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

[hfojvt]

147. it's not that simple though

You said it yourself - birth control costs pennies. Thus of 100 people who have health insurance, probably 99% of them are gonna be usiing birth control whether the insurance company provides it for "free" or not. Thus, it becomes a question of whether providing birth control for 99 people who would get it anyway is cheaper than all the other associated costs of a pregnancy.

However, even with an unwanted pregnancy, chances are good, if the woman decides not to abort that she was gonna have a baby at some point anyway. So they have a baby in 2013 instead of 2015. The insurance company is not paying any extra over a 20 year period because of that baby, just paying it a little earlier. And heck, the way medical costs rise, it's probably a lot cheaper to have that baby now than two or five years down the road. Meanwhile the company is paying for twenty years of birth control that it otherwise would not have.

However, I don't think they will mind the extra costs, I think they will just pass them right on - even to customers like me, who sadly have absolutely zero use for birth control because we are not allowed to have sex.