What not to insure
by Curtiss Wikstrom

     The purpose of insurance is to cover extraordinary, unexpected costs that would create too large of a burden on our income.  We can't afford an illness that will lay us up for months without an income.  Since the possibility of that happening is small, we can pay just a fraction of our income to insure us against that possibility.  Thousands of us band together and pay a fraction of our income into a pool so there are resources to take care of those who have serious illness or injury.

    We don't want to insure ordinary things.  There is a cost to running things through insurance.   It is always less expensive for us to pay for regular living expenses directly.  We should have large deductibles on our insurance, and pay for most things out of pocket.  That keeps our insurance costs low and affordable.  One should save enough during good times to cover the deductible amount when we are ill.

      If we run ordinary costs through our insurance, all ordinary costs that can reasonably be anticipated will be added to the price of the insurance, plus administrative costs.  Insurance rates will go up by more than the cost of the product or service.  When government forces insurance companies to pay ordinary and expected costs, it increases the health care costs for people.  They pay more for the additional insurance than they would if they paid for the services directly(because of the overhead costs).   

     Contraceptives are one of those things that we can pretty much figure out what the cost would be.  They are not a significant cost, and not an extraordinary burden that we could not handle in the ordinary course of our lives.  It would be foolish for us to include these in our insurance plan, because the contraceptives would actually cost more that way.  That is not what insurance is for.  If the government forces the insurance company to pay for them, even those who don't use them end up having to pay for them, since the insurance company has to anticipate that everyone will use them.  When we pay for things ourselves, we get to make the choices as to what we get.  If we hand our pay check over to a government agent, not only do they make the choices as to what we get, but we also have to pay them wages for making our choices for us, reducing the amount of money we have to spend for ourselves.  

     Putting an ordinary item like contraceptives into an insurance plan not only increases the expense, but  it violates our freedom of choice, and in some cases our freedom of conscience.  A number of people do not believe that they should use chemical, or artificial birth control methods.  Other employers feel that it is morally wrong for them to pay for or promote these items.  It is unconscionable that the Obama administration and the Democratic Senators would force this on people.  Taking an ordinary expense that should never be part of an insurance plan in the first place, and violating people's freedom of conscience to force it down our throats is an unnecessary and ridiculous intrusion on people's freedom of choice, and freedom of conscience. 

     Claiming that they are protecting a woman's freedom of choice is illogical and deceptive.  What Obama and the Democrats are really doing is increasing the cost of contraceptives to women.  And in the process they are violating their freedom to make decisions for themselves as well as violating the freedom of conscience of some employers.