If you are a man who favors governmental control of health insurance i.e. ObamaCare, you are a fool. You are second in line – the men of the Titanic.
Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood touts Obama’s dictate that requires all health insurance plans to cover birth control without deductible or co-pay:
Women won in Washington this week. [ed: when was the last time they lost?] The Obama administration’s decision to protect the birth control coverage benefit that is part of health care reform will have a real and direct impact on millions of Americans [ed: correction – Americans who are women] –who will now have insurance that covers birth control without deductibles or co-pays. This will save women who use oral contraceptives about $15 to $50 a month, adding up to hundreds of dollars a year–and even more for those that need access to longer acting methods, like IUDs, which can cost up to $800. [ed: further correction; American women who have sex and thus require BC will save money]
For women in America, this is a watershed moment. The birth control coverage benefit is one of the most important breakthroughs for women’s health care in a generation. Birth control will be treated like any other preventive prescription, and it will be more accessible than it’s ever been.
Basically, ‘pro-choice’ is the right for women to decide whether their pregnancy is an illness or a healthful going concern. Oh the power. This is quite unlike any other affliction like, say, the flu where only a sadist would not want to rid her body of the virus. Pregnancy is also quite unlike the flu or most other sicknesses over which we have limited control. The progressive-liberal frame on this issue is that non-sex is a non-option. They assume sex must occur which could lead to pregnancy, the cost of which society would be forced to deal.
The Obama administration reached this decision after hearing from major medical societies, patient advocates, members of Congress, and, most importantly, regular Americans who disagreed with efforts to undermine the birth control benefit.
The emboldened text confirms the worst fears of those who opposed Obama’s governmental overreach: that the executive branch can reach a decision about the economics of private health insurers. As Julian Sanchez noted back in August when this plan was first preached from on High:
As some note, it’s possible that providing birth control would end up reducing costs on net by reducing the number of policyholder pregnancies. It’s somewhat doubtful to me whether this occurs when the copay is *zero* as opposed to merely relatively low. But in any event, I’d expect the insurers to be adequately motivated to find the right figure without a mandate.
He’s right. Insurance companies would have a profit motive to figure out the best price point for birth control co-pay and wellness exam deductibles. Everyone rails against insurance companies for their greed and their cunning; why do we now sell short the idea that they can read an actuarial table?
As usual, the frame is political. A zero dollar co-pay is a political win – an energy we can absorb through Richards’ celebratory article. She’s a proponent of what I call the “get shit for free” culture which is mostly populated by liberals and progressives. Paying one red cent is still too much; these people want a moral victory which requires them to not pay anything for their goods and services. And, in their minds, if they aren’t paying for it then it’s a non-cost.
Sanchez is also correct here:
I mean, I understand why (employed, insured) women in their 20s and 30s might be personally pleased about the short-term drop in their expenses, but looked at more broadly, it’s just a large predictable cost that’s going to need to get baked into premiums. (The very poor, needless to say, are also most likely to be uninsured.) It just means the cost is now shared between women who do use it and those who don’t. I guess that’s nice for the women who use it, but I’m not sure why it’s necessary or, for that matter, fair.
A zero dollar co-pay and zero dollar deductible merely shifts the cost to those who don’t require birth control i.e. men. Everyone is paying for the health of the few. The risks taken on by youngish women are spread across the entire insurance pool. Of course, that’s what insurance is, – the pooling of risk – but this sex-specific risk-sharing is essentially sexist in nature. Only women benefit from this government mandate.
The added irony to it all, as I’ve mentioned before, is that the risk is spread across society, yet individual women still retain the right to do whatever they want with their bodies. If health care is perceived as a right, then women are determining if they need health care. But rightful health care, as it is normally thought of and presented by liberals, are those things that are outside of our control. Take smokers: these people make a choice of what to do with their body, and they generally pay higher premiums for their health insurance. They pay deductibles and co-pay on their medications and doctors visits. Not that they deserve a mandated risk share either, but why the double-standard?
