I'm a little bit confused. Kathleen Sebelius says free contraceptives is a cost-reducer.

[MH1]

92. Maybe the confusion is about WHOSE money?

Your argument seems to be about the insurance company saving or not saving money. I am quite sure - whether she said it clearly or not, and she may have even said it wrong - Sebelius, along with all the other pro-BC politicians, are referring to overall costs - essentially costs to the entire system. Which would include social welfare costs, but even taking those out, as pointed out at least a few times above, simple math shows that providing birth control pills is cheaper than paying for even an uncomplicated pregnancy, OVERALL. It's so friggin' obvious that it's odd that anyone even questions it. But I have no idea, zero, zip, nada, how much insurance companies do or don't pay for pregnancy. And it's irrelevant. It's the overall cost to the system that matters.

As for forcing companies to do things, companies are forced to do a lot of things when they try to make money off of US citizens. That's part of the contract of being allowed to do business. It's called regulated capitalism.* If you think capitalism shouldn't be regulated, then you are definitely at the wrong site.


* the question of whether health care should be handled as a commercial good for profit in a capitalist system is a whole 'nother question which we'd best not get into here. It seems we are stuck with that paradigm in the good ol' US for at least the next little while so we need to make the best of it.