White House Contraceptive Regulation Fact Sheet

[elleng]

The White House Office of Legislative Affairs issued the following fact sheet on its plan to accommodate religious organizations that were angered by the administration's rule requiring health insurance coverage of contraceptives.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2012/02/10/us/politics/10reuters-usa-contraceptives-factsheet.html?ref=reuters

[Richardo]

1. ...and scene.

Thanks for the post, elleng

[elleng]

2. YVW, Richardo.

[Ruby the Liberal]

3. Thanks!

[ProgressiveEconomist]

4. IMO this is a very clever

resolution of the issue.

However, although I haven't seen the details in the Federal Register, it appears that insurance companies are being required to give away contraceptive coverage for free to employees of any religious nonprofits they cover.

Obviously, insurance companies aren't going to give anything away for free voluntarily. Either somebody is going to have to reimburse them for the contraceptive coverage or else insurance companies are going to have to be required by law or regulation to provide the contraceptive coverage to religious nonprofits as a fundamental cost of being in the health insurance business. Perhaps there will be a regulation punishing severely any insurance company that drops a current religious nonprofit or tries to raise their prices more than other comparable client organization prices.

Left to their own devices, IMO insurance companies would negotioate higher prices for contracts with religious nonprofits than for comparable entities, or else refuse to cover religious nonprofits.

But all these considerations always will be extremely difficult to document. And in any case, they'll only come into play after November 5th. Thats the "extremely clever" part of this White House plan, IMO!

[crazylikafox]

6. One study found that covering contraception lowered insurance premiums by 10 percent or more.

Per the White House contraception fact sheet linked to in the OP

[ProgressiveEconomist]

7. Interesting. A more convincing point

for insurers might be that millions of women who work for Catholic nonprofits ALREADY have contraceptive coverage, though perhaps not with zero copays.

[karynnj]

5. This is the best list of what the new provision is - and this is genius

Obama iwins on so many levels.