Friday, February 10, 2012
The buzz in the major blogs is the Obama compromise to address the Catholic Church’s concern about birth control coverage, including abortifacients.
The right wing is calling this an accounting gimmick, but somehow Obama doesn’t see it.
The accounting gimmick should be obvious to anyone if we change the covered benefit from something that half of America thinks should be mandatory to something we all agree should not be.
Ask yourself: Consider if Obama had first mandated elective cosmetic surgery must be covered by all employers. In response, employers complained about the effect on their insurance rates. So Obama says, “Fine. Let’s compromise. The insurance companies must cover cosmetic surgery for free when an employer does not do so electively.”
We would all recognize that the consequence is all employers rates will reflect the same insurance increase necessary to pay for elective cosmetic surgery. The increase is not going to be borne by those few who want to provide elective surgery, or the result would be a free-rider problem.
The only difference is in degree. Many more employers will want insurance that covers birth control than would ever pay for cosmetic surgery coverage. So it appears the Catholic Church could get something for nothing, but that is not in fact possible unless insurance companies intentionally misprice policies to provide cover to the Obama Administration.
The right wing is calling this an accounting gimmick, but somehow Obama doesn’t see it.
The accounting gimmick should be obvious to anyone if we change the covered benefit from something that half of America thinks should be mandatory to something we all agree should not be.
Ask yourself: Consider if Obama had first mandated elective cosmetic surgery must be covered by all employers. In response, employers complained about the effect on their insurance rates. So Obama says, “Fine. Let’s compromise. The insurance companies must cover cosmetic surgery for free when an employer does not do so electively.”
We would all recognize that the consequence is all employers rates will reflect the same insurance increase necessary to pay for elective cosmetic surgery. The increase is not going to be borne by those few who want to provide elective surgery, or the result would be a free-rider problem.
The only difference is in degree. Many more employers will want insurance that covers birth control than would ever pay for cosmetic surgery coverage. So it appears the Catholic Church could get something for nothing, but that is not in fact possible unless insurance companies intentionally misprice policies to provide cover to the Obama Administration.
