On contraception coverage, reality’s liberal bias strikes again.
In recent weeks, conservatives have complained about being forced to pay for other people’s birth control, but a recently released study indicates that increasing availability to contraception actually saves taxpayer money.
A report released by The Brookings Institution this week showed that a $235 million program to expand access to Medicaid family planning would actually result in a savings of $1.35 billion. That’s a return on investment of over 500 percent.
Mass media campaigns and teen pregnancy prevention programs also resulted in savings, but to a lesser degree.
“Unintended pregnancy is a widespread problem with far-reaching implications: almost half of all pregnancies in the United States are unintended, and the women and children involved in these pregnancies are disproportionately likely to experience a range of negative outcomes,” Georgetown Public Policy Institute Adam Thomas, who authored the paper, explained.
“The research also shows that each dollar spent on these policies would produce taxpayer savings of between two and six dollars,” Adams concluded.
Obviously, this ties into the whole contraception coverage, Rush Limbaugh, Sandra Fluke, Republican nutjobs, etc.madness. While the taxpayers won’t be paying for Georgetown students’ contraception — as every shameless liar on the right has been saying — the principle is the same. And anyone who’s given it a moment’s thought should look at this study and say, “Duh!”
Look, it’s simple math. Which do you think costs more, contraceptives or nine months of prenatal care, followed by who knows how many months of post-natal care? And let’s not even throw in ongoing pediatrics. Contraceptive coverage would keep premiums lower for everyone, since the idea of insurance is shared risk and shared cost.
If you’re morally opposed to birth control, why should I care? What makes you so special? Ask a Quaker how he feels about funding the Pentagon or an Earth-loving Wiccan how she feels about funding oil, coal, and other polluters through subsidies. If you don’t care about their concerns (and, if you’re on the right, it’s eminently clear you don’t), then give me one good reason why I should care about yours.
If you want to keep taxes and insurance premiums low, you provide universal contraceptive coverage. That’s just math and math hates Republicans.
Blunt Amendment on contraception coverage fails
More when I have a link for it.
Women’s Health Experts Speak Out
The bishops’ opposition to contraception is not an argument for a “conscience exemption.” It is a way of imposing Catholic requirements on non-Catholics. This is religious dictatorship, not religious freedom.
Republican culture warring set to do them a lot of damage.
Some time around the end of February, the Senate will vote on the Blunt-Rubio amendment, which would allow insurers and employers to deny coverage for birth control or any other medical services simply on the grounds that they find them morally objectionable.
The vote was originally set for this week, but a Senate Dem leadership aide confirms to me that it will actually take place after next week’s recess, for various procedural reasons. The aide insists this will gives Dems more time to attack Republicans over the issue. “It gives us more time to build up the vote and draw more attention to the cliff Republicans are going out of their way to jump off of,” the aide says.
I’ve been speculating here that this could actually prove a good wedge issue against the GOP, in spite of the fact that much of the commentary has focused on how bad this could be for Democrats, because it could hurt them among Catholic swing voters.
I was actually going to write a longer post about exactly this before my morning went all haywire. Luckily, Sargent is likeminded enough to write most of it for me. He goes on to cite these numbers from a New York Times/CBS poll on support for the president’s compromise:
- Even Republicans support this policy, 50-44.
- Independents support it by 64-26.
- Moderates support it by 68-22.
- Women support it by 72-20.
- Catholics support it by 67-25.
- And even Catholics who attend church every week or almost every week support it by 48-43.
Further, Gallup shows that the contraception rule has had zero effect on Catholic voters’ approvals of Obama and the NYT/CBS poll Sargent cites puts Obama ahead of every GOP candidate — a poll taken after Obama detailed his compromise.
If the GOP wants to have this fight, bring it. It’s kind of suicidal.
![A compromise on the contraception rule.
Greg Sargent:
On a conference call with reporters just now, senior Obama administration officials announced the outlines of the “accommodation” the White House has settled on with regard to the contraception controversy.
The gist is that women who work for religious institutions that object to offering birth control coverage will get contraception for free, directly from their insurers. The institutions won’t have to pay for it. The White House argues that this preserves both the “liberty” of those institutions and the core, inviolate principle that all women will have equal access to birth control, no matter where they work.
