WASHINGTON – The Obama administration announced on Friday a new proposal that will extend a mandate, already in place in ObamaCare, to require universities, including religious universities, to provide contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs to their students, as well as their employees, free of charge.
The White House issued a 32-page regulatory proposal on Friday that was couched in conciliatory tones as it offered alleged alternatives for providing contraceptives to women, free of charge, who are employees of religious organizations. The plan claims to contain options for carrying out the mandate without forcing insurers to bear the entire cost for contraception, or expecting religious institutions to share the cost for birth control products with insurance companies.
For religious groups who sponsor self-insured plans, the administration suggests a third-party administrator of the group health plan, or another independent entity, to assume the responsibility of fulfilling the contraception mandate.
Regarding the extension of university students’ free coverage of contraception services, Planned Parenthood President, Cecile Richards said, “Covering birth control with no co-pays means college students will not have to choose between paying for tuition and books, or paying for basic health care like birth control.”
In response to the announcement, Sandra Fluke, the 30 year-old feminist activist who participated in a mock hearing headed by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, saidthat she welcomed the new rule, though she was disappointed that the policy provides for a one-year delay for religiously-affiliated schools prior to enacting mandatory free contraception coverage. Ms. Fluke admitted that she chose to attend Georgetown University, a university affiliated with the Catholic Church, in order to work to overturn its faith-based policy on contraception.
The White House has chosen to declare a 90-day period of public comment following the announcement of its new proposal. Subsequent to this 90-day comment period, the administration will issue another “rulemaking,” followed by yet another comment period, and then, ultimately, the final rule. Administration officials said that the final rules for “self-insured employers” would be issued after the November election.
An official who briefed the media, and who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said, “Our general principle is that we want to maintain the posture that a religious organization that objects to paying for contraception, won’t.”
But, “maintaining the posture” sounds like an Obama administration euphemism for “having the appearance for political purposes.”  (read more)
Lets step back for a minute from the overwhelming, overtalked and profoundly over hyped talking points about healthcare, birth control, and the disingenuous, albeit factually false, conversation about women’s reproductive rights, also known by the institutional liberal mantra as the “WAR ON WOMEN”.   Oh, big scary bumper sticker words.
The Birth Control mandate is a stealth issue.   It is an irrelevant distraction from the larger conversation about the “goal”.   The ultimate Obamacare left-wing progressive goal is complete governmental control over healthcare issues.   Socialized medicine.
We know how smart and patient the “fabian socialists” and the “Cloward Piven” types are who know a strategic method of goal achievement, overwhelm the system.  The contraception issue is a means toward this goal, not the ends.   The end is the goal of socialized medicine.    Lets think and talk about it.
The progressive institutional left, in all its forms ,couldn’t pass the single payer system.  The euro model they wanted.   So if they can require you to carry insurance, and they can tell the provider of the insurance what they must cover, the only difference becomes “who” administers the program;  either government or private enterprise.
You need to step back and think about two divergent paths to achieve the same goal.   One path is government taking complete control of healthcare by organizing the providing of the service and determining what payments providers should receive, think Medicare and reimbursement.   The other path is to control what services are provided by private insurance carriers, hence the mandates.  Both paths lead to the same place.      
There is little difference between total governmental control of healthcare, and requiring all citizens to carry health insurance as a product, when the government can control the internal construction of the product you are required to carry.   
So, in essence the government creates the lever, that the lemming pulls to get their free pellet.   Same/Same.
Obama will not back down from the Birth Control mandate, any more than he will back down from the other previously passed mandates.   Because this new one is only the first in a series of mandates being planned to control the insurance providers.
Eventually all of the mandates like, requiring pre-existing condition coverage, requiring a young adult staying on a parents plan to 26 years old, and the birth control mandate about policy coverage are going to lead to increased costs of the coverage itself.   The premiums will rise, we are seeing this play out currently.
What appears as a “good idea” for individual aspects of mandated coverage right now will eventually lead to ridiculous costs of insurance.  It is a natural consequence.   It is an intended consequence.  Think about it.  We’re not stupid.  
If the argument for birth control coverage being forced into every single health insurance policy is because it will ultimately lower costs in the long run, then why wouldn’t the government mandate coverage for toothpaste, or for diet pills, or vitamins, or, well, you see where this is headed.
What about a mandate to cover the expenses of going to and from health treatment facilities?  Sounds good and reasonable, at least from the perspective of a sheeple lemming who view it as another “free” pellet while being cognitively disconnected from the cost increase that will ultimately be included in their premium.      
This drive up of cost becomes, by intended consequence, a means to drum up support for government takeover.   How?   Well easy, as citizens keep seeing their premiums rise, and they do not connect the dots between the rise and the mandated coverage the insurance companies are required to include, the citizen sheeple will be more apt to swallow the bitter pill of total takeover.  Heck, I would argue they’ll ask for it.
Obama ain’t gonna stop with Birth Control mandates.   This is only the structural test to judge the viability of many more HHS mandates soon to follow.  He will mandate other aspects too; many aspects and requirements that other interested sheeple will buy into because it provides them a “free” pellet.    Once all the mandates are in place the costs will be so substantial that governmental intervention will be required by the same pellet eating sheeple.   People will be screaming for something to be done about these skyrocketing insurance premiums.  
The cost/benefit insurance “system” will have been overloaded, and the door will be open for the administration of either party to justify the previously mentioned ends.
Forget the Birth Control issue and look at the big picture.  Because Phase II of this current strategy is even worse.
Phase II will begin after the government steps in on your behalf to control the costs at your request.   How?   Well immediately they begin determining reimbursement rates, and more importantly what services will be provided.   That’s when the bureaucrats lower the hammer and begin making your healthcare decisions.   Maybe you really don’t need that hip replacement, or maybe they determine the osteoporosis is too significant for you to benefit from surgery… etc.   etc.    Here is where the “panels” come in.  
Then ironically, all those little coverage mandates they convinced you were so wonderful and necessary, will slowly be removed passing the cost right back along to you.  Yep. 
Obamacare must be stopped, shredded, deconstructed and dissolved.
The free market within the health insurance industry must be allowed to sell a product tailored for the individual needs of disparate groups.    The current course does nothing to stop premium prices from skyrocketing.   Nothing.   And let me repeat, it is structurally an intentional design.
However, even with Obamacare removed the health insurance products within the industry do need to be reformed to bend the cost curve downward.   So what reforms should be considered?   
First, allow insurance companies to compete across state lines.  Second, reform medical liability laws to eliminate frivolous malpractice lawsuits, cap malpractice awards, and stop  unnecessary defensive medical practices.   Lastly, allow policies and group coverages to be tailored to the specific needs of those persons who would be using the benefits.   Let the employer determine what the health insurance policy they select covers.
Get off your ass and vote out Obama so we can be rid of this looming nightmare.