Free Sterilizations for All Young American Women

The latest gift to American women is free sterilizations!  Any woman attending college or of that age can demand their health plan provide them with this service even though data shows that less than 2% of all women of that age use this procedure as a method of birth control.  Isn't that a rather extreme method of preventing pregnancy?


There will be those who will argue that this procedure is only used where the health of young lady is threatened. Isn't already covered by all medical plans? Of course, the answer is yes. Any verifiable threat to the life of the person is covered. However, it would not be covered, if it was to prevent pregnancy.  So what is Health and Human Services saying?  Are they looking at picking who can have children and demanding the rest be sterilized? That definitively would limit costs!


The issue as we see it, they are presenting a problem for which no solution is needed. Maybe we are not seeing the picture through their lens. We have learned that when something does not make sense, we don't have all the necessary facts. Which ones are they leaving out?


Regardless of the answer, free sterilizations are never free, they have to be paid for by someone. Are you willing to put up your share? Is this just more of the "nanny" society that no one can take care of themselves but need "big daddy" government to do it for us?


We are confused, maybe some of our readers can help us out. Where is this all heading? Let us know your opinions.


Conservative Tom

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Home » News

Congresswoman: We’re Not ‘Promoting Sterilization’ of College Girls, We're Just Making It Free

By Elizabeth Harrington

March 19, 2012

Subscribe to Elizabeth Harrington's posts

    

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D.-Ill.)

(CNSNews.com) – Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D.-Ill.), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee which has oversight over the Affordable Care Act (AKA "Obamacare"), said Monday that a new Obamacare regulation announced on Friday afternoon that requires all student health insurance plans to offer college women free sterilizations does not mean the government is “promoting sterilization.”

“This isn’t about promoting sterilization,” said Rep. Schakowsky said. “No one--there aren’t college girls lining up to become sterilized because they feel like it.”

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D.-Calif.) said critics of the regulation were making “outlandish statements,” and that the mandate was designed “so a woman can, in consultation with her physician, can make a very serious decision.”

The regulation that the Department of Health and Human Services announced on Friday says that all student health plans offered by colleges in the United States must provide the same cost-free "preventive services" that the administration announced in a final regulation released last month will be required in virtually all other health plans sold in the United States.

The mandate, according to HHS, requires that the insurance plans provide without any fees or co-pay: "All Food and Drug Administration approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity."

Schakowsky, Becerra, Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson (D-Conn.), Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.), and Barbara Easterling, the President of the Alliance for Retired Americans, held a conference call with reporters on Monday to mark the upcoming second anniversary of the enactment of Obamacare.

During the conference call, CNSNews.com asked: “Do you support the HHS regulation that requires health insurance companies to provide free sterilizations to college-age women who want them?”

Rep. Schakowsky said: “You know, this attack on women’s health care is--I think the compromise that the president has offered and that the rulemaking from HHS, I think, is a good one. This is not about, you know, college-age girls getting sterilization when they want it--no.”

President Barack Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. (AP Photo)

“I mean, there may be situations where for medical reasons and in consultation with the doctor that sterilization procedures are warranted for the health of a young woman,” said Schakowsky.

“Contraception and related procedures, contraception was declared one of the top 10 preventive health services of the 20^th century by the Centers for Disease Control," said Schakowsky, "and the reason for these regulations is to protect the health of women, women of all ages, so that they can afford to get the preventive care that they need.”

“This isn’t about promoting sterilization,” she said of the regulation that guarantees free sterilizations.  “No one -- there aren’t college girls lining up to become sterilized because they feel like it.  And we’re talking about medical procedures.”

As CNSNews.com reported, HHS announced the student-health-plan regulation late on Friday and released a request-for-comments document on how the student-health-plan regulation would be implemented that specifically stated that the regulation would "require coverage, without cost sharing, for ‘[a]ll Food and Drug Administration approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity,’ as prescribed by a provider."

