But nobody’s talking about dropping anything.

There’s certainly a correlation. I’m willing to grant it’s not 100% if you’re willing to grant it’s not 0% ;)

Because “dropping” contraception coverage isn’t at issue here.

Why would that be relevant? If some population of women, say 10,000 was having 500 abortions per year without coverage but with coverage only has 400 that is a 20% decline. I grant a serious pro-lifer would not be happy with 400 abortions a year but look at the huge efforts some pro-lifers go in order to convince individual women no to have abortions, counting even a single changed mind as a great victory. (This does raise an odd existential question of whether it’s better to exist even for a month inside a womb versus never having life at all but that’s not one I see many pro-lifers or anyone for that matter address much)

Because “dropping” contraception coverage isn’t at issue here.

If you think there’s that close of a relationship between plausibility and truth, there’s a problem right there.

As usual you make numerous claims some more plausible than others. I’ll start with a simple one.

That’s good to hear. If all my claims were exactly equally plusible then maybe I’d be lucky in being 100% right about everything, but if I was wrong in just one thing then I’d be 100% wrong about everything. A diversity of plausible claims then is welcome news!

How do you know they are happy to offer contraceptive care “free of charge”? Do you know the reason for co-pay? Allow me to explain a little. Insurers know quite well the microeconomic explanation of the relationship of supply, demand, and price. If contraception was essentially free, there would be no need for a co-pay. So why do they charge it? Habit? So which ones offer it for free?

Well let’s limit our discussion to the pill. We have generic pills out there as well as some newer pills that aren’t. All things being equal insurance companies would rather a patient opt for a cheaper generic than a premium non-generic unless there was some reason the older generic would not be good for that particular patient. As for it being ‘free’, the pill itself is not free. Whether it’s generic or not the pharmacy gets paid when the person fills the script. If the insurance company isn’t raising rates for the employer, then the cost of the script is either coming directly from the company’s profits (in which case stockholders are paying for it) or it’s coming from reduced spending on other medical things (in which case the employer may be reaping all or some of the savings rather than paying for the pill, actually figuring out how much savings is going to the employer and how much to the company’s profit line is a rather devilish accounting or microeconomics question).

You do know the basic service of health insurance and the service most promoted by the insurers, right? Checkups. With or without contraceptives. I think you may have confused women who can’t afford to go to the doctor at all because they _don’t_ have insurance with those that do have insurance.

Since you need a script for the pill that has to be renewed on a regular basis, you will have to show up to the doctor on a regular basis for a regular checkup. Believe it or not just as there are some ‘doctor hogs’ who hit their doctor every few months with their insurance, there are also people who only hit their doctor if there’s something really wrong. While hogs do drive up costs a bit, it’s probably the doctor shy people the insurance companies would rather get into the office once or twice a year. In any given year, a person who isn’t having any major problem is probably perfectly fine, but for most people something really bad is probably going to happen sooner or later. Take cancer, diabeties, heart disease/attack, stroke for example. On that unhappy wheel probably 80-90% of us are going to end up drawing at least one sooner or later. The person who never needs a doctor is probably going to drive costs up quite a bit when s(he) doesn’t catch something sooner so yea insurance companies like the fact that you have a regular relationship with your doc.

As to your extended ad hominems, I agree that there are people who post to this web site that make outrageous claims.

Pet peeve here, I made no ad hominem. This is an ad hominem:

“You’re assertion is wrong because you’re stupid.”

You may or may not be stupid but that wouldn’t make your assertion wrong. If its wrong it is wrong because it is false, you being smart or stupid doesn’t make it true or false.

“Your assertion is wrong, so it’s stupid to demand that we take it seriously”

Ahhh this is harsh but not an ad hominem. If it’s wrong then it’s wrong and should be treated as such.

Now I don’t think I made either attack here. Fact is Obama has not gotten any credit for cutting in favor of pro-life demands (i.e. the decision to override the FDA regarding the morning after pill for teens, splitting abortion coverage away from health care reform). If you’re going to be trashed as a radical no matter what you give, then why bother giving at all? Screw those who are demanding compromise, at least until they learn to practice the art themselves. And I think its a perfectly reasonable hypothesis to claim that the reason for this lack of honesty stems from the pro-life movement having embedded itself so firmly as a sub-group of the Republican Party that it has ceased to have any real claim on our attention as anything other than a Republican spin group.

