In his drive to make blue Wisconsin into something out of The Handmaid's Tale, Scott Walker's budget also includes language that would nix a state law that health insurance plans that have prescription drug plans, include ALL prescription drugs.
Under Walker's plan, all prescription drugs that are prescribed would require coverage... except prescription birth control pills.
Walker’s budget summary says the requirement that all presciptions be covered in prescription drug plans is an “unacceptable government mandate on employers with moral objections to these services,” and that it “increases the cost of health insurance for all payers.”
On Walker's first point, about "moral objections." What's next, banning post-partum depression drugs, because Tom Cruise and the rest of the Scientolists find them morally objectionable? You could find someone that has a "moral objection" to any drug a doctor prescribes.
If you find something morally objectionable, you don't have to use that drug-- but to put up hurdles for everyone else is simply imposing your "morals" on everyone else, no matter how absurd your "morals" may be.
On Walker's second point that it "increases the cost of health insurance for all payers," he's simply pulling things out of his backside now. The Capitol Times asked for evidence on this point and the Walker camp couldn't provide any proof to back up that claim.
Governor Walker may not know this, but pregancies and births are pretty expensive-- and birth control pills prevent pregnancies and biriths.
In fact, The National Business Group on Health estimates that excluding birth control pills prescriptions from other prescriptions costs 15 to 17 percent more than including it.
This is nothing more than Walker paying-back his campaign contributors from the far-right, no matter how ridiculous that pay-back may be.
You see, there is a fringe group within the anti-choice community that believes that birth control pills are "abortifacients," because in some circumstances, an egg becomes fertilized and the birth control pill blocks a pregnancy from occuring.
This fundamentalist interpretation of birth control pills is even considered to far out there for most hardcore pro-lifers. Wisconsin's main pro-life group, Wisconsin Right to Life, for example, doesn't even endorse this ban.
Wisconsin women, don't worry. Remember this kernal of wisdom from The Handmaids Tale:
In the days of evil and anarchy you had freedom to, now you are granted freedom from.