http://news.yahoo.com/arrogance-obamas-accommodation-160900646.htmlNo one elected Barack Obama to be Pope. So why on Earth is he forcing Catholics to violate their religious doctrines?President Barack Obama went a long way this month to proving conservative critics correct when they paint the president as aloof and arrogant. In a long-anticipated decision, Obama and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius mandated that employers provide coverage for contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients at no charge — not even copays — as part of the ObamaCare regulation of health insurance. That mandate exempts "places of worship," but not religiously affiliated organizations such as schools, charities, and hospitals. When an eruption of outrage followed the announcement of this new rule, Obama announced an "
accommodation" — without once bothering to consult the religious organizations impacted by the rule, nor changing the impact of the rule one whit through the supposed "compromise."
Obama's
diktat to Catholics demonstrates just how arrogant the president can be.
SEE MORE: The 'permanent patients' in America's hospitals First, let's take a look at the differences between the original rule published in late January and the supposed accommodation offered last Friday, as economist
Greg Mankiw helpfull explains it. The original rule (A) required employers to buy health insurance that covers contraception and abortifacients for its employees. The compromise (B) requires employers to buy health insurance for its employees, and have the health insurer communicate its coverage for contraception and abortifacients to the employees. As Mankiw notes, the employer still bears the cost of the health insurance which will cover the costs of those products and services, so it's impossible to support B but not A, or A but not B. There is no substantive difference between the two positions.
Employers still have to provide coverage — at no cost, not even copays — for contraception and abortifacients such as "
ella" and
Plan B, as well as IUDs. Here's a question few are asking: Why? Obama and his administration insist that women need better access to contraception and abortifacients, but few women have problems accessing them. The
CDC reported in 2009 that contraception use wasn't exactly lacking: "Contraceptive use in the United States is virtually universal among women of reproductive age: 99 percent of all women who had ever had intercourse had used at least one contraceptive method in their lifetime." Of all the reasons for non-use of contraception in cases of unwanted pregnancy, lack of access doesn't even make the CDC's list; almost half of women assumed they couldn't get pregnant (44 percent), didn't mind getting pregnant (23 percent), didn't plan to have sex (14 percent), or worried about the side effects of birth control (16 percent). In fact, the word access appears only once in this study of contraceptive use, and only in the context of health insurance, not contraception.
SEE MORE: Will Obama's contraception compromise help his campaign? The mandate for no-cost insurance coverage makes no business sense, either. Insurers operate risk pools, and the more risks one group creates, the more they are expected to contribute to balance the risk for the other participants. For instance, when a driver buys insurance, his rates depend on a number of factors, including age, vehicle type, area of residence, driving record, and the number of miles driven in a year. If a driver chooses to drive more than 7,500 miles in a year, the risk increases, and so do premiums for that driver. If the insurer spread the cost of this one driver's increased risk across the whole pool of drivers, it would disincentivize risk minimization. Adults can choose to be sexually active. They might require contraception. But if the government mandates coverage of those products, shouldn't the people choosing that riskier behavior be expected to contribute
more rather than less, to keep the rest of the risk pool from paying for their increased access?
The White House and
HHS insist that this is immaterial, because it's cheaper to provide the contraceptive coverage than to exclude it. This is based on a cost-benefit analysis that claims that the use of contraception and abortifacients lower health-care costs for women. If that's true, however, health insurers wouldn't need a mandate to add such coverage to existing plans. The problem with this analysis is that it ignores the fact that insurers have to cover the up-front cost of such products and services, while any possible savings (by preventing more expensive pregnancy and childbirth costs) would occur over a much longer period of time. Those up-front costs will be borne by those paying the premiums — in this case, the employers (and sometimes, partially, by employees.)
