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Should the country pay for women's contraceptives?

Should the country (taxes) pay for women's contraception?

  • Yes

    Votes: 41 41.8%

  • No

    Votes: 57 58.2%
  • Total voters
    98
Aunt Spiker said:
In that case - it's best not to have children you can't afford! Don't you agree?
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Of course it's best not to have children you can't afford.

The problem is two fold:

(1) You two support policies that encourage financially unstable people to have children.
(2) You two support policies that discourage financially unstable parents from getting needed jobs to support their families.

You two make it sound as though pregnancy is an infectious disease that someone simply catches. The reality is you have to actively do something, often many times, to become pregnant. Stop doing it if you can't afford to do it.
 
Gina said:
Well said Auntie! Pay for unplanned children>contraception. No way to argue that equation.
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There is no such thing as consequence free sex.

Promoting that silly life style is what has led us to the problems we face today.
 
roguenuke said:
You would be wrong. Almost all birth control requires a doctor's prescription to get. I don't know of any oral BC that doesn't require a prescription, plus shots and patches and implants all require a doctor as well. A prescription means going to a doctor and usually having some form of exam or at least doctor questioning. The use of almost any birth control, with the exception of pretty much only condoms, requires a doctor, professional expertise. And most is absolutely expensive for most people. My low dose BC after my child was born, while I was still breastfeeding was over $120 for a three month supply. There are plenty of other birth control options that are more expensive and there are also plenty that will not work for certain women (low-dose is actually the only kind I can take due to a blood disorder I have).

This isn't about a "sense of entitlement". It is about people making mistakes or choices that could lead to bigger problems. And pretending that everyone would make the "right" decision if given "no other option" doesn't make sense. In their minds, they aren't thinking about what might happen when they have sex to begin with, not most people anyway. Many are just in it for the instant gratification. Right or wrong, it won't change anything if they end up pregnant from that choice. So it is best to try to prevent that pregnancy from entering into the picture at all.
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I've purchased some at the pharmacy without a prescription before. And since, as you say, that most of those things require a doctor, they are generally covered by insurance to some degree.

To your second paragraph, if you've seen any other posts I've made, I mention that it's also a lack of responsibility, which directly addresses what you're talking about. Even if people do try the instant gratification thing, they still need to take responsibility for their actions. And when they wind up with a baby, it's the entitlement ideology that makes them think I owe them something to support their baby. No matter how benign you make sex, it still has to be handled responsibly, just like anything else, and when not done so, should be prepared for the consequences.

So you see, the lack of responsibility regarding the matter puts them in the position that thrusts the entitlement ideology into their lives. I have a friend who had an unplanned baby, now he's voting for Obama solely because he "need" Obamacare to support his child. The funny thing is, he used a condom and it didn't work. Never the less, the circumstance presented the entitlement ideology.

No matter what the case is, I don't owe you anything, especially things you're responsible for.
 
Gina said:
Well said Auntie! Pay for unplanned children>contraception. No way to argue that equation.
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How about getting people off of the entitlement ideology and onto a responsibility ideology, so these people care for their own children?
 
cpwill said:
You are conflating two unlike things. Using contraception can certainly be wise - that does not mean that you have the right to demand that others provide it for you. Going to the gym is good too, I don't have the right to demand that you cover my bill at Golds.
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No I'm not. The stupidity of calling contraceptive use "bad behavior" is totally separate from the issue of whether or not we should provide it to impoverished women. I was simply pointing out that it is, indeed, stupidity.

We should provide it to impoverished women because it's economically and socially prudent to do so, and because poor people are entitled to a certain standard of quality of life too, which is why we have medical care for the poor to begin with.
 
Krystov said:
I think it means "don't have sex unless you can afford the preventative tools, or are prepared for the consequences".

Your argument about taxpayers is invalid. They reside within the 47% of people who don't pay taxes. As with people who mooch the system, people who make money and pay taxes who also need welfare are also in the minority. The country is only spending money on that 47%, not making any.