During the conference call, Rep. Xavier Becerra also offered his support for the regulation and responded to CNSNews.com's question by criticizing opponents of the regulation for advancing what he called “stereotypes” and “misinformation” about the president’s health care law.

“Now when they [critics] talk about sterilization, you and I know that they’re trying to build this up into something that it isn’t,” said Becerra. “I think Jan clarified very well what the purpose of the HHS rulemaking is. It’s so a woman can, in consultation with her physician, can make a very serious decision. It’s not one of these fly-by-night activities that a woman would do without thinking long and hard.”

“So, I hope the press will help us avoid these types of stereotypes and this misrepresentation that’s occurring with regard to the actions and the legislation that’s out there,” said Becerra, “because it gives the American public this wrong perception that there, in fact, are death panels, or that the government did take over our health care, or that jobs were killed by the passage of the ACA.”

“That’s the farthest thing from the truth,” he said.  “And I hope you all are out there trying to make sure that you’re passing along information -- truthful information -- and probing when folks start to make those kind of statements, which you and I know are intended to misrepresent and to deceive the American public.”

Although surgical sterilization is less common among college-age women than older women, it does occur, even in the pre-Obamacare era when the federal government has not guaranteed that college-age women could be sterilized for free.

According to the Centers for Disease Control’s report, “Use of Contraception in the United States: 1982-2008,”  among women ages 20-24, who are using contraception, 2.4 percent have been sterilized.  Among those aged 25-29, who are using contraception, 15.0 percent have been sterilized.

During the call, Rep. Becerra also said: “I just will add one quick point here and, Elizabeth, I hope you in the media and the rest of the folks in the press will help us with something.

“When I mentioned [earlier], for example, that almost 500,000 new jobs were created in the health care sector since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, I wasn’t making that number up,” he said.

“You can verify that number. 488,000 jobs have been created in the health care industry in the last two years,” he said.  “When someone says to you there’s been a government take over of health care, there are death panels, or that the Affordable Care Act is a job killer, it would help if the press were to probe a little further when folks make these outlandish statements.”

    

Finally A Health Care Suggestion That Makes Sense

In the following article, Paul Hsieh, provides a rational suggestion for health care after discussing the issues related to ObamaCare.  It is an article worth reading.

Conservative Tom

Free Market Lessons from Contraception Fight

Once again, liberty provides the answer.

by
PAUL HSIEH

Bio

March 8, 2012 - 12:00 am

 

The Obama administration’s decision to require religious-based employers to include birth control coverage in their employee health plans has spawned a heated debate. Catholic employers object to being compelled to cover medical services they consider immoral. This has resulted in acrimonious debates over religious freedom, reproductive freedom, and even Rush Limbaugh’s bad language.

The controversy has also made apparent three lessons about America’s current health care system and why we need free-market health care reforms.

1) Health insurance should be uncoupled from employment.

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The contraceptive coverage problem arises because most people with private health insurance receive it as a job benefit. Most Americans now take this for granted. But consider how odd it would be to receive, say, auto or homeowner insurance from our workplace.

The current system of employer-based health insurance is an artifact of federal tax rules from World War II. When the U.S. government imposed wartime wage and price controls, employers could no longer compete for workers by offering higher salaries. Instead, they competed to offer more generous fringe benefits such as health insurance. In 1943, the IRS ruled that employees did not have to pay taxes on health insurance paid for by employers, and the IRS made this permanent in 1954.

This law permanently distorted the health insurance market in favor of employer-based plans. If an employer pays $100 for health insurance with pre-tax dollars, the employee enjoys the full benefit. But if the employer pays that $100 as salary, the worker will only be able to purchase $50-70 of insurance after federal, state, and Social Security taxes. Over time, this tax disparity allowed employer-based health insurance to dominate the private insurance market. In 2008, over 90% of non-elderly Americans with private insurance received it through their workplace.

