Friday February 10, 2012
Today President Obama announced that religious organizations will not be required to pay for for contraceptive coverage for their employees; instead, such coverage will be provided by the insurance companies themselves free of charge.
According to a White House press release:
...[The] Administration will implement a policy that accommodates religious liberty while protecting the health of women. Today, nearly 99 percent of all women have used contraception at some point in their lives, but more than half of all women between the ages of 18-34 struggle to afford it.
Under the new policy...women will have free preventive care that includes contraceptive services no matter where she works. The policy also ensures that if a woman works for religious employers with objections to providing contraceptive services as part of its health plan, the religious employer will not be required to provide contraception coverage, but her insurance company will be required to offer contraceptive care free of charge....
Today, the Obama Administration will publish final rules in the Federal Register that:
- Exempts churches, other houses of worship, and similar organizations from covering contraception on the basis of their religious objections.
- Establishes a one year transition period for religious organizations while this policy is being implemented.
The President will also announce that his Administration will propose and finalize a new regulation during this transition year to address the religious objections of the non-exempted religious organizations. The new regulation will require insurance companies to cover contraception if the non-exempted religious organization chooses not to. Under the policy:
- Religious organizations will not have to provide contraceptive coverage or refer their employees to organizations that provide contraception.
- Religious organizations will not be required to subsidize the cost of contraception.
- Contraception coverage will be offered to women by their employers' insurance companies directly, with no role for religious employers who oppose contraception.
- Insurance companies will be required to provide contraception coverage to these women free of charge.
Covering contraception saves money for insurance companies by keeping women healthy and preventing spending on other health services. For example, there was no increase in premiums when contraception was added to the Federal Employees Health Benefit System and required of non-religious employers in Hawaii. One study found that covering contraception lowered premiums by 10 percent or more.
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Friday February 10, 2012
In politics, timing is everything. So despite the fact that the Obama administration announced back in August 2011 that contraceptive counseling and FDA-approved contraceptive methods be included (without cost or co-pay) by employers in new private health plans written on or after August 1, 2012, it's only become a hot button issue now that we're in a volatile election cycle. The rules were put in place last year then clarified and reiterated on January 20, 2012 by the US Department of Health and Human Services, but the debate has intensified in the past week. As of this writing, we're waiting to hear from President Obama in a news conference scheduled just past noon today.
The opposition comes from the bishops of the Catholic Church who insist that contraceptive coverage not be forced on Catholic universities, hospitals, and social service agencies.
Yet as NPR reported this morning, rules requiring contraceptive coverage have been in force for years. On BNPR's health blog Julie Rovner states, "The only truly novel part of the plan is the 'no cost' bit," and includes an audio clip from an ACLU representative who adds "as a legal matter, a constitutional matter, it's completely unremarkable."
As Rovner explains:
In fact, employers have pretty much been required to provide contraceptive coverage as part of their health plans since December 2000. That's when the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that failure to provide such coverage violates the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act. That law is, in turn, an amendment to Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlaws, among other things, discrimination based on gender.
While the conservative right has framed the argument, casting the move as "a war on religion" in the US, that argument draws attention away from the true issue of women's health care. Including coverage for contraceptives is not the same as forcing an employee to use these methods. It all comes down to individual choice. If health care coverage is truly a "benefit" then that should extend to comprehensive coverage of women's health care needs.
Birth control is a basic fact of most women's reproductive lives, including Catholic women. A number of studies have shown that 98% of Catholics use birth control (in such "artificial" forms as pills, barrier methods, prescription drugs as compared to. the "natural" rhythm method) at some point in their lives. Even conservative NY Times columnist Ross Douthat acknowledges "most studies do show that only 2-3 percent of Catholic couples never use artificial means of birth control" which comes to a sum total of "hundreds of thousands of people."
In Catholicism, as in many other religious faiths, there is individual choice; there will always be practitioners who pick and choose what to believe and follow and what to ignore or discard. Should a handful of bishops or the "hundreds of thousands of people" who are truly faithful control public policy to the point at which others are denied "benefits" extended to the general public?
The sad reality is that it's a tough economy. Having birth control included or excluded from one's benefits package isn't going to be a make or break for a woman grateful to find employment after being out of a job for days, months, even years. But it does ignore the larger social concerns of women and our society. The economic cost of unplanned pregnancy is high, as is the impact on a woman's ability to work and care for an already existing family. With a high divorce rate in this country (another of life's realities frowned upon by the Catholic Church), odds are good that many women with children will become single mothers, and the statistics for this group are disturbing; 1 in 3 single mothers struggle to feed their children.
