The answer comes in two parts. First, because the law requires a woman to get a prescription before she can buy the pill, and it requires her to get an invasive and frequently unnecessary medical exam before she can acquire that prescription. Eliminate those controls, and insurance coverage would be beside the point; the pill would be cheaply available over the counter. Second, because changes to the tax code in the 1940s and ’50s have channeled us into a system where Americans overwhelmingly get their health insurance through their jobs. Eliminate those incentives, and far fewer people would be dependant on their employers for insurance at all, substantially reducing the relevance of the boss’s opinions about birth control.
It goes without saying that Barack Obama has displayed no interest in rolling back the FDA’s birth control rules. Nor has he moved away from the policies that push people into employer-based health coverage, or, more broadly, from a system where so many medical services are purchased via insurance in the first place. Indeed, his signature accomplishment is a law requiring people who don’t have health insurance to buy it.
If you can’t afford to buy it, you may qualify for financial assistance. That’s the Democratic Party’s promise: We won’t end the policies that empower big institutions and raise the cost of living, but when they send you the bill we might help you pay. You saw the same idea at work when various speakers this week invoked student loans: The Democrats will lend you money for college, but they’ll do nothing to end the legally enshrined credentialism that makes so many professions off-limits without a degree. And if those subsidies end up inflating the cost of tuition and health care even more…well, then the pols will just call for more subsidies.
More here, and it’s an excellent read, rightly skewering both sides for their variations on crony capitalism.
2 Comments
I still think that all this birth control nonsense is to enrich the pharmaceutical companies. A woman on hormonal contraceptives is more likely to need antidepressants, counceling, reproductive help, certain cancers, certain heart problems, hormone imbalances, etc. (all of which are indicated on the label for bc pills and are supposed to be explained by your doctor and/or pharmacist).
They also ensure that a woman has to go in to see the doctor at least once a year, and most health insurance plans do not cover women’s annual physicals. And women who start families later in life are also more likely to have higher risk pregnancies or problematic labors, increasing their need for specialized obstetric care–again, marginally covered by most insurance.
It sounds like a really good deal to me, if I were a pharmaceutical company or doctor, to get women on contraception cheaply and thereby ensure that a good chunk of them will have problems later on that require long-term treatment and monitoring. I don’t think this is about over-population doom-and-gloom. Like everything else, it’s about money and manipulating the market.
It’s also more than a little ridiculous that most ob’s require a pap at an initial prenatal exam AND two weeks post partum. After my first pregnancy ended at 6wks gestation, I was pregnant again within two months. My ob insisted that I needed a second full pelvic exam and pap after the miscarriage completed AND a third when I became pregnant again. When I switched to midwifery care, I learned just how excessive (and common) that policy was.