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The Obama Watch
Obama’s Department of Free Contraceptives
The latest regulatory contortions of HHS.
Stung by the backlash to his HHS mandate, Obama hastily proposed a “revision” to it last February. The revision amounted to an accounting trick that would theoretically shift contraceptive and abortifacient costs from objecting religious employers to their hapless insurers. Obama cast this magical thinking as a neat resolution to his political problem. It at once upheld a right to religious freedom and a right to free contraceptives, he insisted: “Religious liberty will be protected and a law that requires free preventative care will not discriminate against women.”
He had promised feminists that he wasn’t going to let the religious impede this new right. Would he defend it at all costs? “Darn tootin,” he replied to one of them at a rally in 2011.
Last week Obama’s HHS gave more definition to his proposed revision in an 80-page catalogue of regulatory contortions, all of which are intended to uphold a right to free contraceptives, even for the employees of most church-affiliated groups. The policy is described as a concession to the religious, but it is sure to operate more like a corrupt partnership with them. At best it keeps the outside of the cup clean while leaving the dirt inside to collect.
A barometer of the policy’s bogusness is the enthusiasm with which Planned Parenthood and company greeted the “sensible compromise.” Even Sandra Fluke approved, accepting the magical payment arrangement as an unimportant distinction without a difference. The key to these groups is that HHS locks in place a federal right to free contraceptives. “This policy makes it clear that your boss does not get to decide whether you can have birth control,” read the statement from Planned Parenthood, working hard as usual to twist non-participation into a form of sinister oppression.
The revision, far from respecting religious employers, draws them into a cynical arrangement: Obama will pretend to respect their religious objections if they pretend to ignore his corrupting of their employees and fleecing of insurance companies. After all, shifting costs from employers to insurers is nothing more than government-supervised theft, a shell game that Obama now tempts religious groups to play alongside him.
This is an insidious offer, designed to turn the religious into stooges for his secularism, stooges who earn their narrow privileges through passive complicity in unjust state fiats. “Sure, go ahead and bill our insurers for free contraceptives and abortifacients” is hardly an honest or pious stance for church officials to take. If that is a triumph for religious freedom, it is an exceedingly sad and illusory one, as it rests upon new violations of freedom, not to mention indifference to the mandate’s overall hostility to conscience rights under the First Amendment (groups and individuals deemed non-religious under the revision still pay directly for contraceptive costs whether they like it or not).
Forcing an insurance company to provide a product for free is baldly unconstitutional. But Obama, having already lost many of the HHS cases, figures that is an easier legal hill to climb than preserving the original mandate. Insurance companies are so cowed by the federal government that they offered only murmuring replies to the news of the more definitive revision. They need to “study” this “unprecedented” policy. No doubt many of these companies are wondering how the costs of setting up a separate free-contraceptives program for church-affiliated groups, some of which are run by celibates, will pay for themselves under the Sebelius model: “The reduction in the number of pregnancies compensates for cost of contraception,” the HHS secretary casually told Congress last year.
Obama’s contention that religious freedom and a federally-backed right to free contraception can seamlessly coexist should offend even the least skeptical. His claim rests upon the fantasy that insurance companies won’t find some way to pass the costs of free contraceptives on to religious groups through higher fees. It also assumes that religious groups have no legitimate grounds to object to enrolling its employees in a free-contraceptives program, as if that level of involvement in the scheme doesn’t itself compromise them. But of course it does. They are still required to expedite access to insurance that treats contraceptives and abortifacients as “essential” care. That they are nominally freed from paying for it doesn’t eliminate all moral concerns.
The terminology of Obamacare remains relentlessly Orwellian. Under it, one and all must accept the official lies that obvious costs count as “free services,” disabling functioning parts of the body constitutes “basic health care,” and blameless assertions of freedom under the First Amendment are “discriminatory.” Those who refuse to bow to these oppressive lies, according to the federal government, are the real oppressors, the “boss” who stands athwart his employees’ freedoms. The goal is to propagandize the people so deeply that out of a petrified gratitude they will trade their freedom for the latest Faustian bargain.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
About the Author
George Neumayr, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is co-author, with Phyllis Schlafly, of the new book, No Higher Power: Obama’s War on Religious Freedom.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (39) | Leave a comment
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Appleby| 2.6.13 @ 7:17AM
Just Keep Saying NO.
Hardcard| 2.6.13 @ 8:18AM
Free ain't nothing free, king O gives the stuff out and we the taxpayers pay. Fluke you !!!