Erin Gloria Ryan of Jezebel is clear about what this means for women:
In the meantime, enjoy this delicious bit of victory over the forces of stupidity and plan how you’ll spend the money you’d otherwise use for your monthly birth control copay. Something cool, like a new book or running shoes or candy? Or something practical, like your 401K or nipple tassels? The choice is yours.
Kill me.
Like this:
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So i guess that means condoms are free now right? We can just go and grab fistfulls of em…. oh guess not.
What a bitch. Kill me? No, kill her. The ungrateful and flippant attitude really enrages me.
” are those things that are outside of our control. ”
but, but it just happened!! Sex is magical!
“[ed: when was the last time they lost?] ”
The president is still a man, and not all demands are met unconditionally/entirety. Title IX in STEM for example. Enough grounds to qualify for misogyny.
“For women in America, this is a watershed moment. ”
OT:
The maternal preference as patriarchal side-effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tender_years_doctrine
[ed: when was the last time they lost?]
Many times. In 1997 assistant secretary of the Army Sarah Lister was fired for calling US Marines “extremist.” Monica Lewinsky and Camille Paglia turned feminism into a joke. It’s OK again to refer to women as “girls.” In the early 90s, there was a famous joke that female children have to be called “pre-women.” The lesbian/Dworkin wing of feminism lost a long, nasty internacine war against their opportunistic hetero sex-positive feminist sisters. Heir-apparent Hillary and with her the entire feminist movement was thrown under the bus for johnny-come-lately Barack. Geraldine Ferraro met the James Watson fate.
And the ERA was never passed.
… and finally, representing feminism’s most bitter loss, Ashton dumped Demi.
PA,
those aren’t policy issues. they haven’t lost anything in terms of more goodies, transfer payments, and subsidies.
Since we have it so great, I guess you guys all wish you were women?
You can give us everything we ask for and we will still find a way to be unhappy.
Chuck,
Do you really think making life really easy and cushy for men is good for them?
for men? when did that happen?
That’s what a lot of men in the MRA want, to be coddled like women.
yeah, they’d say that since women get free stuff then they should too. i reject both which is why i consider most MRA planks a reaction against feminism in the wrong direction.
Consider the Tender Years doctrine, which is now patriarchal prejudice of “children are for women” biting men in the ass, and the ‘in the best interests of child’ again doing justice by punishing men for their career avarice and not giving women enough high-paying jobs.
Or the abolishment of affirmative action in Sweden when it started favoring women.
“Warren Farrell states that men and boys are about a half century behind our women and girls.”
I wonder why is that?
I have to be the devil’s advocate on this one. Less careless reproduction is good.
It’s a long time ago (in a land far, far away from the US) but I distinctly remember paying for my own BC. “I” didn’t want the consequences of sex therefore “I” take responsibility for this (haha – it was so long ago condoms were optional!). It would never have occurred that this should be covered by insurance (I’m pretty sure it still is not here).
There was an uproar when a 10% GST was introduced and feminine hygiene products were included (all value added products, processed foods etc were included, not fresh foods and basic staples). I would be interested to hear opinions on this from another perspective.
“Or the abolishment of affirmative action in Sweden when it started favoring women.”
men. a la Mr. Farrell.
Birth control pills were never very expensive. Erin from Jezebel is talking about less than $200/year.
Lara–
Do you really think making life really easy and cushy for men is good for them?
I don’t think it’s good for women either, when the government is the one doing it or forcing men in general to have to do it through higher insurance premiums. Women should have to look to individual men to make things easier and cushier for them, and in return give him lots of wifely services, or else to themselves. They should not be enabled to look to men collectively to make their life easy and cushy, through government taxation for benefits going only to women, and other coercion, such as sky high (as a percentage of after tax earnings) child support=also stealth alimony, even for oops babies which I think are in the great majority of the cases wanted by the woman, either consciously or subconsciously, but almost never wanted by the man who’s forced to pay that “child support”.
