Trump Rolls Back Access to Free Birth Control

what a moron.

 

Out of pure curiosity, why is it expected that an employer should have to pay for female birth control? I wasn't aware that employers paid for birth control in the first place. I'd really appreciate a thought out and informative answer.

 

Read the link I posted:

The birth control mandate is one of eight women’s preventive health benefits that the Affordable Care Act requires health plans to provide without any cost to the patient. Other required benefits include breastfeeding equipment, HPV testing, and domestic violence screenings.

Obamacare directed the Institute of Medicine, an independent, congressionally chartered body, to define what medical services should be included as women’s preventive health benefits.

It's part of the health care plans a company can offer, which is practically the only way people have health care in this country.

Here's more:

Why Birth Control Should Be Free

One of the tenets of the ACA is that if there’s strong scientific evidence that a preventive service has health benefits, then people shouldn’t have to pay for it. After the ACA became law, the Department of Health and Human Services commissioned an independent body, the Institute of Medicine (IOM), to review which preventive services are necessary for women’s health, and the group said insurers needed to cover eight more things. These included annual well-woman visits, screening for cervical cancer and HIV, screening for domestic violence, breastfeeding supplies and counseling, and, should a woman not want to get pregnant, access to every FDA-approved method of birth control that can be prescribed by a health-care provider, including emergency contraception and sterilization. (Plans aren’t required to cover abortion drugs and male sterilization, a.k.a. vasectomies, and certain religious employers are exempt from birth-control coverage.

The Facts on Birth Control Coverage for Women

There’s a reason birth control was included as preventive health care — a panel of doctors recommended it. The nonpartisan Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommended that birth control be covered as women’s preventive care because it is fundamental to improving not only women’s health, but the health of their families as well. Medical research has demonstrated this fact for decades. Improved access to birth control is directly linked to declines in maternal and infant mortality.

 

Ok awesome. Everything after "Here's more" wasn't showing up for me until I replied. I understood why employers would supply the other types of preventative care but not really about providing free birth control. And just to confirm, if I was a woman and signed up for healthcare through my employer, I would've previously been given free birth control along with breastfeeding equipment, HPV testing, and domestic violence screenings?

 

The word 'free' in this is bugging me a little bit. While I believe it should be free, I don't believe it has been( correct me if I'm wrong @Jason Tate). it's been covered by your health insurance 100%, so you pay $0 out of pocket, but you're still paying for your insurance or your employer is.

 

The Future of Contraceptive Coverage

Starting in 2012, all new private plans were required to cover, without cost-sharing, the full range of contraceptives approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as prescribed for women, counseling and services.

I think the word's applicable to what is being described/the change.

 

This basically answers my question above. So you enroll in your companies health care and this is one of the benefits that's covered or I guess now used to be covered. Hopefully, employers will choose not to go this route and continue to provide it as a benefit

 

You know, it's really pretty irrational to expect the following three things to be true:

1.) That human beings, whose existence as a species literally occurs because of sex, to do anything other than have regular sex; and then,

2.) For those same human beings to be denied a realistically affordable way of preventing unwanted pregnancies; and finally,

3.) To THEN screech and complain about those same human beings, who now are having a higher rate of unwanted pregnancies, to not want to terminate those pregnancies.

All my life from conservatives, I've heard 'abortion is evil!' Well. You know what stops abortions? Not getting pregnant in the first place. And 'abstinence' would be fantastic, if not for biological and evoltionary realities.

The fact is, for the 'pro-life' party, they sure do LOVE to put together legislation that ensures there will be a steady stream of abortions for years to come.

 

Yep. then in 2 or 3 years they'll gasp at the abortion rates numbers before immediately blaming it on something completely irrelevant.

 

No access to birth control, no access to safe abortion, no maternity leave, no resources to help poor mothers, man it’s like they just don’t want women to have options or something!!

But for real. Birth control is health care. That’s all there is to it. It has a myriad of uses but even if literally the only thing it did was prevent pregnancy, it would still be health care and should still be covered.

Taking away women’s ability to plan their lives and make their own decisions is nothing short of misogynistic tyranny. It further opens the door for women to be subjected to reproductive abuse. It keeps us stranded in poor health and fear of unwanted pregnancy. This is a crisis and it puts many, many underprivileged women at risk. Religion should not have anything to do with lawmaking.

 

This infuriates me for obvious reasons, but it infuriates me extra bc I am someone who quite literally (yes, I really mean literally) cannot function without birth control. I have endometriosis and can't even get out of bed bc I'm in so much pain during my period. I've tried every pain med you can think of, heating pads, hot baths, you name it and I have tried it. The only thing that helps: birth control. Finding a doctor who believed me and took me serious took a really long time (prob about 8 years) but it was the best thing that has happened to me. Because of her help, I could finally function for the first time. Not only was it great not being in excruciating pain every month, I didn't have to call off work all the time bc I was in too much pain to go which really helped me out financially. And it's not just endometriosis, it helps with so many other medical issues. And even if it helped with none of this, it should still be covered. Period. I've been in a position myself where I had to go off it for financial reasons. I don't want to see anyone else have to do that.