Jack London| 2.6.13 @ 8:21AM
yawn - how many bytes of stupidly can the AmSpec waste on this. You are free to not use contraception. But you cannot stand in the way of the huge societal benefits of widening access to healthcare to other people on ridiculous ideological grounds - it just makes you all look like you have the brains of a single-celled amoeba.
CJW| 2.6.13 @ 8:41AM
Commie Jack
Only a single celled commie believes that the taxpayers should be forced to pay for your condoms, and that the issue is whether you have acess to contraception. The issue is whether religious groups who oppose contraception and abortificants have to pay for it.
Nancy in NC| 2.6.13 @ 8:51AM
I know it's called reading and that leaves most on the left out in the cold, but the First Amendment is fairly easy to understand with even those with less than average intelligence.
"Congress shall make no law...prohibiting the free exercise thereof". Curse the left wing and the idiots who would destroy our freedoms.
Jack London| 2.6.13 @ 9:17AM
Funny how you left out "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" Nancy. I wonder why - you being a constitutional scholar.
And you obviously haven't noticed that the administration has gone way beyond what it should have in accommodating absurd objections to universal reproductive healthcare.
Moe Blotz| 2.6.13 @ 9:32AM
Jack, did your mother have any children that lived?
RonRonDoRon| 2.6.13 @ 1:55PM
Do you have any idea what "an establishment of religion" meant in the context of the writing of the Constitution?
Stephie| 2.6.13 @ 2:02PM
Way beyond? HAH! They haven't even scratched the surface and it isn't "absurd" to have objections to having pay for your wife's and or daughter's sex life.
lost| 2.6.13 @ 4:33PM
Contraceptives is not a form of universal reproductive healthcare and the fact that you do not understand that speaks volumes. My utilities should be "free" because heat in the winter time is very important to my health and I think you should pay them for me.
Moe Blotz| 2.6.13 @ 5:15PM
Call Joe Kennedy, he gives away home heating oil.
PolishKnight| 2.6.13 @ 9:22AM
Pardon me: Hahahahaha!
I'm amused by the notion of the scientific, intellectual, wise leftist who is making the whole world into Sweden and reactionaries better get out of his way!
The average Democrat voter is a welfare mother or illiterate immigrant family with a half dozen kids. Jack has less in common with the average Democrat voter as Romney does with Nascar fans.
Sandra Fluke is a wonderful representative of the leftist and feminist ideology because calling her a "slut" is a joke. She looks like a frigid lesbian and probably is. For her, expensive birth control either is a status symbol, political ploy, or hormone therapy. It's not because all the hot guys at law school want to chase her to bang her bones. That's laughable.
Ironically, the days of Benny Hill and Mad Men are the times when affluent women were sexy and you could imagine them NEEDING abortion and contraception options...
John Navratil| 2.6.13 @ 11:46AM
Polish Knight,
It's the newspeak. Not giving is taking. Passivity is oppression. Thinking is stupid.
PolishKnight| 2.6.13 @ 12:43PM
It's newspeak but also projection. The left engages in an age old defensive tactic by accusing their opponents of exactly what they are doing but they are amazingly brazen about it. So someone who tries to stop them from taking is a "taker". Or someone who opposes their race preferences agenda is "racist".
I saw all this stuff in high school.
RonRonDoRon| 2.6.13 @ 1:53PM
If there are "huge societal benefits," why does not society pay for them directly (through government expenditure) rather than mandating that employers pay the cost on society's behalf?
spike59| 2.7.13 @ 5:53AM
"yawn - how many bytes of stupidly can the AmSpec waste on this. "...counting yours, Jackie? you are free to use contraceptives-and pay for them-or go to the neighborhood clinic and get them 'for free'
you moron
Byron| 2.6.13 @ 8:47AM
Okay Jack, To suddenly declare some random consumable "free" somewhere in the chain of manufacturing, marketing and retail is arbitrary and meaningless. To pick some random consumable and some random group that should get it "free" by another random group paying for it is arbitrary and meaningless. Please define "free".
Jack London| 2.6.13 @ 9:20AM
Physician consultations and prescriptions for women's reproductive healthcare is not a 'random consumable'. But you know that.
Byron| 2.6.13 @ 9:42AM
Yes, it is and you didn't define "free". Its like taxing asian chiropractors to pay for "free" peanut butter for cross-eyed short people because peanut butter is a "good" thing. It is exactly that arbitrary. Just because something is "good" doesn't mean someone else should buy it for you.