It's not that I want to subject people to less than desirable circumstances, it's that I want people to take responsibility for themselves. Show them that there are real, negative consequences for irresponsibility (financially and sexually) so that they're afraid to be put in that position. This all encompassing safety net we've developed removes that fear and people stop caring if they fall into poverty. 12 million more people are on social care programs now than there were 4 years ago. We can attribute most of that to the economy, but there are those that simply say, "well I can get something for free, so why not?".
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You failed to understand my argument. My point was that they fall within that [sarcasm]blighted[/sarcasm] 47% because they have children. Devoid of that handicap, a significant fraction ("hundreds of thousands" out of "millions") would be capable of bettering themselves and obtaining jobs where they do pay income taxes. I should also mention that many would not be claiming the children tax credit, which would bump quite a few of them above the arbitrary threshold of your loathing.

You are ignoring the facts in this matter. The speed of light is c, the sun rises in the east, and people have sex. These are objective observations of reality that we must take into account when formulating our policies. No matter how much you wish it was otherwise or how loudly you harangue their folly, photons will not travel any faster than c and people will not stop having sex.

Your ultimate goal is to moderate what you perceive to be unwarranted expenditures. Will you fruitlessly persist with hysterics and impotently fume at this stalemate when liberals thwart your attempts to amputate these people from the budget? Wouldn't it be a more effective expenditure of your energies to acknowledge how little headway you will make in that direction and instead act to quell these unmitigated indiscretions? Stop reveling so much in your loathing and disdain for these people and instead do something that can undoubtedly do something to diminish the foundation of that hatred.
 
Krystov said:
How about getting people off of the entitlement ideology and onto a responsibility ideology, so these people care for their own children?
Click to expand...

I agree with that. In the mean time, don't we have to deal with reality?
 
Donahue said:
Of course it's best not to have children you can't afford.

The problem is two fold:

(1) You two support policies that encourage financially unstable people to have children.
(2) You two support policies that discourage financially unstable parents from getting needed jobs to support their families.

You two make it sound as though pregnancy is an infectious disease that someone simply catches. The reality is you have to actively do something, often many times, to become pregnant. Stop doing it if you can't afford to do it.
Click to expand...

No - I support providing all forms of contraception - including to males who might become fathers! Contraception isn't JUST for females and it's not JUST A female concern.
I support abortion.
I support people just NOT having kids that they can't take care of - I support providing support so they can further their education if necessary and find more solid employment.

Yep - I support helping people out a little bit so that they can become more financially stable and then won't NEED support.

Your lack of support isn't going to STOP people from having SEX. But you think it will. :shrug: No matter what you WANT people to do - sex is going to be had. It's just the reality of things.
 
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Gina said:
The difference, as I read in the article, is that women were offered long term birth control, like the implant and IUD's. Those are not part of what is offered to low income women, at this time.
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If this mandate, were just about giving poor women better access to birth control, I wouldn't quibble all that much.
With that said, it gives all women subsidized birth control, without regard to their ability to pay.

So millionaire, other upper income and middle class women get something for "free" that they could already easily afford.
It makes 0 sense.
 
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Hare said:
It's not exactly a disparaging remark, just a quip regarding how far behind the eight ball we are in this respect. An overwhelming chunk of the developed world have turned to single payer or other publicly funded healthcare systems due to cost concerns. We've held out for this long due to outdated thinking and managing to disregard virtually every empirical study on the subject.
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We have a constitution and need to follow it. This isn't about bleeding hearts. No one is owed contraceptives. We're not behind at all, we don't subscribed to the notion. In YOUR opinion our thinking is outdated, but not in mine. This country wasn't built on big state programs until modern liberalism took hold. That doesn't make it good thinking, good for the country, or good political principles.
 
If the program only involved 'poor' folks, which tends to be poorly defined, then some 'conservatives' will vent their spleen on the 'welfare queens' and subsidized slatterns who are a minority. Spread the cost over millions of people, include rather than exclude and a program becomes a winner to the public.

