Truthiness

After reading this entry written by Hit or Miss, who proudly declares that politics are not worth her vote, I came to two conclusions:

1. She prefers truthiness to the truth.  Who needs information based on extensive research when you can make baseless statements that feel true?

2.  Her lack of interest or involvement in politics is a blessing in disguise because I personally hope that she continues to avoid casting ballots until she educates herself on these issues.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

1. truthiness (noun) 

• 1 : "truth that comes from the gut, not books" (Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," October 2005)  

• 2 : "the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true" (American Dialect Society, January 2006)

The entry focused specifically on the inclusion of oral contraceptive coverage in the Affordable Care Act.  What the author failed to mention, most likely due to a lack of research, is that the Affordable Care Act actually put in place a mandate that requires that insurers provide access to all contraceptive medications, devices, and procedures approved by the Food and Drug Administration without cost-sharing.  I believe that this distinction should be made because reversing the contraceptive mandate would not only eliminate access to oral contraceptives, but to all FDA approved contraceptive methods.

The author apparently believes that the mandate was solely intended to prevent pregnancies in young alcoholic women attending college and to encourage them to engage in carnal relations without hesitation.  No evidence was provided to support her claim that the Obama administration sought to do either, just as no evidence was provided to prove that only college girls with insatiable appetites for alcohol and intercourse would use contraceptives.

After spending valuable nanoseconds considering the issue, the author decided that the government should not only stop encouraging the drunken trollops roaming the college campuses across the country and start concentrating on eliminating cost-sharing related to medications and treatments for chronic or fatal illnesses.  While I am in no way attempting to devalue the chronically or terminally ill, I cannot see a legitimate connection to the Affordable Care Act for a few reasons.

The Affordable Care Act altered our health care system dramatically, especially by dissolving cost-sharing for preventive care.  The law includes preventive care for chronic illnesses like cancer and diabetes, but the author believes that reactive care should have been included under these mandates.  Loss of health insurance coverage and refusal to provide health insurance were also addressed by the Affordable Care Act through mandates regarding chronic illnesses.  Additionally, there are federally funded public health programs, such as Medicaid, that require patients to pay little to no co-pays or deductibles for reactive care. 

The idea of eliminating cost-sharing for reactive care services is not, in my honest opinion, something that should or could be addressed by the Affordable Care Act.  While many people claim that they would support such a mandate, most would oppose it once they learned about the costs associated with caring for millions of people with chronic or terminal illnesses.  The Affordable Care Act was intended to decrease the cost of medical care by preventing many of these high cost illnesses and eliminating cost-sharing for reactive care would only serve to increase the cost of medical care.

Personally, I support universal health care because I believe every person should have steady access to medical care.  If millions of people oppose the contraceptive mandate, which actually saves tax dollars, how many people would oppose a mandate eliminating cost-sharing for the chronically or terminally ill once they become aware of the increased cost associated with such conditions?  If the system were altered to eliminate cost-sharing for both preventive and reactive care I imagine that universal health care would simplify the overly complicated system presently in place. I digress, however, as the issue at hand is specifically about the contraceptive mandate, not about how cost-sharing for reactive care should be eliminated.

According to a five year study performed by Princeton University, 49 percent of the pregnancies that occur annually are unintended.  In 2001, 3 million unintended pregnancies cost taxpayers $5 billion.  In contrast, contraceptive use saves approximately $19 billion annually in direct medical costs.

An article that appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine many aspects of the public cost of unintended pregnancies.  In 2008, a single birth insured by Medicaid cost taxpayers approximately $12,600 and covered prenatal care, delivery, postpartum care, and the first year of infant care.  In contrast, contraceptives for a single person cost roughly $260 in the same year.  In 2008, a $1.9 billion investment was made to fund family planning care which resulted in Medicaid saving $7 billion by reducing unplanned pregnancies.

In 2002, the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan eliminated cost-sharing for highly effective intrauterine devices, injectable contraceptives, and implants.  The elimination of cost-sharing led to a 137 percent increase in the use of these specific contraceptives and prevented approximately 1800 pregnancies.  The investment in public planning services has proven beneficial as these programs have saved taxpayers $3.74 for every dollar spent.  More than 9 million women made use of publicly funded family planning services in 2006.  An estimated 1.94 million unintended pregnancies and over 800,000 abortions were avoided in a single year.

Eliminating the contraceptive mandate would only serve to maintain or increase the cost to taxpayers.  Instead of reversing the mandate, which saves billions of tax dollars annually, perhaps the author should instead consider how the contraceptive mandate could be used to fund the elimination of cost-sharing for reactive care.  Perhaps I am mistaken, but this seems like a more logistically sound solution.

The author also states that contraceptives should not be included in the Affordable Care Act because the only condition prevented is impregnation.  According to the National Women's Law Center, most women in the United States of reproductive age make use of contraceptives and many of them do so to ensure that planned pregnancies prevent health concerns arising for either the mother or the child.  The conditions avoided by the mother include gestational diabetes, high blood pressure, and placental problems.  The conditions avoided by the child include low birth weight and pre-term birth.  It should also be noted that the interval between pregnancies is pertinent and having children too close together or too far apart can increase the risk of developing a number of complications.

On a more personal note, I would like to address the author's assumption that only an irresponsible and promiscuous woman would use contraceptives and that they do so with the sole intention of preventing pregnancy because that would obviously interfere with one's ability attend college parties, consume abnormal amounts of alcohol, and frequently fornicate.  I originally chose to respond to the author's entry on contraceptives and those that would use them because she not only managed to offend me, but managed to offend my husband as well.

This is written directly to the author:

I was prescribed oral contraceptives by my reproductive endocrinologist in May in an attempt to reduce the risk I have of developing endometrial cancer and heart disease.  I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome seven years ago, but was unaware of the danger I put myself in by not managing the more severe symptoms I suffer from.  I have been married for almost three years and my husband encouraged me to manage my condition instead of merely living with it, especially because we hope to have children in the future. We are waiting because my husband just entered the Armed Forces and I would prefer to complete school prior to a medically aided conception.

I do not use oral contraceptives because I don't want to become pregnant, I use oral contraceptives because I hope to be blessed with a child one day.  I do not spend my nights at parties or fornicating, I spend my nights researching for assignments like these because my educational aspirations are apparently higher than yours.  The last time I left the house was to have two surgeries because the oral contraceptives indicated that I may have already developed endometrial cancer and biopsies were needed to determine whether or not that was the case.

Perhaps you should bother to educate yourself in the future to avoid spewing baseless nonsense written at a sixth grade level.

Also, please stop listening to Rush Limbaugh; he's a terrible man with terrible ideas.