Fox News has been on the move against the Obama administration's health-care rule requiring insurance companies to cover contraception without a co-payment. Greg Gutfield, one of the anchors of
The Five, a Fox News show rolled out in July, had
this to say:
This makes no sense to me. There are two elements that kinda drive me crazy here: The decision is supposed to help make birth control affordable to millions. How much more affordable can you make it? It's like 50 bucks a month. I mean, do we—should we start up like a "buy the pill" campaign? Like "feed the children" where we make sure we all adopt one woman and pay for her pills? Anybody can afford this.
As Solange Uwimana at Media Matters
points out, some people
can't afford it.
A 2010 survey by Hart Research Associates that was commissioned by the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, found that paying for prescription birth control had been no easy matter for 34 percent of women voters at some point in their lives. And 55 percent of young women age 18-34, the most likely demographic to experience unintended pregnancies, had at some time struggled to find enough money to purchase birth control.
Thus, health insurance that doesn't cover contraception, which is what Fox News and other critics would like for church-affiliated organizations like hospitals to be allowed to provide for their employees, can be expected to increase the number of unintentional pregnancies. Which means more abortions.
When contraception is provided free, the number of both falls:
Two studies provide evidence that when the barrier of cost is removed, a shift toward the most effective contraceptive methods results. In 2002, California's Kaiser Foundation Health Plan changed its policy to eliminate copayments for the most effective contraceptive methods (IUCs, injectables, and implants) so that they were 100% covered for all users. Before this change, users of these methods had to pay up to $300 for 5 years of use. The elimination of copayments, along with training for health care providers in the use of IUCs, contributed to a 137% increase in their use—and an estimated 1791 pregnancies averted among Kaiser's patient population.
A policy that helps curtail unintentional pregnancies by providing free contraception, as the Obama insurance rule would do, is not just a blessing for the individuals involved but for the common good as well.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, as cited by The New England Journal of Medicine, "one Medicaid-covered birth in the United States (including prenatal care, delivery, postpartum care, and infant care for 1 year) was $12,613 in 2008." The national average per client cost for contraceptive care in 2008 was $257. The $1.9 billion estimated to have gone toward publicly funded family-planning care that year saved Medicaid $7 billion. Guttmacher estimates that for 2006, publicly funded family-planning services for 9 million women helped prevent nearly 2 million unintentional pregnancies and more than 800,000 abortions.
The Obama administration's ruling on contraceptive coverage is the right one not only in terms of equity, that is, in terms of benefits that should be available to all women regardless of their income and regardless of who they work for. It's also good for the nation's budget.
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Send an email to the White House and tell President Obama to stand firm on requiring all health insurers to cover contraception without co-pays.