The High Price of ‘Free’ Health Care

[bonnie]

The High Price of ‘Free’ Health Care

Mar 12, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 25 • By JOHN MCCORMACK

Today, in the United States, the federal government does not force insurers to provide free contraception. Yet contraception is as widely available as it is cheap. Most insurance policies cover it. The federal government gives birth control to the poor through Medicaid. The federal government spends an additional $300 million per year to provide it to low-income and uninsured Americans who don’t qualify for Medicaid​—​spending that the staunchest conservatives in Congress supported even when Republicans controlled the presidency, the Senate, and the House. If a middle- or upper-income woman happens to be in one of the small number of plans that don’t cover contraception​—​say, an employee at a college run by Catholic nuns​—​she can buy birth control pills for as little as $9 per month at Target.

Yet by the logic of the Obama campaign and many Democrats in the House and Senate, the current policy amounts to a “ban” on contraception. And the federal government can only right this injustice by forcing private insurers​—​including insurers of religious institutions​—​to provide free contraception, as well as free drugs that can induce abortions early in pregnancy.