IF that 3% is accurate, it is only recently, and only because of government regulations. What you consider profit is what's left after advertising, lobbying, etc. That's a faulty method of accounting what is paid out directly in providing (paying out for) the coverage consumers pay for.
This might offer some insight:
The Bomb Buried In Obamacare Explodes Today-Hallelujah! - Forbes
As for:
No cost will incur for contraceptives not accessed by those covered. It isn't as if the insurance companies are being told to buy pills or condoms and ship them to patients who have no use for them. They are only told that the ability to access such products must be a covered benefit. Since that would go towards meeting their 80%-85% payout quota, it really isn't costing the insurance companies any extra at all. If they do jack up their premiums, it would ultimately bite them in the ass.
And they may be 2 industries, but they sell complementary goods, one sells the products, and the other bets it can sell more coverage than it needs to pay out, in many cases going so far as to deny legitimate claims for fishy reasons. They actually prop each other up, as the existance of private insurance allows the pharmecutical companies to hike their prices in a way that government contracts would never allow, and this gives the insurance companies cover to hike their rates in response.
Recently? Because of regulations? go ahead, prove it, otherwise simply admit that you don't know what you are talking about.
FYI, the fact that 99% of women in the US proves that there is plenty of access to birth control, the mandate is about shifting the cost to other people because the women's lobby thinks it is fair, not because women can't access birth control. Funny thing, when I was married the cost of my wife's birth control came out of my pocket, my guess is that is how it works about half the time when a woman is in a relationship. Can't prove that, and am not actually claiming it is true, but I bet no one can prove otherwise either.
Actually, the insurance industry only started covering prescription drugs recently, before then it was all out of pocket. The government got involved because it wasn't fair that poor people couldn't pay for expensive stuff. Rather than wait until supply and demand brought the cost down they thought they could fix it by making insurance pay for it, which simply drove up the cost of insurance, and actually decreased access to health care. Unintended consequences are so much fun.
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