before the new laws that seem to be trying to destroy it as a business. It worked like this:
1) I am presented with a range of coverage options, which are more or less expensive. I decide whether I want to pay for only catastrophic coverage, or if I am likely to need a plan in which other services (like sterilization) are covered. I pay a rate that is higher if I choose a plan that covers more services. This rate is based on the insurance company's data on how much they expect to pay out for services of this type.
2) I submit a range of health and demographic information, which goes before actuaries who further modify the rate that I pay. This actuarial data gives them a surprisingly accurate sense of the expected cost of insuring me, based on my history and my family history and certain other factors (like smoking). If that cost is higher than the rates I'm willing or able to pay, I won't be insured.
This is because the insurance company has to make money to stay in business. It is essentially in the business of gambling on the health of its members. Thus, it has to come out ahead on more of its bets than it loses. The actuarial data and health histories exist to ensure that the company does this.
3) If I already have a condition and I just want someone else to pay for it, I will not be insured. This is because what I want is not "insurance," but charity, and charity is not a business that an insurance company can afford.
All that I get. What I don't understand is how these companies stay in business once you take away their ability to make people pay for services they intend to use (1), deny pre-existing conditions (3), or factor in the probability of disease in determining rates (2).
It sounds to me like this is a shell game to destroy private insurance entirely. Someone maybe thinks they're very clever; but as mentioned above, the power to require coverage for abortion (say) is the power to command an absence of such coverage. This gate swings in both directions. "Choice" as such is not what this is about -- it's about public policy, and in this sense policy is the "choice" only of the President and his chosen advisers.
Given that there are very deep differences of opinion among Americans about what is right in these cases, it seems very dangerous to force everyone to play by one set of rules. No one is going to end up liking the outcomes.
the new laws that seem to be trying to destroy it as a business.
ReplyDeleteYou mean the laws that will give the insurance companies over 30 million new customers?
I am presented with a range of coverage options
Unless you have some kind on "cafeteria" insurance company, you may have a choice of coverage, but any of those choices will include services that you may not ever use. So you are paying for services that others may use and you don't. Any insurance coverage is offered as a pool of premiums covering some range of services for a group of people who may or may not need. Otherwise, there is no point in the insurance. Your selected insurance coverage and premium are not specific to you.
This is because the insurance company has to make money to stay in business.
Indeed they do and they don't seem to have any trouble doing so.
If I already have a condition and I just want someone else to pay for it, I will not be insured.
This is wrong for at least two reasons. One is that prior to PPACA and 2014 and insurance company can refuse to cover your appendicitis because you have asthma. This will rightly change.
The second is that your philosophy is that anybody born with some illness or condition or who changes jobs and insurance companies is f**ked and so is their family.
It is not charity to expect that a modern industrial and wealthy nation, like almost all others, should have a health system in which all people participate, even the healthy, so that there are enough premiums to cover those who are not born healthy.
That's what PPACA does.
It sounds to me like this is a shell game to destroy private insurance entirely.
PPACA allows for profit besides giving the insurance companies 30 million new customers. It doesn't say what must be charged. It says what must be covered and it says how much of what is charged must go for services.
the power to require coverage for abortion (say) is the power to command an absence of such coverage.
The insurance companies today have the power to not cover services. What is your point?
it seems very dangerous to force everyone to play by one set of rules.
You are suggesting several sets of rules? In the case of PPACA, there is a single set of rules that specify minimum coverage and limitations of denial. Individual companies can still offer a broad range of covered services as long as they follow rules of minimum coverage.
When you say "this is wrong for at least two reasons," what you mean is that you think the private insurance industry is morally wrong here -- not that the facts are wrong about how they operate, yes?
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, though, all the particular objections you cite mean is that these are areas for charity rather than insurance. This is not to say that charity isn't important, or shouldn't be something for which we make provision. It is to say that we ought not to confuse the categories.
Private insurance, whatever its limitations, provides excellent health care for a large part of Americans at no public expense. We should be leaving it alone, and addressing the problems of charity within a smaller frame that attacks only those problems.
As for the thirty million new customers, I would like you to reflect on a couple of facts:
1) These customers are generally young and, therefore, poorer than older Americans. There isn't all that much wealth you can extract from them.
2) Of the wealth they have, much of it is needed for family formation or education. These and other similar expenses are things younger Americans buy that benefit all of us, but which we expect them to bear privately.
As already mentioned, insurance is essentially a gambling organization: that is, it's functionally like a casino, with the actuaries in the role of making sure that the odds favor the house. While the benefits arising from such organizations are numerous enough to justify permitting their operation, it's not clear to me that it's morally appropriate to force someone to play in a game in which the odds are stacked against them.
It isn't obviously moral either to expect the poorest part of the population to support the richest. We already extract a heavy toll from the youngest and poorest part of the population to support the oldest and wealthiest, via Medicare and Social Security. We all know those programs will not survive in their present form to return a benefit to these young Americans, but we tax them heavily anyway. Now we're talking about forcing them into this new system, to extract yet more wealth from them to support (again) the older and wealthier.
You'll forgive me, then, if I disagree with you about what the right approach to this problem is. That the sick deserve our charity and care is true enough; but I disagree with the idea that this is a moral way to go about making that provision.
what you mean is that you think the private insurance industry is morally wrong here
ReplyDeleteI never said any such thing.
That the sick deserve our charity and care is true enough; but I disagree with the idea that this is a moral way to go about making that provision.
True enough. To you the moral way is that they should beg.
Grim, Jim is a troll. He claims to be a banker--yet is stone-ignorant of finance and insurance.
ReplyDeleteHe's actually in the business of building straw-men.
Grimm,
ReplyDeleteContrary to Dad's mis-characterization, I am not a troll. I debate.
Furthermore, his accusation that I am "stone-ignorant" about finance and insurance proves that doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to either.
He simply doesn't want to hear opposing opinions nor facts that refute his posts. To him presenting opposing opinions and facts is trolling. I guess what he's doing with this "blog" is preaching sermons, citing "scripture", and expecting nothing but "amens".
You don't "debate." You make assertions which are inane and then burp in self-satisfaction, Jim.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of "inane assertions", Anon...
ReplyDelete