Obamacare Coverage Dictats Not “Free”

Today, the power of the Feds to dictate health care coverage nationally is being wielded to force “free coverage” for women’s “reproductive” medical and consumerist services.  And the radical Kathleen Sebelius and Nancy Pelosi are bragging about their power of imposition.  From, “A New Day for Women’s Preventive Care:”

...thanks to the health care law, it’s changing. Beginning Wednesday, all new insurance plans will be required to cover additional services and screenings for women without cost to the patient. These include services that are essential to helping women stay healthy — such as domestic violence screening, FDA-approved contraception, breastfeeding support and supplies, gestational diabetes screening, HPV testing, sexually transmitted infection counseling, and HIVscreening. That’s on top of other potentially life-saving services such as cholesterol screenings and flu shots that many private plans and Medicare have already begun covering with no co-pay thanks to the law.

What a crock. It’s not free.  Someone is paying for it.  Moreover, why should Anne Romney (say) not have to pay for these services or the extra cost to insure against these costs—or for that matter, my wife—when they can afford to look out for their own needs?  And note, that some of these free goodies aren’t really “medical”—non therapeutic sterilizations and contraception are consumerist in that they further lifestyle desires rather than treat or screen illnesses or pathologies.  And domestic violence screening is more sociological than health-related.  This is precisley how health care costs go through the roof!

And it is all so paternalistic:

Women are likely to be the health care decision-makers for their families — whether it’s keeping a child up to date on checkups and immunizations, helping an elderly parent stay on a medication regimen, or finding the extra money in the family budget to pay for  insurance. Too often, those women put their own health last. And that can be especially true when it comes to preventive care — the regular checkups and screenings that are so important to staying healthy, but can be easy to put off.

When men say women are just unable to look out for themselves or care for their own needs, we are sexist.  When radical women say the same thing, they are somehow feminist:

And this is just nonsensical:

For too long, insurance companies stacked the deck against women, forcing us to pay more for coverage that didn’t meet our needs. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, a new day for women’s health has arrived.

But that is precisely what this rule does—force women (and men) to obtain coverage they might not want or need—under the pretense that it is “free,” when it is no such thing.

If we want to control health care costs, we need to go in exactly the opposite direction than top-down politically-motivated dictates from the federal bureaucracy.  Really, women don’t need to be “saved.”  They can take care of themselves if they have a competative marketplace from which they can make targeted decision to meet their own individual circumstances.