Imagine if 'millionaire' homeowners were stripped of their tax write offs for interest? if only 'poor' folks get to deduct medical costs...

How about if we deny Social Security payments to millionaires...

I marvel at those who claim birth control is easily affordable by a few but grouse at the few dollars extra if we all pay for it...

I wish we did more to make birth control acceptable as a good thing for the nation.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
If this mandate, were just about giving poor women better access to birth control, I wouldn't quibble all that much.
With that said, it gives all women subsidized birth control, without regard to their ability to pay.

The millionaires, upper and middle class women get something for "free" that they could already easily afford.
It makes 0 sense.
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Most millionairairs,upper and middle class citizens that can already "afford" Birth control usually have good health insurance with low co -pays.
THe insurance companies are the ones absorbing the difference between the co pay and no co pay. Your tax payers dollars are NOT paying for their Birth control for those with insurance.
 
minnie616 said:
Most millionairairs,upper and middle class citizens that can already "afford" Birth control usually have good health insurance with low co -pays.
THe insurance companies are the ones absorbing the difference between the co pay and no co pay. Your tax payers dollars are NOT paying for their Birth control for those with insurance.
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Yes but the cost sharing arrangement is changed.
All plans, regardless of the gender of the covered, must cover female birth control, all plans regardless of the want, need or ability of the individual insurance consumer, must cover the cost of birth control, even if one does not want it.

It doesn't make sense.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
Yes but the cost sharing arrangement is changed.
All plans, regardless of the gender of the covered, must cover female birth control, all plans regardless of the want, need or ability of the individual insurance consumer, must cover the cost of birth control, even if one does not want it.

It doesn't make sense.
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Most health insurance already covers the cost of pregnancy and childbirth.

In 2007 the average cost of a "normal" pregnancy and childbirth was $7,600.

Pregnancy Health Coverage - How Much of My Pregnancy Costs Will My Insurance Cover?

THe cost of covering co-pays for BC on those already insured is much, much less.

I would think the insurance companies will actually be saving money.
 
minnie616 said:
Most health insurance insurance also covers the cost of pregnancy and childbirth.

In 2007 the average cost of a "normal" pregnancy and childbirth was $7,600.

Pregnancy Health Coverage - How Much of My Pregnancy Costs Will My Insurance Cover?

THe cost of covering co-pays for BC on those already insured is much, much less.

I would think the insurance companies will actually be saving money.
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How would they save money by covering women for something, with no cost out of pocket, when these women were more likely to purchase and use, regardless of the subsidy?

Would we save money by providing free bc to poor women?
The answer is likely yes.

That, however, isn't what this mandate does.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
How would they save money by covering women for something, with no cost out of pocket, when these women were more likely to purchase and use, regardless of the subsidy?

Would we save money by providing free bc to poor women?
The answer is likely yes.

That, however, isn't what this mandate does.
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Because there will be fewer unwanted pregnancies.

About half of the women with unwanted pregnancies end up continuing their pregnancy and giving childbirth which is far more expensive than Birth control.
 
SmokeAndMirrors said:
No I'm not. The stupidity of calling contraceptive use "bad behavior" is totally separate from the issue of whether or not we should provide it to impoverished women. I was simply pointing out that it is, indeed, stupidity.

We should provide it to impoverished women because it's economically and socially prudent to do so, and because poor people are entitled to a certain standard of quality of life too, which is why we have medical care for the poor to begin with.
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It may or may not be the prudent thing for them to do. We were "low income" when we had our two boys. That does not mean that we would have had the right to insist that others cover our bills for birth control.
 
A <SNIP> from this artile:

Study shows birth control saves taxpayer money



By David Edwards
Wednesday, March 7, 2012 13:16 EDT

<SNIP>
A report released by The Brookings Institution this week showed that a $235 million program to expand access to Medicaid family planning would actually result in a savings of $1.35 billion. That’s a return on investment of over 500 percent.

