Immaculate contraception: There's no such thing as free birth control

Yesterday’s new adventure in damage control and bureaucratic improvisation makes the compliance problem much worse. There is simply no precedent for the government ordering private companies to offer a product for free, even if they recoup the costs indirectly. Why not do that with all health benefits and “bend the cost curve” to zero? The shape of the final rule when the details land in the Federal Register is anyone’s guess, including the HHS gnomes who are throwing it together on the fly to meet a political deadline.

One major problem will be how the rule applies to large organizations that self-insure. Arrangements in which an employer pays for care directly and uses insurers to manage benefits and process claims (not to take on insurance risk) account for the majority of the private market. In these cases there isn’t even a free lunch to pretend exists.