Apparently the Department of Health and Human Services will be giving women free access to birth control.
First, what I do not care about. I do not care if women use birth control or not. Provided the method is lawful and does not intrude in my personal affairs (is there a form of birth control which is loud or pungent?) it is none of my business.
What I do oppose though is the USG subsidizing birth control. Attempts to characterize the HHS' action as occurring with "no additional costs" (as CNN puts it) are completely inaccurate.
Someone has to pay for these things, be they loud or pungent or whatever they are. In this case, it is the insurance companies. Contrary to the popular leftist belief, corporations are not just amorphous, fall from the sky entities. They are owned by shareholders, sometimes even public shareholders who live and breathe and take their kids to weekend soccer games. And who pays for insurance? Well, the people who participate in insurance plans. So if the USG is mandating a company provide "free" services, be in it in the form of prophylactics or advertising or cell phone service, the underlying costs of other services will go up. If the company providing the "free" service is precluded from increasing their costs and ultimately their profitability disappears, they will stop operating, absent a government subsidy (see: airlines, American).
The most offensive assertion of the HHS though is the idea that paying for this expenditure will save the USG money in the long run. The reasoning here is that, since the welfare state ultimately pays for the medical care for most elderly and indigent people, anything that can improve overall healthcare is in the federal domain. By this reasoning the feds can tell us how we need to live our everyday lives.
Nonsense. If Michelle keeps urging "Let's Move," I just might do it- to a cabin outside of Elko where I am completely off the grid.
Sensible libertarian views on nearly everything- except foreign affairs.