With the Contraception Mandate, Price Consciousness Just Went Out the Window

As I had mentioned before, Planned Parenthood says that a woman on birth control spends between $15 and $50 a month. That, to me, says that women are being price conscious about what birth control method they choose. Logically, price is an issue because it affects the amount of co-pay or out-of-pocket expense that they must pay every month.

So, once you make all contraceptive methods free of co-pays, penalties, and deductibles under the Obama mandate, women will no longer be price constrained and they will naturally migrate to the more expensive methods that may have several advantages over their current, cheaper prescriptions. As a consequence, you can expect the overall expense for birth control in America to rise significantly in just a few years. For you and I, this means higher and higher insurance premiums to offset those higher expenditures.

ObamaCare's Free Contraception Is More Than Just A Religious Issue

All last week, the news media's attention was focused on the Catholic Church's objection to being forced to provide free conception under the latest ObamaCare edict. However, there's a bigger problem for all of us regarding the free contraception mandate. That is how much your health insurance premiums will be increased as a result of forcing insurers to provide that free contraception.

Somewhere between 60 and 80 million woman will now become eligible for this latest ObamaCare handout. Planned Parenthood estimates that women spend between $15 and $50 a month for various contraceptive methods, devices and drugs. So, when you add it all up, the health insurance industry is probably going to have to cover $30 billion dollars a year or more in providing contraception coverage. But don't expect the insurance companies to eat that cost. You and I will pay that amount in higher premiums. My guess is that it could amount to $200 to $300 in higher family insurance premiums. Once again, Obama's promise of lowered health care insurance premiums fails to be a reality.

Already, the average family's insurance premium has risen from just around $13,000 a year to over $15,000 since Obama took office. I suspect that $20,000 a year is not too far off; especially, if the President keeps mandating freebee services under ObamaCare.

It's All About The Numbers Mr. Obama!

In 2008, America spent roughly $2.2 trillion dollars, or 16% of the GDP, for health care. Based on a population of 300 million people, that is an average cost of more than $7,300 per person per year. However, we know that 46 million Americans don't have any health insurance. That means that those who do have insurance wind up footing the bill for those that don't. This, then, means the average cost of health insurance among those who have insurance is closer to $8,600 than the previously stated $7,300. On top of that, Medicare and Medicaid patients -- about 44 million people -- underpay the real cost of health care by about 20%. Therefore, that means the health care system is being underpaid by approximately $400 billion dollars a year by those two government insurance programs. That cost doesn't go away. Instead it is picked up, again, by all those who have private non-Medicare/non-Medicaid insurance. So, effectively, the real average cost for health care for those having private insurance turns out to be about $10,200 a year.

People who are self-employed probably pay close to that amount. However, most people -- the one's who get employer-based insurance -- don't see that amount because half or more of the cost is being picked up by the employer.

That brings me to Obama's town hall meeting in Ohio yesterday (Click to See Full Story: Obama seeks to reassure seniors on health care). In his introductory speech on, once again, health care reform, he related a story of a woman by the name of Natoma Canfield who was a professional, self-employed cleaning woman. Ms. Canfield had to cancel her health insurance because the premiums rose to $8,500 a year and she just couldn't afford it. She subsequently contracted cancer and, I think you can figure out the worst-case scenario that followed from there.

The situation that Ms. Canfield found herself in is certainly a sad one. However, what Mr. Obama failed to explain in his use (or abuse) of her as an example is that the amount of money that Ms. Canfield was being asked to pay for health care insurance was more than fairly representative of what the true cost is for any self-employed worker in America. What's more, ObamaCare wouldn't change that. In fact, the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office has indicated that Ms. Canfield's cost for private insurance cost is likely to go up under ObamaCare; especially when another $500 billion in Medicare cuts is implimented. Additionally, under the plan that Obama and the Democrat's have for health care reform, Ms. Canfield wouldn't be allowed to cancel her health insurance. If she did, she would be fined as much as $4,000 yearly; and, that fine wouldn't give her one iota's worth of health insurance coverage. It's just a fine that goes into the coffers of the Federal Government.

In typical fashion, Obama uses extreme examples that are complete distortions of the truth in order to sell his lies about ObamaCare. Sadly, and just like some ruthless con-man, he uses a poor woman with cancer to scam his target -- the American public.