Jack London| 2.6.13 @ 9:55AM
Insurance works by pooling all our input. This isn't about something being free but your crazy objection that women's reproductive healthcare should not be a universal part of insurance. In any case, only the cheapest generics where they are suitable will not have a co-pay.
Moe Blotz| 2.6.13 @ 9:29AM
Oy Byron, didjiz actually expect a FOO to answer your question? "Free" means the recipient of the good or service does not have to pay. Drink your gin, be a good bloke, and love big brother.
Von Mises Jr| 2.6.13 @ 9:52AM
The first rule of economics is that "there are no free lunches."
ObamaCare is a grand re-distribution scheme. If you are a family earning over $80K per year and your employer does not provide a super-duper Cadillac Health Care Plan to you, by 2014 you will pay 1% of your income as a fine/tax. By 2016, the rate is 2.5%. So if you make $80,001, your fine for not buying a $20K Bronze Plan (estimated by IRS) is that you will pay a $2K fine. If you earn less than $80K you get a subsidy that is not disclosed, so you may still owe a fine and it is unlikely you can afford the Plan at that income level.
The other re-distribution is from property owners and renters to low-income earners or unemployed. The Medicaid Expansion was estimated at $2B by Rick Scott in FL for his State. This means that property taxes will need to be increased to cover this cost.
With an average income of $50K (down from $54K a few years ago) and you and your spouse both work (as is common in this era of big government), then you are screwed. If you are a retired person or low-life, you are a winner for now. Until you need treatment, and then are also SOL.
The only long-term winners are the Ruling Class elite that will be buying stuff with your money.
PolishKnight| 2.6.13 @ 9:54AM
By then, gasoline will cost $20 a gallon or so so everyone will be an Obama millionaire!
Von Mises Jr| 2.6.13 @ 10:32AM
In the Weimar Republic or 1990's Argentina, you had to be a millionaire to buy a loaf of bread.
Pecos Pete| 2.6.13 @ 10:52AM
Von: How about Argentina just this week freezing prices of products sold in grocery stores. For two months. I wonder how that's gonna work out?
Von Mises Jr| 2.6.13 @ 11:11AM
Brilliant minds think alike. This is what I posted on AT earlier about a similar article: "Kirchner in Argentina confiscated retirement savings a couple years ago and the four Paul’s who made out by the government stealing from Peter re-elected her. And Argentina still has some 30% inflation and the new Eva Peron just announced price controls limiting increase to 10% annually. This always and everywhere results in shortages and misery."
PolishKnight| 2.6.13 @ 9:54AM
By then, gasoline will cost $20 a gallon or so so everyone will be an Obama millionaire!
Pecos Pete| 2.6.13 @ 9:54AM
People have to use contraceptives for them to be effective.
They don't use them now when the cost is less than a pizza. Ultimately, to get the cost down of unwanted pregnancies, KingOcare could dictate that before sex the participants must obtain a certificate of approval and then the act itself must be observed and supervised by an employee of the federal government, or an insurance company. (Side benefit: Unemployment will decline dramatically from this new tenured job, titled Sex Observer.)
Another possible solution could be sterilization of babies at birth based on a government regulation about the ratio of new births to the existing population, not counting illegal aliens. Or, KingOcare could make vasectomy a requirement for most men (those not meeting the proper requirements for non sterilization; i.e., Conservatives) and then women don't have to be treated as a special class of personhood in terms of contraceptives.
Better yet, the only pregnancies allowed are those created by insemination from sperm banks operated by HHS. Of course, a panel of government experts must certify the female as a suitable potential mother. (I think this has some historical relevance.)
PolishKnight| 2.6.13 @ 9:57AM
Ironically, the modern leftist (and partly right) eugenics policy is to reward women for bearing multiple children out of wedlock and into poverty and crime (and Democrat voting rolls) while punishing responsible men with "family" courts that take away their kids (but not the financial obligations) at the drop of the hat while discriminating against men in the workplace.
It does make the old German 1940's system seem both smart, and fair, by comparison.
Rockabilly| 2.6.13 @ 11:35AM
A recent WSJ article I read related the fact that our population will be declining soon as it is doing in Europe. We we will be an older society with fewer young to pay for the social welfare state we have created and a less dynamic and energetic society. We will in effect stagnate under the weight of social welfare and accelerating medical cost of caring for an aging population. So what is important? Free birth control! Immigration has delayed this inevitable trend but this will not continue. Europe here we come.
PolishKnight| 2.6.13 @ 12:47PM
The notion of the "young" paying for retirement is a broken ponzi scheme in two ways. First, the growing population gradually experiences unemployment and resource shortages that not only don't increase funds into the pension system but drain from it in the form of welfare and education subsidies which are largely just babysitting for 30 year olds.
