Congratulations! Your health insurance premium will now be more expensive thanks to a measure in ObamaCare that forces private insurance companies to provide women with prescription birth control and the morning after pill without having to pay out of pocket costs/a co-pay.
U.S. health insurance companies must offer women free birth control and other preventive health care services under Obama administration rules released on Monday, a historic decision supported by family planning groups and opposed by conservative groups.
The rules from the Health and Human Services Department are part of the nation's healthcare overhaul and largely follow recommendations from an advisory group released last month.
The U.S. Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, commissioned by the Obama administration, recommended that all U.S.-approved birth control methods -- including the "morning-after pill,"he guidelines go into effect on Monday, requiring insurers to provide free coverage of preventive care services for women in all new plans beginning in August 2012.
"These historic guidelines are based on science and existing literature and will help ensure women get the preventive health benefits they need," HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement.
"Eliminating cost sharing for these crucial preventive services will make needed care more accessible and will improve the health of millions of women," said Iowa Democratic Senator Tom Harkin, who had urged HHS to accept the report's guidelines.
The Department of Health and Human Services has categorized prescription birth control and the morning after pill under preventative services, which is dishonest. Taking prescription birth control or the morning after pill is a choice. It isn't required for survival, it doesn't prevent disease and it doesn't cure anything. Women are not entitled to other people paying for their medicine, especially when it's a drug that isn't required to live a normal life. Will life saving anti-biotics now be "free?" Will life saving cancer treatments now be "free?" Moral arguments aside, if women make the choice to take birth control or the morning after pill a priority, they should pay for it themselves.
A major red flag here is the government once again telling private companies what they can and cannot do and is picking winners and losers in the market place. Health and Human Services has the power to avoid Congress as well and can add on regulations to ObamaCare as we go.
So where does the overreach end? Will the Obama Administration now require Chevy only sell Chevy Volts? Or force Toyota to give away Prius'?
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