Judging by the questions from conservatives on the court â all men â theyâre still not fully aware of how every day people â particularly women â receive health care in the United States, or how health insurance actually works.
This isnât a surprise considering that they are of the same ilk who believe women can obtain reproductive health care through dentists, optometrists, podiatrists, correctional facilities, elementary schools, and other school-based healthcare clinics.
I wonder when the conservatives on SCOTUS will finally address Where babies come from?
Edit to add: I was remiss in not pointing out that VIAGRAÂŽ and ROGAINEÂŽ are considered âmedical necessitiesâ by most health plans and, thus, are covered without question and, more so, without controversy. Now Iâm beginning to understand why 46 states charge sales tax on all Tampax but not a single Trojanâ˘.
Face it, the justices are not anti-coverage, they are anti-contraceptive.
âŚand how many of these antis are Roman catholic? The âgoing forth and multiplyâ was issued a loooooooooong time ago.
Do these guys even realize that contraception prevents abortions???
How about Alito asking a female law clerk in his office how she gets her contraception. Or ask any of his fellow female Justices how this frigging works.
(major facepalm)
Waaaaaayyy too complicated a subject for them.
This is so depressing. Is there going to be a key ruling made based on NOT KNOWING THE FACTS OF THE CASE? There is no separate plan to buy just to cover contraceptive care??? Why would they think that? A woman would have to purchase an additional comprehensive health plan to get the care she is guaranteed by the ACA.
The court is risking whatever legitimacy it has left.
This whole argument is insane. Itâs like having a separate policy for each disease or organ.
âMy heart is OK, but I better cover my liver.â
Verrilli pointed out that those sort of contraceptive-only policies donât even exist on the exchangesâŚ
It goes considerably beyond that. How would a âcontraceptive-onlyâ insurance policy work? Itâs safe to assume that the only people who would sign up for such a policy would be those who actually need or want prescription contraceptives. So how much would the premiums be? Thatâs simple enough - the premiums would have to be equal to the actual cost of the drugs, plus a profit margin, meaning that it wouldnât be 'insurance" at all. It would just be a more expensive way to pay for the drugs than simply handing your credit card to the pharmacist.
In short, thereâs no way to spread the âriskâ with such a policy, which is how insurance works.
The challengers say even filling out the form declaring that they have an objection to covering birth control is a burden on their religious faith, because at that point the government steps in to work with their third party administrator to ensure their employees receive the coverage separate from the employersâ plan.
Say a woman requested that her employer put in writing, to her, that they refused to cover contraceptives in their health care plan based on religious objections. The refusal is on company letterhead. The employee then forwards that to the Feds. The Feds then ask the company to verify they issued that communication to the employee. They either confirm it, or refuse to confirm it. Confirming, or refusing to confirm, both serve as notice for the purpose of the Feds getting a 3rd party administrator involved. In either instance the whole exercise serves the same purpose as what the government is litigating. I hardly see how a company could refuse to put in writing to an employee what their contraceptive policy is vis-a-vis their benefit plan. Employees are given volumes of paperwork about the terms of their healthcare plan. Just forward those to the Feds.As soon as men have to get a second policy for Viagra - I am all in - I mean itâs only fair.
The reason they donât quite grasp how women get contraception is because they donât care.
Itâs just not their problem. So long as a woman doesnât get pregnant, many men (not all) could give two sh*ts as to how she goes about preventing it. Not a manâs problem. And if the contraception involves a reproductive health issue for a women (as with dysmenorrea or fibroids) , then men really arenât interested in hearing about it.
Doesnât matter how many hoops she has to go through. Itâs the womanâs problem. She just needs to do what she has to do. (So men can do what they need to do.)
FFS. I just canât evenâŚ
The Obtuse Court of the United States.
Can they be removed for incompetence or gross ignorance? No? Didnât think so.
So this doesnât really matter, other than to confirm their âdonât give a fuckitivenessâ.
What about the point that a âcontraception-onlyâ plan defeats the whole fucking purpose of health insurance!!! Youâre not going to get a discount on contraception by having it be part of a âcontraception-onlyâ plan, because youâre not pooling and including that cost in with everything else. Now itâs in its own little world out over here in âcontraception-onlyâ land, insurers have to incur extra administrative costs to administer such things, and at the end of the day weâre talking about increased costs being passed along to the women who need these contraceptives.
And what of other medical necessities? Can any employer now pick-and-choose which procedures they feel like covering a-la-carte, leaving their employees to seek out standalone policies that may or may not exist?!?! This would be an absolutely ludicrous decision if it comes down for the conservatives (or as a 4-4 split upholding it in some jurisdictions and banning it in others).
All of the âconservativeâ justices are Roman Catholics - Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Kennedy. And so was Scalia. Sotomayor is also Catholic but, ,to date, here religion doesnât seem to have tainted her decisions.
This is why my personal litmus test for the next justice is that she/he NOT be Catholic.
Why arenât the Roman Catholics recusing themselves because of conflict of interest? How can we tell that Roberts sees actual lawful reasons for his view and is not relying on his religious belief that all contraception is bad?
Total hypocrites.
I really enjoyed reading this when I subsituted the word âViagraâ for every referent to female contraception.
Well, weâre talking lady parts here. You knowâŚthose parts trump finds so objectionable he wonât even talk about 'em.