Second, then the highest paying jobs are in government and crony capitalism/fascist industries that "pay" into the pension system, kind of (even if they take money out of the system to do so) while the "loser" jobs: manufacturing, food, "service", etc. are so low paying that only losers or immigrants want them. And the first thing immigrants do when they get their European version of a green card is go on welfare and hang out at school at taxpayer expense.
cicero| 2.6.13 @ 11:48AM
Any even light analysis of Obama Care shows that its intent is to have the country end up with a single payer health care system. All of the exceptions are merely a funnel into the bucket. The economics demand it be so. The contraception block is only one piece that will eventually be in that one single payer system. They could have waited, and only included it in the government plan. However, they have such contempt for the taxpaying citizens that they didn't iven care to hide it until the private insurance industry collapsed.
Bill8472| 2.6.13 @ 12:53PM
What are the insurance companies doing to fight the Obama compromise? Where are they in this contest?
WGMOW| 2.6.13 @ 1:05PM
Sandra Fluke and other of her ilk are indeed sluts. Actually, whores might be a better word. That's what you call someone who gets paid for sex, right? Well, if those sluts want to use my taxpayer dollars (and yours too) to buy contracepetives so they can have sex that makes the whores in my book.
As a female I am continualy disgusted by the depths to which women will sink to get free stuff. Anybody know a good sex-change doctor?
PolishKnight| 2.6.13 @ 1:37PM
WGMOW (I wonder if you're a real woman. What woman asks for a sex-change?) but the joke is that Fluke isn't really interested in sex. Heck, she may not even care about getting the meds. It's unlikely she was facing a $20K contraceptives bill. More likely, her doctor recommended a fancy, new, "cool" pill advertised on TV and she wanted that but instead her lousy insurance company said she could get a generic for $20 co-pay but that wasn't good enough for her. And she probably asked for the pills not for birth control but rather for hormonal therapy.
Sandra Fluke and her buddies are now more likely to wind up as childless spinsters than as "sluts" getting knocked up by accident. This isn't the 70's or even 80's anymore. After the 90's, men wised up and now it's funny that successful men are the ones who insist upon using spermicidal condoms, period, if they're halfway smart lest a baby rabies clock ticker trap them. Want to see what happens if a successful guy gets drunk and has casual sex? This:
tinyurl.com/bbbjxj4
That poor guy should have been more careful!
RonRonDoRon| 2.6.13 @ 1:49PM
So, in effect, it works like this: employers still have to pay for an insurance policy that provides the problematic services, but the government forces the insurance company to provide a discount equal to the price of the those services.
In effect, the employers are still paying for those services, but at a discounted price - because the policy is purchased as whole (a full set of mandated provisions).
I offer an analogy. Wife to husband, "I thought we agreed that you wouldn't buy Johnny that car with the supercharger?" Husband responds, "I didn't. The dealer reduced the total price by the cost of the supercharger!"
Who's right? If the objection to the supercharger is only the cost, the husband is correct. But if the objection is to the purchase of any vehicle with that option, the discount does not eliminate the objection.
PolishKnight| 2.6.13 @ 2:18PM
I'm also chuckling over that example because we all know that the dealer probably marked up the price of the vehicle by the cost of the supercharger (or more).
My friend bought his last car by getting the bottom price from consumer reports services and the cost of any options (including automatic transmission) and entered them into a spreadsheet. He then called around town and asked dealers if they would sell him a car for $400 above cost. He found one that said yes and they said the car had factory extras such as leather seating. He had the spreadsheet ready and said they were still $100 off. They argued and pleaded with him and after 20 minutes, he slammed his notebook shut, said he was done, and walked out.
The manager ran after him and said "Where are you going? I'm giving it to you at the price you asked!" and complimented him on his negotiating skills.
Never buy a car by going on the lot. Always find out the price first by phone before coming in.
N8tivTxn| 2.6.13 @ 1:56PM
The problem with the gene pool is they ain't no lifeguard...
Constantine Ivanov | 2.6.13 @ 6:19PM
Since I always try to find something good in any bad thing, I see here something positive, too:
Who is that dirt bag that is or will be willing to use free condoms and contraceptives?
I assume it will mostly be a Dem/Liberast.
So be it: it's their way to become extinct creatures.
As for this sex-addicted fluke (flatfish), she (it?) should be appointed as a (Mother)Fakir-in-Chief.