A friend shared an ecard picture on Facebook recently. The picture is not important, but the text is:
A great way to help prevent abortions is by making contraceptives as available as possible to reduce unwanted pregnancies. But that makes too much sense right?
To which I wrote the following comment:
Condoms are available at Walgreens for as little as $0.50 each (if I'm reading their website correctly). Based on Sarah Fluke's press conference with Congressional Democrats, contraceptives will cost her $3000 over three years at law school. At $0.50 each per condom, she could have sex 6000 times in three years, for an average of 5.46 sexual encounters per day (if we assume every year is leap year).
It seems to me that contraception is pretty affordable and widely available. Should insurance companies make it available as part of a plan freely entered into by a policy holder and policy issuer? It might be smart for them to provide this type of benefit to mitigate their costs to cover pregnancies. Should the federal government order insurance companies to provide the benefit at no additional cost beyond the insurance premium? No. The federal government, and a great many Americans, don't seem to understand the true purpose of insurance, namely to protect against unexpected expenses that one can't afford to absorb themselves.
And before someone else brings it up: No, it is probably not fair if an insurance company provides men with erectile dysfunction medication unless they provide women with medication for an equivalent medical condition. I don't think a "desire to not get pregnant" is the same as "erectile dysfunction" (see http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/What_is_female_sexual_dysfunction.htm)
Also: Given that women do not typically spontaneously become pregnant (with one notable exception; see http://www.lds.org/scriptures/nt/luke/1?lang=eng) one can even argue if contraception is a health insurance issue (though as I noted earlier, it might be smart for them to offer it if it would mitigate their cost for covering pregnancies).
I know there are people that want to impose their views on all of humanity (and in this case forbid all women from having access to contraceptives). I agree that is wrong (the imposing, not allowing women to have access to contraceptives). And I know this particular ecard image does not directly address the government order aspect or Sarah Fluke's 15 minutes of fame. But given that the recent flare up of emotion and arguments on this issue coincided with Obama's announcement that all insurance companies would be forced to provide contraceptives without additional cost, a policy that he arguably does not have the constitutional authority to order or enforce (not that many in Washington DC really seem to care much about Constitutionality, just about using it as a political weapon), these connections seemed germane to the topic the ecard is referencing. Sorry for this lengthy comment over what is supposed to be a biting but amusing comment on an ecard. I now return you to your regularly scheduled Facebook.
I added another comment a bit later:
Oh, and after typing "cheap condoms" into Google, I found an offer for a case of 2888 condoms for just $75, over $500 savings according to the site. Someone should really get this information to Sarah Fluke right away, as she could buy three cases for only $225 and have almost 50% more condoms than my earlier Walgreens reference for about 92% less money!
Note: If I were Sarah, I would probably not want to trust my reproductive health to the lowest bidder. Of course, many health insurance programs are made available specifically because they were the lowest bidder. Hmm.
What do you think?
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