BYOFS
Lost in the debate over Obamacare’s compulsory employer-subsidized birth control (or something) is a basic question:
Why does ‘insurance’ need to cover birth control or contraceptives at all? Why do we even have to have this debate?
These things, whatever they are (and I really don’t know or understand what sort of contraception a person would turn to their ‘insurance’ to buy – condoms from the 7/11??) are consumer items. They are mass-produced physical objects. Do you know how we generally obtain such things, if/when we want them? We use a thing called ‘money’. As Homer Simpson’s brain – but, seemingly, not those of lefties – realizes, money can be exchanged for goods and services.
What exactly about birth control/contraception, I guess I’m asking, brings them under the umbrella of stuff-we-might-agitate-for-insurance-to-cover? Obviously someone can say ‘because it’s a thing I buy and it’d be great if someone else paid’ but that’s no answer. Icebreakers Sugar-Free Mints are a thing I buy, can I turn to ‘insurance’ to defray that cost? How about Advil? Aveeno anti-itch body wash? Why/why not? I mean, surely all these things are about the ‘body’ in some way….
I am not coming at this from the point of view of a contraception absolutist, from either direction. I don’t want to know or hear about other peoples’ freaking contraception. It’s none of my business. But bringing it into the ‘insurance’ conversation has intrusively made it my business, and I’m tired of it. So I’d really like to know, why can’t people just buy their own damn condoms/birth control pills if they need them, like normal people? Are condoms like $20,000 a box in some parts of the country and I just didn’t know? What gives?
People. Buy. your. own. freaking. sh1t. Please.
Warning: this will get crass.
Insurance subsidies for “contraception” means paying for female hormonal birth control (the pill, depo shots, norplant, the ring, etc.). Female hormonal birth control means that women can have sex with men purely on impulse. Women believe that this makes them better able to obtain high quality lovers so they’re in favor of it.
Seeing as how most women are useless as workers, they’re mostly hired as either office eye candy or as a soft harem as a benefit for managers in large corporations (see the profession of trader’s assistant). The men involved are in favor of uncomplicated condomless sex with these women so they’re in favor of it.
Uncomplicated, condomless sex is a “feminist” goal (with the understanding that feminism is mostly a movement about women looking for sexual access to desirable men (and desirable men looking for easy sexual access to women)). Therefore, there’s a pre-organized lobbying group in favor of it.
A lobbying group does no good unless you’ve got a pre-validated argument to rile up the masses and “access to contraception” is right up there in exploiting pre-existing propaganda. Everyone has the unarticulated impression that “access to contraception” is an unambiguously good thing – only disapproved of by religious lunatics (and who wants to be one of those?).
Hormonal birth control manufacturers love it if people don’t pay for their products directly – they get access to consumers who don’t care about price at all.
Insurance companies don’t care about price since they simply pass the costs on to the employers.
Employers would be expected to fight against this sort of thing but they’re entirely run for the benefit of factions within the organizations and see above for why those factions favor this. On top of that, employers love the inflated health care costs since it ensures that only large employers can afford to pay for health insurance for their employees which gives them a huge edge over any potential competitors.
Of course, if you’re an unattractive guy (i.e., get no befit from having women who are primed for condomless intercourse around) you are paying a subsidy to women and attractive guys. Who would admit to being one of those guys?
Much as I think you’re on to at least something, with at least some of that, it just seems like an awfully elaborate and intricate psychodynamics to be underlying a national debate over what is, after all, a really stupid and trivial matter: whether/who will defray, like, some pills that I gotta figure can’t cost more than like $25-35/month. Or, to put it another way, a fraction of their iPhone bill.
Why can’t they just BTOFS? Obviously no one wants to pay for anything, etc, but if the motivation you describe were so powerful it’s hard to imagine that women en masse would say ‘I have to pay $35/month myself? Forget it then, I just won’t be on birth control and will live a totally different lifestyle.’
So there’s just no plausible explanation for why whether-insurance-pays-for-these-pills is some sort of pivotal fulcrum for any fence-sitters on the margin. It almost seems like just a symbolic my team-your team thing.
“Obviously no one wants to pay for anything, etc, but if the motivation you describe were so powerful it’s hard to imagine that women en masse would say ‘I have to pay $35/month myself? Forget it then, I just won’t be on birth control and will live a totally different lifestyle.’”
Women being herd creatures much more than men are very sensitive to implicit social disapproval / approval. “You have to start paying for your own pills” is implicit disapproval. “Your birth control pills are covered by insurance” is implicit approval. No woman wants to be the only easy girl (no quality guy will invest in her). No woman wants to be the only chaste girl (no quality guy will put up with it). Women therefore are very interested in society not giving any disapproving messages to the “things just happen” 20 something lifestyle.
As far as the whole chain of reasoning in the first comment it’s more that for a policy to exist and be stable a whole bunch of forces need to converge – some people have to benefit from the policy being started, other people have to grow dependent on the new equilibrium that exists after the policy is around, potential opponents have to be neutralized in some way, etc. Policies that don’t have a whole bunch of people who benefit somewhat don’t stick around because eventually someone who would benefit from ending them will end them without major opposition.
This is all a really long winded way explanation of why this is a symbolic my team / your team thing and why enough players in the decision process either line up in favor or don’t choose to line up against.
While what Steve Johnson has to say may seem complicated, it is all true.
Steve is making the argument that, in this case the rocks (issues) happened to fall in place in such a way that they are almost like a wall that is implacable, incapable of avalanche.
I think he is correct.
Well said, Steve.
I think I agree with Steve and Pastorius. Liberals and feminists see government as Daddy — not the stern Daddy that makes you do your homework at night, but the ideal Daddy who lets you do whatever you want, and is always there with the checkbook should any of your impulses go awry. I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that liberalism is nothing but Daddy Issues writ large, but I would suggest that they are –what’s the science-y term? — strongly correlated.
PS: “BYOFS” would be a great grassroots campaign slogan. I’d also add: “Republicans: Because we don’t need to make everyone else mad at our daddies, too.”
PPS: I know my insulting slogans would be “lowering the level of discourse,” but screw ‘em — I live in a blue state, and I see far worse stuff on Prius bumpers every day.
Yes, BYOFS would be a great slogan. And, I don’t know if you intended this or not, SC, but the acronym can be a synonym (ironic) for
Buy-Offs
as in
Payoffs
which is the opposite of buying one’s own fucking shit.
Yes yes yes! I see lots of people online arguing that birth control is a right and that catholics are just corrupt and trying to be mean to the government or whatever, but by arguing these details they’re betraying that they’ve already accepted that the government has a technocratic right to tell people what kinds of services they have to provide if they want to voluntarily provide services. What’s next? Food pantries must provide carrots?
To paraphrase the old yarn: “I didn’t speak up for the Catholics because I didn’t believe in their stance on birth control…”
BYOFS.
Wow if I ever turn this into a blog post I’ll reference your post here
Because oral contraceptives are prescription-only and doctors generally want to get all blood-testy in order to prescribe them.
In order for us to exercise our god-given right to deny intercourse to lowly betas while lining up to get bedded by alphas… (Jesus Christ, I can’t even type that with a straight face…) …we need access to contraceptives!
Seriously, what’s so wrong with letting insurance providers decide whether or not they want to cover contraceptives and then letting consumers decide with which insurance company they’d like to do business? How come everybody gets terrified of the Free Market whenever it comes within two feet of people’s genitalia?