BrianGarst.com

To bastardize Milton Friedman: There’s no such thing as a free contraceptive. This seems obvious, but apparently not everyone understands:

A panel of healthcare experts said Tuesday that the federal government should require insurance plans to offer free coverage for contraception.

The healthcare reform law requires plans to cover certain preventive care without charging a co-pay. An Institute of Medicine committee on Tuesday issued a highly anticipated report that recommends eliminating co-pays for eight categories of women’s health services, including contraception.

…If HHS accepts the IOM’s recommendations, they’ll apply to all plans except the small number that are exempt from most healthcare reform requirements.

This is exactly why Obamacare will raise, and not reduce, health care costs. All of us will be forced to pay higher insurance premiums to cover these costs, regardless of whether or not we use the products involved. Too old to reproduce? Too bad, your insurance will be forced to include coverage for contraceptives, which means you’ll be forced to subsidize the consumption of others.

In addition, those who do use contraceptives will be far less discriminate in their usage as they won’t be sensitive to the costs. The result will be over-consumption. This is not bending the cost curve down as Obamacare proponents claimed they would do, it’s perpetuating the third-party payer problem that has rendered health care unaffordable for so many.

obamacare