Hence, most workers don’t own their own health insurance in the same way that they own their auto or homeowners insurance. Employers generally decide which health plans their workers receive. When workers change jobs, they must almost always also change health plans. U.S. tax law thus artificially injects employers into decisions about employees’ health benefits. In contrast, note how employers need not become involved with their workers’ choices of auto or homeowner insurance.

2) Mandated benefits will become political footballs.

The current controversy arose from the government mandating coverage of contraceptives. But this problem is not isolated to contraceptives. Rather, any mandated health insurance benefit could ignite a similar political firestorm.

For instance, Massachusetts requires insurers to cover in vitro fertilization, a procedure recently condemned by the pope. Should Massachusetts Catholics be compelled to pay for others’ in vitro fertilizations despite their religious objections?

Under any system of mandatory insurance (such as in Massachusetts), the government must necessarily specify what constitutes an acceptable policy. This creates a giant magnet for special interest groups seeking to include their own favorite benefits in the mandatory package.

As Michael Cannon noted in 2009:

In the three years since Massachusetts enacted its individual mandate, providers successfully lobbied to require 16 specific types of coverage under the mandate. … The Massachusetts Legislature is considering more than 70 additional requirements.

Under ObamaCare, this special-interest feeding frenzy will expand nationwide. At a 2011 Dept. of Health and Human Services “listening session” to help determine the mandated “essential benefits” package, special interest groups openly lobbied for numerous benefits, including:

* Expanded services for autism and phenylketonuria

* Coverage for “eating coaches”

* Expanded coverage for HIV testing

* Coverage for medical nutrition therapy, especially for the African-American population

Mandatory benefits thus allow those with sufficient political influence to compel others to subsidize their favored medical expenses. Yes, it’s wrong to compel Catholics to pay for others’ birth control. But it’s equally wrong to compel women to pay for prostate cancer checks, or teetotalers to pay for alcoholism treatments they do not wish for and will never use.

3) We must fight for freedom as a principle.

As George Will noted:

The Catholic Bishops, it serves them right. They’re the ones who were really hot for Obamacare, with a few exceptions. But they were all in favor of this. And this is what it looks like when the government decides it’s going to make your health care choices for you.

If the Catholic bishops had previously opposed ObamaCare and supported free market health care reforms on principle, they would now have the moral high ground to argue for religious freedom. But having made their earlier deal with the devil to support ObamaCare, they’re now paying the price.

And their current attempts to seek their own ObamaCare exemption merely turns them into just another special interest group lobbying for a waiver, such as labor unions or the politically connected friends of Nancy Pelosi.

The Catholic bishops can recapture the moral high ground by not merely seeking a narrow exemption for themselves, but rather by supporting broader free market health care reforms, including:

A) Eliminating the tax disparity between employer-provided health insurance and individually-purchased health insurance. This would uncouple health insurance from employment and restore a level playing field to the individual insurance market. Individuals could then purchase policies that they kept even when they changed jobs (just as they already do with their car and homeowners insurance). Employers would no longer be responsible for coverage choices made by their employees.

B) Eliminating all mandated benefits — not just contraceptives, but the dozens of others such as orthotics, autism therapy, in vitro fertilization, etc. Insurers should be free to offer to willing consumers inexpensive policies covering only catastrophic accidents and illnesses. Insurers would remain free to offer richer policies that covered varying levels of elective procedures (but cost correspondingly more). Customers could purchase whatever levels of coverage they wished from willing insurers based on their own individual needs and circumstances.

These free market reforms would lower insurance costs for many consumers, allow individuals to keep their insurance when they changed jobs, and free employers from having to pay for medical services that violated their religious principles.

In summary, the root cause of the current controversy is government interference in the marketplace for health insurance. And the only proper solution is to repeal those government controls and move towards a fully free market in health insurance.

Paul Hsieh, MD, is a member of the Colorado chapter of Docs4PatientCare (www.Docs4PatientCare.org) and co-founder of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (www.WeStandFIRM.org).