NOBODY is forcing anyone to use any form of contraception. NOBODY is forcing anyone to prescribe contraceptives, dispense contraceptives, etc. In the case of Rebecca, the contraception she is using spares her from "the life threatening risks of pregnancy". The same insurance that you would allow to prevent contraceptive coverage would be responsible for paying for the care of her life-threatening condition if she did get pregnant, and the expense of that is MUCH greater than the expense of simply covering it in the first place.
98% of sexually active catholic women have used contraception. This is NOT a first-amendment issue.
Good afternoon. I am Dr. Tara Kumaraswami, and I am an obstetrician/gynecologist here in Chicago. I have the privilege of working with women every day, helping them stay healthy, avoid unintended pregnancy, and have healthy pregnancies when they are ready to become parents.
Today I am representing Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, a national network of doctors across the country who care deeply about improving our patients? access to contraception and other reproductive health care. My colleagues and I see what happens when women can?t afford the contraceptive they need because their insurance doesn?t cover it.
I want to tell you about a 28-year-old mother of two, whom I?ll call ?Mary.? She works as a medical assistant at a religiously-affiliated hospital. She had multiple complications with her most recent pregnancy and was told that she should never become pregnant again. For Mary, another pregnancy could be life-threatening. Mary loves her two children and wants to make sure she stays healthy for them. She and her obstetrician decided that an IUD would be the best way to prevent a future pregnancy.
At her doctor?s office, Mary found out that her insurance, which she receives through her job, does not cover contraception. She was surprised and confused: why wouldn?t her insurance cover what her doctor recommended for her to stay healthy and alive?
I met Mary when she came to our Title X family planning clinic. We were able to provide her with an IUD through a grant. It was unfair to Mary that her insurance did not adequately protect her health, and further, that she wasn?t told in advance about this huge gap in her coverage. Women like Mary should be able to rely on their insurance plans for the resources to stay healthy and be there for their families.
For patients like Mary, avoiding unintended pregnancy is a matter of life and death. Other women depend on birth control for other medical reasons: reducing heavy periods that, untreated, require blood transfusions; easing debilitating pain from endometriosis or severe periods; and reducing the risk of cancer of the uterus and the ovaries.
For many other women I see, birth control has a different kind of importance, allowing them to plan and space pregnancies so that they can continue their educations, pursue their careers, support their families, and achieve their life goals. We can?t underestimate the contributions women have made to their families, their workplaces, and our society because they can decide when to have children.
As a physician, I am so thankful that I have birth control as a way to help my patients. But like my colleagues across the nation, I am tired of insurance plans getting in the way of women?s health. Every woman deserves affordable access to birth control and its many benefits. This is a matter of health, medicine, and morality. Our sisters, our cousins, our neighbors, and our friends should all have insurance coverage for contraception, no matter where they work. Thank you.
Rebecca's illness isn't unique to her, nor is it unique in requiring contraception. There are a large number of medical condition for which contraception is indicated, including Mary's. A *lot* of women (especially young women) are prescribed contraception not for birth control, but for hormone regulation.
A religious exemption for contraception coverage means that this employer doesn't cover treatment for a wide range of serious to potentially fatal medical conditions, some of which I emphasized in Dr. Kumaraswami's statement above.
Suppose Mary is prohibited from using birth control and finds herself one of the 20% of women who have been raped. No coverage for the morning after pill - that's contraception and is religiously exempted. Now Mary is looking at abortion or probable death. If health insurance isn't supposed to cover life-threatening conditions, why the hell does it exist at all?
__________________
__________________
We work together every damn day. --Jon Stewart
Rebecca's illness isn't unique to her, nor is it unique in requiring contraception. There are a large number of medical condition for which contraception is indicated, including Mary's. A *lot* of women (especially young women) are prescribed contraception not for birth control, but for hormone regulation.
A religious exemption for contraception coverage means that this employer doesn't cover treatment for a wide range of serious to potentially fatal medical conditions, some of which I emphasized in Dr. Kumaraswami's statement above.
Suppose Mary is prohibited from using birth control and finds herself one of the 20% of women who have been raped. No coverage for the morning after pill - that's contraception and is religiously exempted. Now Mary is looking at abortion or probable death. If health insurance isn't supposed to cover life-threatening conditions, why the hell does it exist at all?
It sounds much like the spin given regarding "partial birth abortions" by democrats.
It sounds much like the spin given regarding "partial birth abortions" by democrats.
You're really going to compare, IUDs, birth control pills in their little pink clamshell containers, depo provera, spermicidal jelly, diaphragms, and condoms to intact dilation and extraction? Really?
Your last comment sounds like the spin of a person who has failed to consider the potentially fatal ramifications of his ideology and needs to consider whether saving face is a sufficient reason to continue pushing a bad policy.
The church's idiotic insistence that they be allowed to raise a conscientious objection to the medical treatment of the employees of their affiliated organizations has done more to harm the status of religion in the minds of the American public than anything Obama could have done. Religion is shooting itself in the foot, engineering its own demise with this. You don't tell 98% of your female constituents that they are undeserving of life saving treatment. You don't imply that god would rather have them dead than to use contraception. You don't imply that they are whores and expect them to support you.