Sorry if this made no sense y'all. This shit just upsets me so much and when I'm upset I make no damn sense (which is why I don't normally post about political things bc I'm basically constantly angry/upset anymore lol but I felt like I could add something personal and maybe make someone think differently)

 

The day this asshole is impeached, resigns, anything, I’m calling off work/school, everything and throwing the biggest shindig. All beers on me

 

Before my insurance covered birth control I was paying $20/month which adds up to $240/year which sucks. And that's way less than I know other women were paying. I can't function without it. I throw up all day long and am in so much pain I can barely move. And I don't even care if anyone think it's gross but my flow was so heavy I like couldn't even go about my day without anxiously planning around it at every moment. Road trips, long classes, and work shifts were a nightmare. With birth control I can actually live my life. I don't have to call in sick a few days every month and sob on the bathroom floor in pain while trying to take deep breaths to control the pain but also every breath feels like a knife in my back so then u somehow simultaneously try to not breathe. It preventing me from having kids is just a plus for me. This is such bs. But sry that's not as important as medication for keeping an erection or anything.

 

the fuckin devil

 

Reason one million and one I'm glad to live in Australia.

That said most if not all women in Australia pay for birth control, just like us guys pay for condoms. But it's not such a burden when you have universal healthcare. My wife is pregnant and pays nothing for the doctor, scans, delivery or after care. Kids pay nothing, the poor pay nothing and retirees pay nothing, generally speaking. I pay because I'm working age then half of the doctor's visit is reimbursed straight into my bank account. And I choose to also pay for private health insurance just so I have immediate access to non urgent surgeries etc (most if not all emergency surgeries and hospital stays are covered by our universal healthcare system. Non emergency surgeries like my recent tendon reconstruction are also free but you have to go on a waiting list. My private cover got me straight in, choice of doctor etc).

Also we have effective gun control which is nice.
Y'all should reall give some of these 'wacky' ideas a try.

 

I have to say I agree with what someone said a few posts above- I DO pay for my birth control. I pay over $200 a month to have the best health care my employer provides. I can’t see where this whole conservative “they want us to pay for their wild sexcapades” idea comes from.

 

It's stories like this that make this change so ridiculous to me. My wife is the same way. We have one-year-old twins from IVF, and prior to that, she had been on depo shots for years prior for these exact reasons.

I also don't understand why people opposed to providing birth control don't see the big picture. As others have said, this will likely cause an increase in abortions. Further, it will cause significantly more expenses by young people who cannot afford to have children having children. Simply having a natural, healthy child birth is thousands of dollars with insurance. Not to mention costs after that.

So if they're trying to prevent abortions, they're doing the opposite, and if they're trying to cut costs, they're going to end up increasing them. I just don't get the point.

Believe me—most of us would love to try your "wacky" ideas. The problem is that our medical system needs to be completely gutted and rebuilt, and that simply won't happen. Our medical system is in some ways more complicated than our tax system. My boss has 3 children with peanut allergies that all went for the same treatment. Obviously, they're all covered by the same insurance. He had costs amounting to $400, $900, and $1100 (all in the same visit at with the same doctor) with no explanation about why they were different. Out of pockets, deductibles, in-network vs. out-of-network coverage...you literally need to sign into your provider's website and search for doctors to find out what coverage level you have, and even then, you don't know what you might have to pay.

My wife, who is a nurse, was admitted to the ER while pregnant. She was at work, started feeling extremely faint, and she was immediately taken to the ER in her hospital. They transported her from the Baylor hospital she worked at to another Baylor hospital. The cost of that ambulance ride to us was $2,000. It was somehow "out of network" even though we weren't actually given an option on how to transport her over. We fought it three times to no avail. Had we known that, she would have ridden with me. She was perfectly stable by that point, and they just wanted to keep her longer for observation. That's our wonderful medical system.

 

Abraham Lincoln's biggest mistake was preserving the Union, and then not completely eradicating the ignorant way of life harbored by the Southern traitors. Either we should have let them secede, or gone full Post-WW2 Germany on them and stomped out what was left of their conservative attitudes. Two centuries later, we are paying for it in an increasingly incompatible nation.

Fiscal conservatism I can empathize with at least, but there's no such thing as a fiscally conservative major party right now. Republicans campaign on abortions, Jesus, cutting spending, and pro-working class tax reform, while doing the exact opposite behind closed doors. Do as I say, not as I do.

This socially backwards shit is going to be the death of us.

 

Vasectomies for men are still covered by insurance in case anyone had any doubt that this was about the government hating women