In supposedly socialist Finland, you have to pay for contraception yourself. It's a discretionary good. Unless you can demonstrate to social services you can't afford it, in which case they'll cover it (they'll check out that you have no assets or sufficient income before doing this). Seems saner to me than arguing over whether the US needs a federal law regulating health insurance in this way.

My guess is that petro believes, and I would agree, is that this same young woman, when she becomes wealthy, will argue that she should pay low taxes rather than allowing the gov't to confiscate and redistribute her personal wealth which she "earned!"

Law and business schools are full of the future rich who legally bilk the system to pay for their high power degrees and then feel they should have to pay taxes on their income. One guy wrote about Harvard business school were almost all the students would buy a BMW (or similar) in order to qualify for financial aid well in excess of the BMW's cost. Basically they paid for the BMW and got the degree for free.

If she grows up and recognizes that a 35% marginal tax rate is her payback to the community for supporting her now, I have nothing but love for her.

But far too many like her believe that what's yours is mine and what's mine is mine. A decade from now she may just as sincerely explain to congress why she should not be taxed to support those who are too lazy to get a job--like she is now.

She can afford it, she just doesn't want to. That was her point in testimony, that the cost mounts up over time. She never claimed it wasn't available to her now.

If you want to argue that there's no value in being "Future Rich", maybe you've got a point there. Or maybe not. Isn't Delayed Gratification what education is all about? You work pretty hard without getting paid now in order that you can do a lot better later on than you would have. And she's not even having to delay gratification, only to bite the bullet and pay her fair share for it. She's getting free schooling, so she's still way ahead of the game. But it's not enough. Isn't that the essence of Greed? No matter how much you get, it's not enough?

That's a good way to put it. You could make the case that with her outlook, once this woman becomes a six-figure lawyer, that she should pay a 100% tax rate, and let the government decide how much to give back to her. Food, clothing, transportation, birth control, the whole nine yards. I don't think the argument would fly, but I'd love to see how she'd try to answer it without admitting what you said (the "What's mine is mine, what's yours is ours" position).

It has nothing to do with wanting people to subsidize her recreational sex life--that's the lie put out by Limbaugh who didn't bother listening to the testimony, or reading the transcript. Or perhaps he did, but decided to lie anyway.

It is about having access to contraception covered by the health care insurance policies of religiously affiliated universities, as part of dealing with women's health. It is about following the non-partisan medical advice of the Institute of Medicine.

Students, some of whom are married and want to delay having children till they've finished school and paid back some of their debt, can't afford the 1200-3000 dollars per year for birth control pills.

Others need to take the pills for medical conditions (e.g. polycystic ovarian syndrome) and this is covered under insurance. However, with the amendments put forth by the Senators, even this coverage could be dropped.

It is about womens' reproductive health and having adequate insurance coverage at religiously-affiliated institutions. Not about greed. Not about recreational sex. Is it making sure womens' health care needs are met as recommended by the Institute of Medicine, and if it was asking for insurance coverage for anything other than contraception it wouldn't even have made a ripple in the news.

Here's the transcript.

By the way, she's there on a public interest scholarship, which is not going to school for free. Even if it paid all costs--which it does not--it still requires considerable effort to qualify for one. You earn those things with a lot of figurative sweat and blood...they don't just give them away.

It is also not asking the government to pay for it. It is asking that the individual institutions include contraception in their current health care insurance policies.

The point is to make a profit, isn't it? If your insurance company adds a service, and then raises your rates to pay for it, then you're no better off than you were before. The only way you come out ahead is if somebody else pays for it. Maybe I'm wrong to say she wants the government to pay for it, but she sure doesn't want to pay for it herself.

I think that would be a good argument if I were trying to ban contraception, but I'm not. She only finds it expensive, not unobtainable.

I'm in complete sympathy, by the way, with the arguments about the cost of medical care. Trying to lower those costs is a great idea. But I'd rather find ways to lower the costs, rather than just pass them on to someone else. I think that's what she's doing here, because I don't see how adding it to your insurance helps financially, if your rates go up accordingly at the same time. Or have I still got it wrong?

She doesn't want the government to pay for it. She wants religiously affiliated institutions to cover contraception because many non-religiously affiliated do cover it already. She's willing to pay for it through insurance--she wants the same coverage given by other similar institutions. One objection is that they're not being given the same coverage because of religious objections to birth control. This is what I've read in the transcript. Maybe I missed something ambiguous.

I take it you don't have insurance coverage then through your employer? Insurance costs will go up the more things you add, but it is still far far cheaper than paying for non-insured items yourself.

The cost is spread around among many, at least half of whom won't use contraception benefits. I now have benefits myself. A mastectomy prosthesis and bra are paid for as are any artificial limbs I might need. I'm paying for them, but I'm not likely (knock on wood) to need them. My yearly costs for this insurance are still much lower than what it would cost for me to obtain a dental crown, and magnitudes lower than what it would cost to pay for my own artificial limbs.

Plus I'm very willing to pay pennies a day to help cover someone else's medical needs at the company whether it be daily medicine, dental care for their kids, or a prosthesis.

Incidentally, ED drugs are not covered. darn.

That's what I understand, and I'm not the best one to discuss it because I don't really understand the Catholic position on birth control, or exactly why they're against it. I don't think they regard it the same as abortion, but who really knows? Santorum's words on the matter have explained precisely nothing. Santorum's words, paraphrased, seem to be "We'd be better off if it had never been invented". Maybe so, but that's like saying the same thing about nuclear weapons. It's not very useful once the genie is out of the bottle.

I do understand the whole conscientious objector concept though, and even though I don't agree with them on this issue, find it a bit alarming to see Obama chucking it aside so cavalierly. I don't think he'd do that if the group in question were a more politically correct one (Catholics are one of the approved-to-bash groups in this country).



Maybe I'm still missing something big. What precisely is the difference between prescription contraception and non-prescription? I understand that some people have health uses for it that have nothing to do with contraception, but that's not the case here. Fluke's argument was just that she found the cost prohibitive. I can see how insurance can bring down the price of overpriced prescription medicine, but to add a third party to get something that you could have just bought for yourself over the counter must increase the costs for somebody.

How do Catholics deal with this in Canada, incidentally?



Somehow, you making that offer seems less gauche than having the recipient of those same pennies come in demanding them. And despite what Littlefish said about "Future Rich" not meaning much, it's hard to forget that the person complaining about the cost could pay the entire $3,000 that she's complaining about from her lunch money once she becomes a six-figure lawyer. There may be hardship cases out there, but it's hard to see her as one of them. Within the foreseeable future, she'll probably be making more money than you do, yet she's demanding yours now? For something optional? It doesn't sit quite right.



Why not? At least that kind of medicine is needed for when one's body isn't functioning correctly. In that sense it's less optional (although granted, if you're not planning to do the same thing she wants to do, what does it matter?)