Ed Gillespie. Weasel.
Anybody who served both as a Republican National Committee Chair and White House aide to George W. Bush is going to be full of shit. That's a given. Ed Gillespie, running against Democrat Mark Warner for a Virginia Senate seat,
provides the proof.
Gillespie is one of several Republican candidates who have recently come out in favor of over-the-counter birth control, something that reproductive rights advocates see as a political move to win over female voters who may be skeptical of their stances on women’s health issues. During Tuesday’s face-off against U.S. Sen. Mark Warner (D), Gillespie reasserted his support for that policy, saying that Obamacare hampers women’s ability to obtain birth control pills at their local pharmacy without getting a prescription from their doctor first.
"The reason that non-prescription birth control, and other non-prescription drugs, are not covered is because that’s the rule in Obamacare," Gillespie said. "My point is that if you replaced Obamacare with market-oriented reforms, people could purchase the insurance of their choice. Many women would purchase plans that would cover over-the-counter non-prescription birth control pills."
That's a pretty contorted version of how the law treats contraception. Right now under the law, people can get over-the-counter (OTC) contraception, but it requires a prescription to be covered by insurance and thus provided without an additional copay. That's a needless barrier that most health advocates want to see removed, but that's the sole tiny sliver of truth in Gillespie's argument.
For example, he suggests that if it weren't for Obamacare, women could get birth control pills without a prescription. Wrong. It has not been approved by the Federal Drug Administration for OTC sale. Obamacare has nothing to do with that. Furthermore, the pill isn't the only form of prescription birth control. That's one thing all these damned Republican men refuse to acknowledge (or perhaps are too willfully ignorant of women's health to even know about). The law as it stands, with its contraceptive mandate, ensures that women have the best possible contraceptive choice for them available without a co-pay. There are plenty of women who can't take the pill and need other prescription methods. They'll be left out in Gillespie's plan. (Not that he'd care.)
Repealing the law would hurt women. Period. Many would lose Medicaid coverage they now have. Many would lose private insurance they now have. Every woman with insurance—through Obamacare or their employer's or their spouse's or parents' plans—would lose no co-pay birth control coverage. There's nothing friendly to women about the Republican's OTC pill fetish.
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