There is another factor only addressed in a cursory manner in this thread. Contraception is indeed relatively cheap but the cost of processing insurance claims does not scale down in processing cheaper claims. As a result my mother can fill her thyroid prescription for $4 per month paying out of pocket but actually gets charged more if she uses insurance. The extra reflects the administrative costs (of the pharmacy as well as the insurer) of processing the claim.
When the cost of generic birth control pills runs around $9 per month and the cost of processing the claim is around 25% of the value claimed (average $2.36) then it is not very effective item to cover under insurance. Unfortunately the PPACA has other such mandates to insure what would otherwise be very low cost items such as aspirin covered with no co-pay for certain patients at risk of heart disease.
Remember, insurer’s are mandated under PPACA to spend a certain percentage (80%, IIRC) on paying claims. If you require them to process millions of claims of such a low dollar amount that even with efficient processing they are placed on the wrong side of their target percentage then it is harder for them to meet that goal.
This may be more an issue of how contraception is made available. Providing it separately at a pharmacy on a monthly basis potentially results in 12 claims per year. Providing it on a subscription basis might be a more financially practical way of delivering such a service if, for example, a yearly supply could be paid on one insurance claim.
Finally, several in this thread noted that guys should just buy a condom. They will have to. PPACA provides contraceptive coverage only to women. Insurers are not required to provide men any contraceptive benefits.
Re: No, Conservatives believe in sex for procreation only. Even in marriage. What grim lives they must lead.
Wrong. The Catholic Church (and other churches which might disapprove of artificial contraception) do not hold that sex is for procreation only, and they recognize a number of different purposes for the sex act. What they do teach is that it’s immoral, within marriage, to willfully and purposively exclude the possibility of procreation, and that to do so denatures the sex act. By contrast, the Catholic church fully endorses natural family planning, which takes advantage of naturally occurring periods of infertility.
You can certainly disagree with their position on artificial contraception, but it’s simply wrong to say they think ‘sex is for procreation only’.
(Made up numbers here). If a $100,000 claim takes $100s to process and a $9 claim takes pennies to process, you could end up with an “average cost to process a claim of $2.36”
My guess is that they want to have more of an excuse to pay women less for equal work. The pay gap is already falsely justified with “because women take pregnancy leave”…now imagine if women started having even more kids.
But then a large population of undereducated kids with low expectations can grow up to be the perfect low-wage workforce. It could actually be seen as a benefit by some of the business community, though they probably wouldn’t say so.
(And note, I did say some, not all businesspeople, or large corporations.)