__________________
We work together every damn day. --Jon Stewart
A study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that approximately 234,000 people ages 15 and older were treated in an American emergency department for non-fatal bathroom-related injuries in 2008. That averages to about 640 people per day. So if I can just get the requirement included in Obamacare I can move forward with my silicone rubber bathtub with recessed fixtures design and get rich while saving lives and preventing injury. The masses can pay for the few, no problem.
A study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that approximately 234,000 people ages 15 and older were treated in an American emergency department for non-fatal bathroom-related injuries in 2008. That averages to about 640 people per day. So if I can just get the requirement included in Obamacare I can move forward with my silicone rubber bathtub with recessed fixtures design and get rich while saving lives and preventing injury. The masses can pay for the few, no problem.
If that's how you see it, I think you need to go back and study the concept of "Insurance".
Insurance isn't "the masses pay for the few" - it's "the masses pay for the masses". When you understand how insurance works, I won't have to respond to this comment, because you will have withdrawn it.
__________________
We work together every damn day. --Jon Stewart
If that's how you see it, I think you need to go back and study the concept of "Insurance".
Insurance isn't "the masses pay for the few" - it's "the masses pay for the masses". When you understand how insurance works, I won't have to respond to this comment, because you will have withdrawn it.
Not a chance!
Quote:
Religious Liberty - The Latest Target of Obamacare
Topics: Political News and commentaries
Let there be no doubt whatsoever, this is indeed dangerous to the very fabric of our society, and a crucial reason why the whole health law, with its centralized control over health-care decisions, must be repealed.
Grace-Marie Turner writes at NRO:
The Obama administration announced today it will wait for a year (coincidentally until after the elections) before requiring religious organizations to comply with an Obamacare mandate that they provide coverage for contraception -- including controversial drugs that can abort an early pregnancy.
This started with a decision by the Obama administration last summer listing the "preventive" services that must be covered by health plans under Obamacare without charge to patients, and the list included contraception.
This is another assault on the Constitution and the First Amendment's guarantee of religious liberty. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) called the federal regulation an "unprecedented threat to individual and institutional religious freedom."
The Obamacare regulation gives faith-based institutions, like Catholic universities and hospitals, the choice of violating the fundamental tenets of their faith by covering the federally mandated coverage in their employee health plans, or of dropping health insurance for their employees -- in which case they would be fined for violating the employer mandate.
Much more about this outrage, here.
As outrageous as the Obama administration's unprecedented threat to individual and institutional religious freedom in regard to healthcare is, just as outrageous is the utterly corrupt Obama/Holder Department of (In)Justice's recent argument before the Supreme Court that "public interest' should overrule churches' freedom to choose their own ministers, and administer their own internal affairs. Both of these are examples of the Obama administration and the left's ongoing war against faith.
That's your prerogative, of course. It seems that you have more of a problem with the concept of "Insurance" than you do with "Obamacare". You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but insurance is a very useful system where the average person will end up paying more for healthcare throughout his or her lifetime than without it, but he or she drastically reduces the risk of having to choose between catastrophic debt or death. That's the purpose of insurance. That's what we pay for. The more health care programs under the coverage umbrella, the higher the premiums, but the cheaper the total cost for health care, the more widely available that care is, and the greater the quality of life for the covered.
While you're position is patently absurd by any objective measure, you are entitled to your belief, and you are entitled to demonstrate whatever level of intelligence you feel like demonstrating. You are entitled to stick your fingers in your ears and yell "lalalala" or "Not a chance!" whenever someone explains to you the error of your ways. You're entitled to learn from anyone you want, and you're entitled to ignore the teachings of anyone you want, no matter how correct that person may be. If you feel that shouting "Not a chance!" lets you save face, by all means, shout it from the rooftops. Good on ya, mate!
__________________
We work together every damn day. --Jon Stewart
Bishops Continue To Fight For Freedom Of Conscience
Written by Dreck Masters
Bishops Not Duped By Obama Misleading Changes
In answer to the outcry from Christians in America, the administration announced that it would change the mandate concerning contraceptives and abortifacient chemicals. That is, they would not force employers to provide them to employees.
This might seem like a victory... except that they didn't really change the final outcome. What they've done instead is create a new mandate where insurance providers are forced to give such benefits in every single plan. In other words, it is no longer on the employee to say yes or no to the services. Insurance providers now must carry them and give them to all their clients.
You see, the customers still have to pay for these chemicals and sterilization processes whether they use them or not. Even when to pay for them completely violates their own conscience.
Good. I hope Dilation and Curettage, and *ALL* treatment relating to reproductive health is covered as well. I'm glad that my government recognizes that allowing the religious opinions of employers to affect the standard of medical coverage and care for the general public is a profoundly stupid idea, and that they've chosen to reject it. 'Tis a glorious day when medical decisions are removed from the hands of anyone but patients, doctors, and family members of the patient.
__________________
__________________
We work together every damn day. --Jon Stewart
Linear Mode