BTW, I’d guess that lifetime and year by year medical expenditures on women are at least fifty percent higher than they are on men, yet to adjust health insurance for gender would bring huge howls from the femmes. That’s what should be done however.
@Lara: You can give us everything we ask for and we will still find a way to be unhappy.
Women, as a group, are very much like blacks, as a group.
Men should sue for equal benefits: either free rubbers, or training seminars on timing the pull-out.
“i reject both which is why i consider most MRA planks a reaction against feminism in the wrong direction.”
@Chuck- my thought is that the current MRA movement is different from feminism only in that it favors men. As you said, they basically want the same things the feminists want, and the want gender to be the dividing line on this. Essentially, they’ve played into the feminists’ frame, and have failed a society-wide fitness test.
Government funded sex? Wow, what a great way to undermine women. Now there’s no reason at all for anyone to not be having sex: we’re actually being encouraged to be sex objects- by our government. I actually am having a hard time fathoming this one. When will we have a nation that is more focused on responsibility than on “freeing” ourselves from what makes us decent human beings? How will this help our already instantly gratified society?
Ol’ PA is trying to pretend that his buddies in the push for a More Perfect Fascist State aren’t destroying society—”nothing to see here!”
If we are ignorant of the vast strides of fascism, it can continue unabated. A good way to do that is, like the old line about the devil, to prove the greatest trick of all: that such strides aren’t happening. Hence Pa’s idiocy.
Simon Grey—
my thought is that the current MRA movement is different from feminism only in that it favors men. As you said, they basically want the same things the feminists want, and the want gender to be the dividing line on this.
I find the types of MRAs who aren’t also or more into game, as Roissy, Dalrock, Badger, etc. are, to be annoying as well, mostly because of their combination of whininess and defeatism at least among most of the commenters. However this statement is going way too far. I haven’t read many MRA’s posts that advocate special privileges for men. They just want unfair divorce laws, VAWA and state laws implementing it, and unfair affirmative action and disparate impact for women to be wipe off the books or made equal and fair. They want and end to emasculating of white boys in schools and white men in sitcoms and ads, and an end to so much favoring of girls and emphasis on empowering them but never boys.
Just want special stuff just for guys to MRA’s communal advocate???
the entire concept of socialist health care is primarily a (yet another) male-female wealth transfer, as females on average consume about twice the average male in health services (not even including reproductive health costs, or the massive massive amount of other ways in which females drain the financial viability of society). Indeed, in a lifetime, unsurprisingly, females represent a net loss for governments, and males represent a net gain. The accounting methods used to disguise this grow ever more numerous and convoluted.
Men, as a group, are way better off paying for women’s contraception/abortions than paying for the healthcare of their unwanted children *for the rest of their lives*. Under a system of socialized medicine, free abortions/contraception is more efficient than the alternative.
I abhor all feminist hypocrisy, but in this case, I’m not going to get too upset about cheap BC.
If every girl got on BC this world would be a better place.
That invalidates the entire Affordable Care Act for you? I know you don’t like the mandate either.
Aren’t you originally English? What would you do if you developed cancer tomorrow?
Actually I agree with FFY.
Free (it’s not cheap it’s free in 2014 and thereafter) female BC is a net gain for men.
However men and women shouldn’t have the same health insurance premiums, either as individually paid, or as paid by corps. And corps should be able to consider that a valid reason for paying women less cash income for the same position, so as to equalize the total employment cost expense, woman versus man in the same position.
To all the men who claim that birth control is only benefiting women, I seriously hope you are paying half the cost of birth control for every women you have sex with. Especially you men who are living with women you’re not married to; birth control should be a household expense, like groceries and cleaning supplies.
The Whorefinder is the closest thing here to a fascist. He likes it when big banks and the big corporations and the big government jerk each other off over the bleeding body of America. He looks at the pigs and says “this is the good pig, this is the bad pig,” not understanding that you can’t tell which pig is which, and efforts at telling them apart are pointless.