Mass media campaigns and teen pregnancy prevention programs also resulted in savings, but to a lesser degree.

“Unintended pregnancy is a widespread problem with far-reaching implications: almost half of all pregnancies in the United States are unintended, and the women and children involved in these pregnancies are disproportionately likely to experience a range of negative outcomes,” Georgetown Public Policy Institute Adam Thomas, who authored the paper, explained.

“The research also shows that each dollar spent on these policies would produce taxpayer savings of between two and six dollars.”
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Study shows birth control saves taxpayer money | The Raw Story
 
Interesting peeling of the onion here.

The base concept of medical insurance is by combining people the insurance company makes a tidy profit and spreads the day to day costs of medical care across a broad base of people. It is socialism and capitalism combined.

But some only want what THEY need as part of the package and other folks needs are to be offered as separate riders. I don't believe the BC will be 100% free, nothing in health insurance is 100% covered but the amount added to each policy would be minor unless the insurance company uses it as an excuse to jack everyone up.

I know some are very partisan on this, seems to me the true libertarian ideal would be no employer subsidy, every man for himself with no herd mentality. Ummm what my wife and I have as independent worker/business owners.

CP-
You maynot have a right to alot of what we as citizens of this country enjoy, but having it is one thing that defines us, from 25% of all energy consumed on the planet to lots of job opportunities for people wanting to serve in a branch of the military.
 
Cheaper than WIC, but I don't think the government ought to be paying for contraception, unless the individual is indigent and qualifies for public assistance.

I do think that the government should give a tax exemption for each years supply of tampons or sanitary napkins. It's an unfair expense, just because we are women. Men have no items that they HAVE to buy...they can let their beards grow down to their patooties if they like.
 
minnie616 said:
Because there will be fewer unwanted pregnancies.

About half of the women with unwanted pregnancies end up continuing their pregnancy and giving childbirth which is far more expensive than Birth control.
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The majority of unintended pregnancies come from poor women and it has been growing over the years.
While the unintended pregnancy rate for higher income women has been falling.
This is all before the bc mandate.

Giving poor women free bc makes sense, giving upper income women free birth control does not.

Poorest U.S. Women Increasingly Likely to Face Unintended Pregnancies
 
Krystov said:
The Taliban and Al Queda aren't a country themselves, but they reside within countries that harbor and support terrorism and Islamic extremism. The goal (which has sorely been failed at) was to root out those two groups and others like it within the harboring nations, and provide those nations with a governmental structure to keep it from happening again.

As for Iraq, those people were being oppressed by a dictator. Whether or not there were WMDs, Saddam Hussein needed to be removed from power. Left there, eventually he and Iran would become a far larger problem than they are currently.

This has been derailed. Again.
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Oh come on. We didn't invade because Saddam was a mean dictator. He was supposed to be a threat to us, and no WMDs were ever found. Iraq was the wrong country to invade. We don't need to spend billions of dollars and thousands of American lives to invade a country that is not a threat to us. It shouldn't be our first thought to do that to a country that IS a threat to us. I know this doesn't directly relate to the topic, but I just can't believe someone would still defend that awful decision. We need to sort out our priorities here. If people are willing to spend billions of dollars to invade a country, lose tens of thousands of lives, and reap no benefit, but get all up in arms about supporting our citizens here, there's a big problem.
 
Donahue said:
How about you raise your own children and let me raise mine?
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I've done mine. You do your's. And the ones that don't or can't do it for the extra childred do it anyway even though they can't do it right. Yup, that works too. In fact everything and anything works; and the results are not a surprise.
 
274ina said:
What about the freee ride the rich get on healthcare? poor pay and only the rich collect?
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What are you talking about? The poor do not pay for the rich's insurance premiums (if they even care to get insurance). If anything, it's the rich that make insurance available to anyone at all.
 
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