:rofl1::rofl1::rofl1::rofl1::rofl1:
I LOVE IT!
Frankly, if he gets the Libertarian nomination, I'm probably voting for Gary Johnson.
But I was raised that it was my civil duty to vote, at least in major elections, and so I must attempt to pick a Republican.
And no, I don't think any of them would actually attempt to ban birth control. None of them are actually that stupid. But that doesn't mean that I don't find their rhetoric offensive and the fact that they think it will get them votes bizarre. This is not a conversation we should be having in this day and age, and the fact that they think we should have it shows that their values are fundamentally different from mine.
And they may well throw up barriers to birth control access, and not having it subsidized,
in our system as it exists, pre or post Obamacare, is a barrier. I am somewhat agnostic on the whole birth control mandate thing, but I AM seriously annoyed by the whole debate. And this is why:
What goes unsaid is this:
Assuming you are not on Medicaid or Medicare, your health insurance comes from your employer. You employer does this, not because they are nice, but because they get a massive tax break. Therefore, employer-provided health insurance is subsidized by the taxpayer. (note that the self-employed do not get nearly as good of a tax break if they buy their own health insurance)
Your employer provided health care, what is not subsidized by tax breaks, is part of your compensation. Have no doubt, wages are lower because your employer provides health care . . . and they'd rather give you health care because its a good deal for them, see tax break above.
Your employer, and not you, chooses your healthcare plan. Although I am lucky enough to have relatively good choices, I have exactly 4, all from the same provider. If I don't like that provider, tough. If I don't like the plans from that provider that my employer selects, tough. Since buying good health insurance independently is outrageously expensive (all the more so because my wages presume I will get that insurance through my employer) I'm pretty much stuck.
A birth control rider on an existing health plan costs about 10-20 dollars a month,
if it is offered at all. See about about employer choosing health plans.
Without health insurance, and assuming you don't go to Planned Parenthood, hormonal birth control, with is by far the most reliable option (excepting sterlization and IUDs) will run you $75 dollars and up a month.
So, what can we deduce from all this?
One, my employer does NOT actually pay for my healthcare. I do and the taxpayer does. My employer serves as a broker. This becomes problematic for the employer if rates go up, because they can't cut my wages to compensate, because we are all pretending that the employer pays for health insurance. The end result is either 1) I don't get a raise or 2) they stop providing health insurance (and oddly, I still don't get a raise!). But, in fact, they don't. Not in the end. In the end, the employee pays for it through lower wages and the government pays for it though lower revenues.
Two, particularly in hard times, I can't really pick my employer. You find work where you can. And thus, I can't pick my health insurance. My employer picks my health insurance. So if my employer doesn't want to cover birth control, without a law saying they have to (or alternately, a law saying I must be offered a rider) I don't get covered for it.
Three, if I am not covered for health insurance, I am paying $75 a month minimum for reliable birth control (unless I visit EVIL planed parenthood). Oddly, this is far more than a rider would cost, which tells me how much it costs the health insurance companies, with their discounted rates, to purchase it for me, which tells me that i am being ripped off. And as a practical matter, birth control
is not a luxury. Period. Unless you expect people, including married people, not to have sex, its pretty much a necessity. Because one thing that is more expensive than birth control is babies. And people
will have sex. Especially married people (we hope).
So, as a woman, my ability to get birth control at a reasonable price is in the hands of my employer, who does not, in the end, actually pay for that birth control. One, they don't actually pay for the insurance, and two, of course, they are paying for insurance, not birth control. Because one only has so much control over where one works, that means that if I were, say, a nurse, and the available job was at a Catholic hospital, then I would be paying $75 a month or more for birth control, while an identical nurse at a Jewish hospital would not have to pay that. Frankly, that's not fair. And the Republicans in Congress would extend that discrimination to any employer with religious objections ANY treatment . . . beware, if your boss is a Scientologist, you won't be seeing a psychatrist any time soon.
Now, I also think its not fair to make employers pay for health insurance coverage that they find morally objectionable. I think being opposed to birth control is silly, but lots of things people believe are silly. We have a right to believe silly things. And misogynistic things.
HOWEVER, the way our current system is set up, and the Republicans have said NOT ONE WORD about changing this (indeed, they seem convinced that it is the best and freest healthcare system in the world), my ability to get birth control is decided not by me, and not by my husband, or my doctor, or even my parents, but by my
boss. And my boss is not paying for my healthcare out of the goodness of his heart, but because our current system is arranged to give him incentives to do that allow him to get tax credits and pay me less. And as a result of THAT system, there is little market pressure on insurance companies to lower their rates, especially their individual rates, and little money in my wages to buy my own health insurance. And because health insurance companies have all negotiated low prices with pharmacists, the prices for people without insurance is much higher.
In other words, the whole reason we need a birth control mandate in the first place is that our system has created a situation where, without it, women have to pay high prices for birth control, and do not have reasonable access to lower prices except through health insurance programs over which they have no practical control.
These high prices that would not exist in a free market system, nor, if we had a free market system, would my employer be the one choosing my healthcare.
That is what no one says in this debate. This problem exists because our system is NOT free market and, in fact, creates horrific market distortions. Because of that, we have to debate whether employers have to provide health insurance that covers birth control, which leads to idiots on stage discussing birth control. Because our system has created a situation where there is unequal access to birth control, based not only on income, but on who one is employed by. Which is what the mandate seeks to correct, and therefore, unless they want to
fix the system, I'm pretty much forced to support the mandate . . . and point out to say, Catholic hospitals, or random religious employers, that you really AREN'T paying for that medical care you object to.
Oh, and about men and birth control. No. They shouldn't have any say. I mean, of course, I discuss birth control with Mike, and a man has every right to make sure that he's not impregnating the woman he is sleeping with, so that he doesn't end up paying child support.
But Mike has no right to tell me whether or not I can use birth control. Its my body. If he wants to impregnate me, then that's a choice we can make together, or he can bugger off. I will have children, or not, as I choose (or more correctly, I will not have them if I chose not to). If my man does not like that choice, then he can find a woman who agrees with him.
Birth control is not abortion. I can see the argument that a man should have a say in whether a woman has an abortion, because he is the father of the child (I don't agree with it, but that's a different tangent). I also agree that a woman should not lie to a man, and get pregnant on purpose when he doesn't want her too (and SHAME on all women who do that). But the choice about whether my uterus is "available" belongs to me, and to me alone. It is central to my freedom and autonomy. If I marry, then my husband certainly has the right to bring up the subject of children, but he has no right to force them on me any more than he has a right to rape me.