Mind you, I am a fan of The Whorefinder because he’s funny, and often incisive in his commentary, but he is clueless as fuck about what “free market” is supposed to mean.
The Whorefinder likes it when big banks and big corporations and big government destroy America. It’s good for the bottom line in quarterly reports.
@ Jamila:
interesting logic. because everything women do costs men money, we should be ecstatic at the opportunity to pay the smaller of your costs…
“over 90 percent of women use birth control at some point in their lives, which means that over 90 percent of men have benefited from women’s use of birth control”
quoted this from your blog post on the topic. that’s not even an elementary-grade logic fail …..
“quoted this from your blog post on the topic. that’s not even an elementary-grade logic fail …..”
OK. Inform me: What percentage of men have had sex with women on birth control?
Actually, PA is right. This does undermine traditional feminism. Think about it: the great feminist achievement is…government-subsidized birth control? Well, that’s only good for the percentage of women attractive enough to actually have sex…the teens-to-early 20′s crowd and a small pool of cougars.
Feminism is making a full circle back to acknowledging a woman’s only real value is her physical appearance.
Mandatory birth control is one small step to mandatory abortion!!
jamila,
as long as women retain the right to privacy and freedom to choose whether or not to give birth to the fetus or abort it, birth control is their responsibility. men have no say in this realm, as feminists have made abundantly clear. you all can’t have it both ways. and if you want to be assured that the father hangs around and helps pay for the child’s care, legalize the thing, and get married before opening legs.
I see no reason to celebrate this, from a man’s POV. Just because birth control is free, does not guarantee that women will use it. Someone said it costs $200 per year, so don’t think that 55c per day is the breaking point for any woman’s reproductive planning. Also, don’t think that because it’s free and she’s currently using it, that she can’t or won’t eventually pull the goalie on you, to cash in on child support.
“And the ERA was never passed.”
PA, its failure to pass was the real victory for women. If the ERA had become law, all the female-first set-asides and affirmative action that we now have would be gone, as would women’s exclusion from the military draft.
Add in the fact that women can point to its failure to be ratified as somehow being anti-woman is just icing on the cake.
This is what they really benefit from the most: things that benefit them but can be spun as being against them, providing fodder for endless protests, editorials, diatribes, and screeds.
They got just what they wanted with the ERA. It couldn’t have worked out better for them.
glp says: Everyone is paying for the health of the few.
Tobacco users are paying the excess risk on all. They are the only group than can be selectively be forced to pay higher rates.
Doug1 said: And corps should be able to consider that a valid reason for paying women less cash income for the same position, so as to equalize the total employment cost expense, woman versus man in the same position.
I agree. A single person is not receiving the same total compensation as a married plus …..
Jamila said “over 90 percent of women use birth control at some point in their lives, which means that over 90 percent of men have benefited from women’s use of birth control”
Making up the facts as she goes along. 90% use does not mean 90% benefit on the other side. And I question the 90% use statistic.
@ Jamila: “OK. Inform me: What percentage of men have had sex with women on birth control?”
the correct path to take if you don’t know a piece of information is to not make any representation otherwise. my pointing out your logical error in no way obligates me to perform your research or make whatever point you thought you were making – for you.
This is actually a victory for devout dykism (what is erroneously called “feminism”) and the total autonomy of the emergent female.
The reality is that whatever the cost white man is PAYING for his own self-annihilation. Free birth control MEANS an increased pressure to start the process of intentional infertility at a
younger age. There will now be pressure to start reproductive destruction at the moment that reproductive capability emerges. Many young white females will begin this purposeful destruction of their reproduction systems at 12 years old and continue for one or two DECADES.
So as we complain about the “goodies” that our daughters will get and be pressured to take while our sons will HAVE TO PAY FOR IT, the way we are ALL going to have to really pay is with self-annihilation.
This self-annihilation is rooted in the homosexual nature and so this is a victory for those devout dykes and their allies that hate man, woman and child and have their male liberal allies chasing after “feminism.”