In its continuing war on future generations, the Biden-Harris administration on Monday proposed new regulations that would force private health insurers to cover over-the-counter contraceptives at no additional cost.
According to a White House fact sheet, “This proposed rule, if finalized, would be the most significant expansion of contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act [ACA] since 2012, when contraception was first required to be covered.”
Got Ya Covered
The ACA, better known as ObamaCare, mandated only that insurers cover physician-prescribed contraceptives. Under the proposed rules, insurers will be forced to cover all contraceptive pills along with “other forms of over-the-counter contraceptives, including emergency contraception such as morning after pill Plan B, spermicides, birth control sponges, and condoms,” reported Reuters.
Currently, the only daily birth-control pill approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for sale without a prescription is Opill, which costs $20 a month.
A package of Plan B pills, meanwhile, can cost as much as $50 over the counter. Those are intended to be taken immediately after intercourse, though, not necessarily every day. “Women who delay buying the medication in order to get a doctor’s prescription,” wrote The Associated Press, “could jeopardize the pill’s effectiveness, since it is most likely to prevent a pregnancy within 72 hours.”
Additionally, noted Reuters:
The rule will also require health plans to cover every FDA-approved contraceptive drug or drug-led combination product, such as IUDs, without cost sharing unless the plan also covers a therapeutic equivalent without cost sharing, and would require plans to disclose that [over-the-counter] contraceptives are covered with cost sharing or a prescription.
The rule, which will take effect next year if finalized, will not affect contraceptive coverage under Medicaid, which is regulated largely by each participating state. “Few [states] cover over-the-counter methods,” the AP pointed out.
A Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) press release states that the rule “would not modify federal conscience protections related to contraceptive coverage for employers, plans, and issuers.”
Blitzkrieg of Women Voters
In the press release, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra said:
From day one, the Biden-Harris Administration has made clear that every woman should have access to the health care she needs. That includes contraception and other family planning services. The proposed rule we announce today would expand access to birth control at no additional cost for millions of consumers. Bottom line: women should have control over their personal health care decisions. And issuers and providers have an obligation to comply with the law.
“The Biden-Harris administration,” said Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su, “trusts women to make decisions about their bodies” — that is, unless they don’t want to be vaccinated against Covid-19.
The administration deserves some credit for consistently referring to contraceptive users as “women” rather than “birthing persons” — or, in this case, non-birthing persons — in its announcements.
However, that decision is probably based more on political calculations than on an abandonment of wokeism. As both the AP and Reuters observed, the rule proposal is clearly an election-eve play for women’s votes for Vice President Kamala Harris, who has made “reproductive rights” (i.e., abortion-on-demand) one of the central themes of her presidential campaign.
Indeed, the administration made it abundantly clear that the proposed rule is just one of many initiatives aimed at countering the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which correctly returned regulation of abortion to the states.
The White House fact sheet declared that the proposal is being issued “at a time when reproductive rights are under attack” and “dangerous and extreme abortion bans are putting women’s health and lives at risk.” On top of that, “Republicans in Congress have attacked contraception access nationwide by proposing to defund the Title X Family Planning Program,” which, from a constitutional perspective, should never have been enacted in the first place.
The Price of “Free”dom
But then the same could be said about ObamaCare. In fact, had it not become law, the proposed rule would be difficult if not impossible to enforce since it is predicated on the ACA’s existence.
The White House went on to tout the administration’s many “actions … taken to expand access to affordable contraception,” including broadening all kinds of federal “family planning” programs and proposing a rule enabling women to get free contraception even when their employers have religious exemptions from providing such coverage. It also trumpeted the Biden-Harris “action[s] to protect access to abortion.” Consequence-free sex and population control are, after all, two of the Left’s highest priorities.
All that aside, no one in either the administration or the mainstream media has bothered to ask one simple question: Who is going to pay for this “free” contraceptive coverage? If insurers are forbidden to impose additional costs on those who use the coverage, as the rule requires, they will instead be forced to pass those costs along to all their customers. For most Americans, that means their premiums will increase. For those few who get coverage through the ObamaCare exchanges, while their premiums will rise, so, most likely, will their subsidies. Those subsidies, of course, come out of the pockets of their fellow Americans.
As far as the administration is concerned, though, that is a small price to pay to ensure Harris’ elevation to the presidency.