(Speaking of which, why no discussion of the question of whether or not dropping contraception coverage may end up causing abortions? Even if they are paid for by a woman’s own funds rather than insurance, wouldn’t pro-lifers be concerned about a policy that might indirectly increase abortion? It wasn’t even 15 years ago when the Catholic Bishops came out against the Gingrich/Clinton welfare reform bill which capped payments for women who had additional children while on welfare on the grounds that such a policy might make abortion more economically rational for some women.)

As usual you make numerous claims some more plausible than others. I’ll start with a simple one.

“Insurance companies are happy to offer contraception free of charge or for marginal co-pays because it reduces overall healthcare costs.”

How do you know they are happy to offer contraceptive care “free of charge”? Do you know the reason for co-pay? Allow me to explain a little. Insurers know quite well the microeconomic explanation of the relationship of supply, demand, and price. If contraception was essentially free, there would be no need for a co-pay. So why do they charge it? Habit? So which ones offer it for free?

As to contraceptives resulting in women with health insurance getting checkups whereas they don’t when there are no contraceptives (as implied by the claim). You do know the basic service of health insurance and the service most promoted by the insurers, right? Checkups. With or without contraceptives. I think you may have confused women who can’t afford to go to the doctor at all because they _don’t_ have insurance with those that do have insurance.

As to your extended ad hominems, I agree that there are people who post to this web site that make outrageous claims.

Correct me if I’m wrong but the individual is to be offered the option to have free coverage which they may accept or reject. The employer, whose supposedly is buying this coverage, doesn’t have his rates altered based on how many employees accept or reject the coverage. This leads to a rather absurd view….

Suppose one year every employee rejects the coverage. Employers rate doesn’t go down or up. Suppose next year every employee accepts the coverage, rate doesn’t go up or down. Exactly how is the employer buying anything in year 2? Answer, he isn’t.

Insurance companies are happy to offer contraception free of charge or for marginal co-pays because it reduces overall healthcare costs. Some of this is for obvious reasons; abortion is more expensive than contraception, child birth is more expensive than abortion. Some for less obvious reasons, being on the pill requires at least yearly checkups where other fast, low cost screening for various medical problems can be done, contraceptives can sometimes be used for medical purposes that have nothing to do with preventing pregnancy.

So you already have your religious freedom. If any person feels lower cost health plans violate their conscience because reaping savings provided by contraception is ‘blood money’, then they should be free to pay more. Catholic affiliated institutions (not churches since they are totally exempt to begin with), are perfectly free to commission an estimate of cost savings they reap from contraceptive plans and put that money towards, say, enhanced beneifits for childbirth. Only a min. level of benefits has been defined, there is no prohibition on offering more.

Douglas Johnson
I disagree that Obama’s extreme position on abortion is not relevant to the contraception and abortifacient provisions of his own healthcare law.

YAWN, the health bill included an unprecedented compromise on abortion. For the fist time ever individuals will have to buy abortion coverage in the form of two seperate policies..before nearly everyone who enjoyed employer provided health coverage reaped huge tax benefits for policies that almost always included abortion. Think of it, all during the eras of pro-life heros like Reagan, Bush I and II day in day out gov’t policy subsidized health plans that provided for abortion and contraception coverage with not a peep. Now abortion coverage is singled out for special treatment because so many do feel so strongly on it and to what benefit?

Well none at all. No matter what you try to give the pro-life movement, it will be an ‘extreme pro-abortion position’ unless you give them 100% or unless you’re a Republican. This blog illustrated that not too long ago where a 20% decline in abortions in NYC was respun as an increase through the most tortured abuse of mathematics. For what reason? The most plausible is that no ‘good news’ should be allowed if it came from a polity what was firmly pro-choice politically. At a certain point, the issue the Catholic Bishops and the pro-life community will have to confront is are they really dedicated to their consciences or has group loyality to the GOP subtlely been substituted in its place?

I disagree that Obama’s extreme position on abortion is not relevant to the contraception and abortifacient provisions of his own healthcare law. Personally, I don’t see how anyone can separate the two, but on that point we’ll agree to disagree.

Rahe was making his point as background to help explain why the Catholic Bishops remained silent for so long about Obama and Obamacare. I think its hard to dispute Rahe’s point that there’s a connection between the two, but again, we’ll agree to disagree.

As for Commonweal, I don’t read it. I know nothing about it.