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Problem with the contraception mandate is the mandate part

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Some of our friends on the left seem bound and determined to turn the hullabaloo over the contraception mandate into a Republican War On Women.  But, there are quite a few pundits on the right (would it that there were more such politicians) who understand what’s really at stake.

The problem with the contraceptive mandate, writes the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner

is not the contraceptive part — it’s the mandate. The new health-care law requires every employer with 50 or more employees to provide their workers with health insurance. It also requires every American who doesn’t receive health insurance through work or a government program to buy insurance themselves or face a fine.

But simply providing or buying insurance is not enough to fulfill the mandate. The insurance must satisfy the government’s definition of what qualifies as proper insurance, including a long list of benefits that the government thinks you should have.

Read the whole thing.  The focus of this debate should be the simple question:  do we want the federal government to make our health care decisions for us — and to determine what kinds of health care plans we must own.

What if someone just wanted a plan to cover emergencies?  Well, under Obamacare, that’s just not possible.

Perhaps, if one of the Republican candidates laid the out in terms so clear, without getting distracted by a discussion on the merits (or demerits) of contraception, he would not only command the assent of his party, but turn the debate into a clear winner for conservatives.  And not just on this particular mandate.

Comments

  1. Toenail fungus.

    Unsightly. No flip-flops in the immediate vicinity of the elite chattering class. Worse than the heartbreak of psoriasis.

    Across the counter treatments: useless. Only a government mandated medical treatment can help the victim of unintended toe nail consequences go face to face with country club set.

    What is under the toe nail is a clump of useless cells tearing away at a formerly pedicured area which no proper professional decorator and maintenance person would consider worthy of time and patience.

  4. sooo….,you’d prefer Obammunism? you know, people not being able to keep their insurance (Obama’s promise to the contrary having been calculated lie)… skyrocketing rates… dying as you wait for the Death Panel“Ethics Panel” to decide your fate… not to mention, general unemployment… national bankruptcy… plunging living standards?

  5. oh and: unlimited government power (since government can now, if the mandate stands, mandate you to do practically anything – even to give up homosexuality)… death of the U.S. Constitution…

  6. sooo…..you’d prefer people without insurance to continue sucking up your tax dollars by using emergency rooms at hospitals for all their health care needs?

    I’d prefer a President who actually led instead of violating US law and the US Constitution, playing games of dividing people, class warfare, sex warfare all based on straw men and moral relativism whilst making the country poorer, dammit.

  7. Apparently Kevin would prefer a government that decides that certain activities are too risky and should be outlawed. *rolls eyes*

    Obamacare has already killed many cheap plans that were catastrophic, had yearly or lifetime maximums etc. Unless you’re one of the lucky few who kiss the ring and get a waiver.

  8. sooo…..you’d prefer people without insurance to continue sucking up your tax dollars by using emergency rooms at hospitals for all their health care needs?

    Oh.

    sooo…..you’d prefer people with Obamacare to continue sucking up your tax dollars by using emergency rooms at hospitals for all their health care needs? But, with more regulation and fewer approved services.

  9. sooo…..you’d prefer people without insurance to continue sucking up your tax dollars by using emergency rooms at hospitals for all their health care needs?

    Yeah, emergency rooms provide contraception.

    Insurance would be much cheaper if it only covered what happened in the emergency room.

  10. How does the party of the Kennedys, Bill Clinton, Chris Dodd etc. even begin to portray themselves as giving a crap about women?

    I think “hubris” is the word you’re looking for, TGC. That, and the fact that they count on the media to cover for them.

  12. you’d prefer people without insurance to continue sucking up your tax dollars by using emergency rooms at hospitals for all their health care needs?

    No, the only reason that situation exists is because addlepated liberal lackwits passed a law saying Emergency people had to treat people even if they couldn’t pay. I would prefer that everybody be held responsible for the costs of their own health care, instead of the Government raiding my pocket to pay for yours.

  13. sooo…..you’d prefer people without insurance to continue sucking up your tax dollars by using emergency rooms at hospitals for all their health care needs?

    I’d prefer to be LEFT THE HELL ALONE, Kevin. But apparently that’s too much to ask for from our overlords.

  14. sooo…..you’d prefer people without insurance to continue sucking up your tax dollars by using emergency rooms at hospitals for all their health care needs?

    Comment by Kevin — February 20, 2012 @ 10:18 pm – February 20, 2012

    Actually, Kevin, studies show that the most frequent of users of emergency rooms are those with government insurance.

    LaCalle and Rabin noted that “many studies on frequent ED use have considered the influence of insurance status and have found this patient population to be predominantly covered.”

    Much of that coverage, however, is provided through Medicare and Medicaid, and frequent ED users are more likely to be enrolled in those programs. “Among those patients who can be characterized as ‘occasional’ users, 36% are publicly insured,” the researchers found, “versus the 60% of frequent users who carry Medicare or Medicaid.”

    One national survey cited by the researchers found that the odds ratio for patients with government insurance being frequent users was 2.1 (P<0.001).

    And as it turns out, they not only utilize at a lower rate, they pay their bills at a higher rate than does Medicaid.

    A 2007 study in the Annals of Emergency Medicine looked at charges and payments for 43,128 emergency department visits between 1996 and 2004. “What surprised us was that uninsured patients actually pay a higher proportion of their emergency department charges than Medicaid does,” reported co-author Reneé Hsia, a specialist in emergency medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. “In fact, 35 percent of charges for uninsured visits were paid in 2004, compared with 33 percent for Medicaid visits.”

    And guess what? Putting in the mandate <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2011/02/02/myths-of-the-free-rider-health-care-problem/ actually increases emergency room visits.

    As John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis has often pointed out, in Massachusetts, where an individual mandate was instituted in 2006, emergency room traffic is higher than ever before. Indeed, between 2005 and 2007, Massachusetts ER visits rose by 7 percent, and the state’s costs of caring for ER patients rose 17 percent between 2007 and 2009.

    So let’s see; to supposedly reduce the number of tax dollars “sucked up” by emergency room visits, you put in place a mandate that increases visits, increases the cost of visits to taxpayers, and also sticks taxpayers with the bill for the insurance.

    All of this is publicly-available information. Yet you and your Obama didn’t bother to do a bit of research on it.

    Or, more likely, your Obama lied, and you’re just repeating the lie without thinking.