Insurers “will be required to reach out directly and offer them contraception coverage, free of charge,” one senior administration official says. “All women will still have access to preventive care, and that includes contraceptive services, no matter where they work.”
I’ll take exception with Sargent on one point here; the coverage isn’t “free.” Employees pay their share for insurance and, even in cases where they don’t, it can be considered part of their pay — their “compensation package,” in corporate lingo. The question here is who owns your coverage, you or your employer? I’m going to answer “you,” in the same way you own your paycheck. The employer paid you, but that doesn’t mean it’s still their money. If you want to take your paycheck and buy big ol’ honkin’ piles of contraceptives, that’s your business and there’s nothing your employer can do about it. The same reasoning — in a saner world — should apply to your health coverage.
Over at the Maddow Blog, Steve Benen calls this a “pretty straightforward fix.” “[R]eligiously-affiliated employers that don’t want to pay for contraception coverage as part of their benefits packages won’t have to,” he writes, “but these employees will still get the coverage because the White House will instruct insurers to pick up the costs.”
Which was the whole damned point, right? The idea is to get people the coverage they need and now they have it. Barring new and damning information, this is one of the few Obama administration compromises I can live with, because — for once — it doesn’t give away the store.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz6v89vtbH1qfengno1_1280.jpg)
A compromise on the contraception rule.
On a conference call with reporters just now, senior Obama administration officials announced the outlines of the “accommodation” the White House has settled on with regard to the contraception controversy.
The gist is that women who work for religious institutions that object to offering birth control coverage will get contraception for free, directly from their insurers. The institutions won’t have to pay for it. The White House argues that this preserves both the “liberty” of those institutions and the core, inviolate principle that all women will have equal access to birth control, no matter where they work.
Insurers “will be required to reach out directly and offer them contraception coverage, free of charge,” one senior administration official says. “All women will still have access to preventive care, and that includes contraceptive services, no matter where they work.”
I’ll take exception with Sargent on one point here; the coverage isn’t “free.” Employees pay their share for insurance and, even in cases where they don’t, it can be considered part of their pay — their “compensation package,” in corporate lingo. The question here is who owns your coverage, you or your employer? I’m going to answer “you,” in the same way you own your paycheck. The employer paid you, but that doesn’t mean it’s still their money. If you want to take your paycheck and buy big ol’ honkin’ piles of contraceptives, that’s your business and there’s nothing your employer can do about it. The same reasoning — in a saner world — should apply to your health coverage.
Over at the Maddow Blog, Steve Benen calls this a “pretty straightforward fix.” “[R]eligiously-affiliated employers that don’t want to pay for contraception coverage as part of their benefits packages won’t have to,” he writes, “but these employees will still get the coverage because the White House will instruct insurers to pick up the costs.”
Which was the whole damned point, right? The idea is to get people the coverage they need and now they have it. Barring new and damning information, this is one of the few Obama administration compromises I can live with, because — for once — it doesn’t give away the store.
Good news for American teens is bad news for the GOP.
The use of and easy access to contraceptives is being seen as the cause of numbers published this week by the Guttmacher Institute, showing that the U.S. teen pregnancy rate has hit a 30-year low.
The study found that in 2008, just 67.8 per every 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 19 got pregnant. That’s down from 1990′s high point, when 116.9 out of every 1,000 became pregnant.
“Continuing decreases in teen pregnancy more recently may be driven by increased use of the most effective contraceptive methods as well as dual method use,” the Guttmacher Institute explained. “In sum, teens appear to be making the decision to be more effective contraceptive users, and their actions are paying off in lower pregnancy, birth and abortion rates.”
The study could hardly come at a more perfect time for Democrats, who’ve found themselves in a pitched rhetorical battle with the Catholic Church over a rule that requires all private health insurance plans to provide free contraception.
Hey look, increased access to contraception combined with accurate information about reproductive health had exactly the result that any sane person would expect it to. Is there some sort of “Most Predictable Thing Ever” award? Because this might be a shoe-in for the trophy.
Of course, it’s not just the Catholic Church that would put the brakes on this trend, but the GOP as well. Maybe someone in the oh-so “pro-life” Republican Party can explain why more of those terrible abortions would be a good thing, because — frankly — I’m just not seeing the logic here.
As the story points out, this study comes at a bad time for critics of the White House’s contraception policy. Why is it that good news for America is so often bad news for Republicans?
