Last week, the Republican-led senate nixed efforts to save a federal mandate established by the Affordable Care Act (ACA, a.k.a. Obamacare) that health insurers provide birth control with no additional cost to users, and which saved U.S. women $1.4 billion in copays in 2013 alone. As TIME Money reported last week, the expandedbirth-control coverage has been "a key factor driving down average out-of-pocket spending on prescription drugs," with a Kaiser Family Foundation report citing oral contraceptives as responsible for a 63% drop in average out-of-pocket spending on retail drugs since the law was enacted in 2012. And the astronomical cost of cutting the mandate almost certainly wouldn't end there . Beyond forcing women to shell out for birth control, such legislation could invite fairly staggering expense all around. For example, unplanned pregnancies can easily cost U.S. taxpayers upwards of $20 billion per year just in birth-related hospital fees. As NPR reported in 2012, investments in family-planning services, including those made available through expanded access to Medicaid, not only "more than pay for themselves" but also stand to save government further billions in healthcare and other related costs. In most social-science research areas, of course, the long-term and virtually inestimable financial impact of unplanned pregnancies--or, more broadly, that of governmental obstruction in women's individual health- and reproductive-management (at times a fascinatingly complicated thing)--has yet to be determined, on the daily, annual, or millennial scale. Further study is needed and, presumably, funding. The potential coverage loss comes alongside fears that lawmakers will also reassert a popular Republican stance that women should pay more for basic healthcare (that is, without those finicky charges related to motherhood), perhaps based loosely on the fact that women rack up more primary-care and diagnostic visits, if not on something a bit more internalized. http://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwb...men-1-4b-a-year-in-copays-alone/#2645bfce28d1
Also, Dog, pre-existing conditions no longer covered. That includes pregnancy. This happened where I worked - the company changed its insurance carrier. Two women were pregnant. They were denied coverage for the remainder of their pregnancies as the pregnancies were pre-existing conditions. Fortunately both were married to men who had insurance, but in one case with much lesser coverage. Single women or lesbians who could not then marry were just SOL when that happened.
You're just now figuring out that Make American Great Again means going back to the era of June Cleaver? Now put your pearls and heels on and let the men talk.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443746/republican-health-care-plan-rand-paul Paul would eliminate the pre-existing-condition regulations altogether (after a transition period), while his other reforms would significantly reduce the number of people who genuinely cannot buy health insurance because of a pre-existing condition. For those who still need help, Paul envisions responsibility for covering them being shifted to the states, possibly in conjunction with proposals to block-grant Medicaid This would give states the freedom to experiment with ways to cover people who are unable to buy their own insurance for whatever reason, whether pre-existing conditions or low income. Importantly, it prevents a small number of high-cost cases from distorting the rest of the insurance pool. It wouldn’t try to insure the uninsurable, but would provide their health care more directly. After all, it is health care that counts, not health insurance.
We should have health insurance to handle catastrophic circumstances. That's what insurance is. That's what it used to be. My auto insurance doesn't cover oil change or brake repairs.
Every person who has died did so from catastrophic circumstances. You dying from your heart stopping in your sleep is a catastrophic circumstances since it ends in..... you know.... death.
women, MarAzul. Remember us? Women who were pregnant when employer changed insurance companies. And because they had pre-existing condition (pregnant) their pregnancies were not covered. These two women I knew were fortunate to be able to get some coverage from their husbands' insurance. But had they been single or gay, no husband or a partner not then recognized, that would not have happened and they would have gone through pregnancy and delivery stuck with all the expenses. The vote to eliminate the Affordable Care Act rejected an amendment that insurance companies could not refuse to cover pre-existing conditions, a key measure in the ACA. So in the brave new world of Trumpcare, once again pregnant women can be cut off. Pro-life, indeed.
Catastrophic circumstances: Requiring surgery or extended hospital stay or expensive procedures. Yes, people die even with insurance. Crazy dog logic again.
Republicans have long called for requiring continuous coverage if a person changes insurance companies for any reason. Since before Obama.
I know right?!? Crandc and I come from a generation where insurance covered every prescription, even testosterone for impotent men, except for "The Pill" and we had to include that expensive monthly prescription in the budget even though we made less money than our male counterparts. Now, granted, we're both college educated professional women who were able to consistently manage that but this is a disaster for our sisters without that kind of opportunity and earning capacity.
Birth control prevents the catastrophic circumstance of paying for prenatal care, delivery in a hospital, and potential complications for the mother and child.
Why should insurance cover any of that? I have one medication I take that costs me $15. The drug company wants to charge $200+ for it. But they sent me a card that cut the price to $15. All I had to do was fill out a form on their WWW site. No hardship kind of situation. The companies have lots of these kinds of programs. Plus, if insurance wasn't paying the $200+, they wouldn't sell much of the drug because people wouldn't pay that much. And the price would come down to a reasonable amount. No such thing as a free lunch.
I was just wondering how big a problem it is, where lesbians works for a company that changes insurance companies, catching them in the pregnant window? I mean it really is infrequent that a small company changes an insurance company. Then to match that up with, how frequent is it for a lesbian to become pregnant? Now I really don't know what the risk is, but it does seem like a little planning fixes the this one. Perhaps you can clarify?
That's just silly. Sorry to say it. Even an abortion isn't catastrophic. People don't go bankrupt because they have a child or an abortion. They do if they undergo an extended hospital stay or brain surgery.
Because hospital ERs can't turn away women in labor and when they don't have prenatal care they have high risk deliveries and more complications which increase the cost even more... that cost gets passed on to government agencies who pass that on to tax payers and insurance companies who pass that on to their consumers. It's far more cost effective to provide birth control.