Denying contraceptive coverage at the same time we cut back on social service programs that provide food and basic support to families in need, we are hurting millions of people in a very real and tangible way, not merely "hundreds of thousands of people" in a theoretical way. If President Obama caves in and makes this exclusion in contraceptive coverage, he does so at our peril.
Related articles:
Free Birth Control? What's Covered By Insurance Under the New Health Care Plans
Thursday February 9, 2012
Nobody wants to see any of our "boys" or "girls" get hurt in combat, and longstanding rules in the military bar women from being assigned to fight on the front lines. Yet a decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have blurred the distinction of what a "front line" is, while at the same time women serving as medics, military police, intelligence officers and other support positions have nonetheless been caught in the thick of battle.
The Defense Department is finally catching up to this new reality of war with a rule change submitted today to Congress. In it, the Pentagon recommends that the roles of military women be expanded, allowing them to serve in a greater number of jobs that take them closer to the front lines. Today's recommendation will allow servicewomen to advance beyond brigade level jobs and be assigned to battalion-level positions. (The military terms describe the size of the organizational units involved and their subordinate elements, thus a brigade can number between 3,000-5,000 soldiers while a battalion has between 300-1,000 soldiers. For an easy-to-understand explanation of the differences between these U.S. Army units, About.com Military Guide Rod Powers offers a straightforward breakdown of the chain of command.)
According to the Associated Press, the Pentagon report was due last spring and follows the findings of an independent panel that urged the lifting of the ban on women in combat:
The Military Leadership Diversity Commission said the Pentagon should phase in additional career fields and units that women could be assigned to as long as they are qualified.
A 1994 combat exclusion policy bans women from being assigned to ground combat units below the brigade level....
So while a woman serving as a communications or intelligence officer can be formally assigned to a brigade, she can't be assigned to the smaller battalion. The military has gotten around those rules by "attaching" women in those jobs to battalions, which meant they could do the work, but not get the credit for being in combat arms.
And since service in combat gives troops an advantage for promotions and job opportunities, it has been more difficult for women to move to the higher ranks.
So in a sense, the Pentagon is finally allowing women to take credit when and where credit is due by legitimizing their service with this rule change. It's certainly long overdue as nearly 300,000 women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan and 144 have died.
AFP cites this as a "milestone for the American military," noting that since the 1970s various prohibitions on women's roles in the military have been lifted in incremental steps. A senior defense official says the move will open up 14,000 jobs for women:
The changes mainly apply to the Army, as well as the US Marine Corps, the official said. The Air Force and Navy have few remaining restrictions on female service members, after a 2010 decision that opened the door to women serving on submarines....
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta approved the policy change after receiving an internal report that looked at women' roles and the experience of a decade of war that thrust women into battle....
Officials described the new rules as more of an evolutionary step and not a radical reform, revising policies that were out of touch with realities on the battlefield.
Unless Congress delays or blocks the recommended change, the new policy should go into effect this summer.
Photo of female Marines © Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
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From the internet:
Tuesday February 7, 2012
The news that Susan G. Komen VP Karen Handel - the woman whose tinkering with "what ain't broke" at the nation's leading breast cancer charity has given the pink ribbon a black eye -- has resigned in the wake of the Planned Parenthood fiasco shouldn't be a surprise to any of us. It wasn't to me, because clearly any woman who supports comprehensive women's health care (which included breast care and reproductive care) could not comfortably give to a non-profit that placed such a controversial, anti-choice, anti-gay failed gubernatorial candidate in a highly influential position.
The Handel/Komen story (and the reasons given for eliminating Planned Parenthood funding for breast exams) is one that's been changing and evolving, with more backtracking and excuses than a Herman Cain news conference. Sadly, I've missed writing about the controversy as I was away last week and without an internet connection. Yet I kept up thanks to old media (the newspaper) and plenty of word of mouth.
Three items have become clear to me:
1) much of the nation is still confused by what Planned Parenthood does (and for those anti-abortion supporters, it needs to be said -- only 3% of Planned Parenthood's work is providing abortions)
2) the politics of how decisions are made are often masked by seemingly innocuous statements and actions that look perfectly fine until you start digging underneath at the hidden motivations (and Handel is on public record as being opposed to Planned Parenthood on principle)
3) the power of political activism within the online environment cannot be underestimated now that Occupy Wall Street, Stop SIPA, and the thwarting of Bank of America/Verizon attempts to impose fees have all shown that the groundswell of widespread grassroots support can be earth-shaking.
I'm working this week in putting together all the pieces of the Komen/Handel/Planned Parenthood puzzle and will have a look back at this extraordinary week in the next day or two, but in the meantime, were you -- like me -- not surprised at what happened? It's not only power to the people, but power to the women...and it's time to embrace it, own it, use it.
More on the Komen story from About.com:
