ladyliberal
Progressive Princess
- Aug 5, 2011
- 1,253
- 291
- 48
Do you use the same system for routine car maintenance and accident coverage? Insurance is designed to cover unexpected expenses, forcing it to cover routine expenses does not reduce cost, it does the opposite. With contraception now paid for by everyone, even the half of the population that does not use it, there will be no incentive to reduce cost, or to develop an effective birth control for men. Personally, I think the latter should have every feminist in the country up in arms protesting the patriarchal system forcing women to forever be responsible for something that should be entirely on men. That is what feminists used to say in the old days, before they were corrupted the system.
I understand your point about the word "insurance" often referring to a method of dealing with unusual rather than routine expenses. However, still don't understand why you seem to feel that having the same system deal with both is necessarily a bad thing. You also seem to feel that expanding routine coverage necessarily drives up costs. As my references argue, however, it can instead decrease them dramatically by reducing the need for more costly treatments later.
I believe that you are drastically understating the usage of contraception. Given that both men and women have an interest (financial as well as personal) one could say that men make use of contraceptives just as much as women do. I believe you are misstating the feminist position-- my understanding is that mainstream feminists hailed the advent of the (female) birth control pill and believe that contraception should be a shared responsibility (as opposed to "entirely on men").
Saying that feminists should try to make it more difficult for women to obtain contraceptives in order to encourage development of a male birth control pill (there are already other contraceptive methods available to men, both devices and surgeries) seems rather silly. It seems much like the counter-feminist argument that it's bad for women to work because it discourages men from providing for them. Giving women control over their own lives rather than relying on men to take care of them is a core tenet of feminism.
Because it will increase the cost, there is no way it cannot. Let me give you an example.
I don't know what it actually costs to buy birth control pills So I will just make some numbers up. Let us say it costs $45 a month to buy contraceptives, that is about $540 a year. You decide you prefer to pay the insurance company for this, and let them pay the pharmacy. They are willing to do this, but they need to pay their staff, and make a profit for their stockholders, which happens to be the pension fund you are relying on to fund your retirement so you really do not want them to go broke. They end up charging you $49.50 bucks a month, but it really helps a lot of people (you are not the only one invested in that pension fund) so you go for it. This directly increase your cost by 10%, another $54 dollars a year.
By the way, forcing more people to pay for contraceptives, even if they do not need them, does not reduce the costs, it just spreads it out. If the insurance company can get 9 people to pay for something that only one person uses the cost for each person only goes up by $0.50 (that pension fund can use that extra $0.005) but the overall cost still goes up.
I agree that there is a nonzero level of administrative costs associated with health plans, and I agree that part of what health plans do is spread costs around, which doesn't by itself reduce costs. However, I think there are two problems with your simple example:
- You assume (rather than demonstrate) that obtaining contraceptives through a health insurance provider is less efficient, in an economic sense, due to administrative costs. However, many services require administration, but are still very efficient. It's much cheaper for me to send a package via UPS than for me to deliver it myself, despite UPS's administrative costs. I see no reason, a priori, that similar efficiencies would not exist in obtaining contraceptives through a plan.
- You fail to address the main point of the numerous references I linked to: contraceptives can *prevent* costs. An unwanted pregnancy (or a wanted one, of course) can generate dramatic direct and indirect costs. These vastly exceed the costs of contraception, and so contraception can save money. Indeed, considering only the costs of health care of the woman, which are only a tiny fraction of the costs of an average pregnancy, some of the studies I referenced found that providing contraceptives saved quite a bit of money.
Either of those reasons alone suffice to invalidate your simple argument.