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

[yardwork]

100. The population of people insured by private insurance companies is different from the whole U.S.

Remember that insurance companies don't insure everybody. They select a group of subscribers who are different from the U.S. population as a whole. The privately insured are healthier and wealthier and whiter than the U.S. population as a whole. The Department of Health and Human Services is responsible for everybody. Everybody includes a lot of people in the U.S. who are never going to be covered by private insurance.

One of the goals of health care reform is to move away from the two-tier system we have now, where "winners" (people fortunate enough to be employed by large corporations or organizations that can negotiate decent health insurance coverage for their employees, and fortunate enough not to be laid off) and "losers" (people who have the misfortune to be actually pursuing the American Dream of self-employment, entrepreneurship, working for or running a small business or farm, that kind of thing that our country was built on) who don't have the clout to negotiate affordable insurance coverage and are therefore out in the cold, uninsured or with lousy, expensive health coverage.

Don't mistake private insurance industry standards for anything that is rational or reasonable for the population as a whole.