The contraception deception

From the White House fact sheet on "Women's Preventive Services and Religious Institutions:

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. 

The White House tried to sell its contraception policy by selling it as a money saver.

Annenberg Fact Check found that proposition dubious even while checking the softer claim of cost neutrality:

Is the Obama administration correct when it claims its contraception mandate will be “cost neutral” for insurance companies? Or are the critics right when they say Catholic institutions will pay a hidden cost in the form of higher premiums when their insurers are required to give “free” contraceptives to their female employees?

We’ve found plenty of evidence. But it’s often conflicting — and ultimately inconclusive.

Others, including commentator Mark Steyn, have pointed out a very important dimension of the problem that the Annenberg article fails to address:  If the contraception mandate results in fewer babies then it will tend to exacerbate the demographic doom from which ObamaCare was supposed to eventually save us.

Steyn:

The notion that an all-powerful government would distract from its looming bankruptcy by introducing a universal contraceptive mandate would strike most novelists as almost too pat in its symbolism.

The degree to which the administration's cynical ploy succeeds in improving President Obama's re-election odds also serves as a measure of America's unwillingness to take the hard steps necessary to avert its looming fiscal crisis.

Bread, circus, contraceptives.


Addendum:

More reading on the deceptions of the Obama administration, the Democratic Party and the mainstream media.