Planned Parenthood: The Pill is an entitlement

Is contraception a “preventive service”?  Planned Parenthood believes so, and wants the government to classify the Pill as such in order to force insurers to provide it for free to consumers.  At issue is the intent of Congress in defining prevention, as well as the ability to limit the language of ObamaCare to keep it from becoming yet another runaway entitlement:

As health reform regulations begin to take shape, Planned Parenthood has begun a quiet campaign to ensure that birth control is counted among the free preventive services that health insurers must cover under the Affordable Care Act.

Birth control barely came up in the health care reform debate, brushed aside by the more heated debate over abortion language and coverage. But with numerous religious groups opposed to contraceptive use, this issue is all but certain to become a flash point as implementation moves forward. …

With little fanfare, Planned Parenthood has begun laying the groundwork for a birth control campaign that will ramp up in coming months. On The Pill Is Personal, a website launched in May to celebrate the pill’s 50th anniversary, the group is soliciting stories from birth control users. “In the coming weeks,” the site tells visitors, “federal officials will consider measures that will dramatically increase access. Share your story or comments about how the pill changed your life and how it can change others.”

The women’s stories may soon be used to lobby federal agencies on birth control’s importance.

“This needs to be based on science and medical evidence, but … it is also really important to hear the stories of how women view birth control, the health impact and the affordability issue,” Rubiner said.

This exemplifies what Nancy Pelosi meant when she said that we’d have to pass ObamaCare to find out what’s in it.  My God, it’s full of Pills!

Is the Pill preventive, in the sense meant when preventive medicine got debated during ObamaCare?  Not at all.  Democrats specifically called out early diagnosis of diseases such as diabetes to argue that ObamaCare would be an overall cost saver.  A subsequent CBO analysis showed that argument to be a fallacy, but that didn’t stop them from making it repeatedly and consistently during the debate.  That never included an explicit argument that lowering the birth rate would be an overall cost-saver, or that it was a legitimate government interest to suppress the birth rate.  (The Social Security crisis actually argues that the government should incentivize higher birth rates in order to keep the Ponzi scheme afloat.)

On top of that, the entire idea of mandates is why the insurance companies have so many problems as it is.  Imposing mandates for supplying the Pill to women for free will add billions of dollars of new costs onto insurers at a time when ObamaCare threatens to swamp the industry in red ink already.  Furthermore, it is entirely elective, just like nose jobs and Lasix.  The actual preventive measure to avoid pregnancy is abstinence, which costs nothing to anyone.  If women choose to be sexually active without desiring pregnancy, then they should shoulder the responsibility and costs of that decision themselves, not shove them off to everyone else.

What do you think?  Should women get the Pill for free?  Take the poll:

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