Rush called a spade a spade. He was absolutely correct… perhaps a bit rude about it at worst but correct nonetheless. Why should others pay for her sex? I find the woman to be disgusting.
As far as health insurance goes, most don’t offer dental… Can we get dental first before
Rush hit the nail in the head.
Because of this, some Advertisers dropped Rush. Such as Carbonite. Few things these days make me laugh out loud. This did. Oops! Oh man… my sides are aching and I have hiccups at this moment.
Did you listen for her testimony? Rush did this for ratings. He has had plenty of free advertising for this stunt. If he wanted to call a spade a spade then he would have just said that she or anyone that wants birth control for serious medical issues or just for not reproducing then they have a few choices:
1. Pay out of pocket (either at the local pharmacy or planned parenthood)
2. Have an insurance plan that covers it.*
* if your current insurance plan does not cover it for religious reasons then work or go to school at a place that does cover it. NO ONE is forcing you to work or learn there. If (as her friend did) do not do this and you are now sterile it must have been God’s plan for you to not reproduce.
Rush does everything for ratings. There’s plenty of reasons he calls himself an entertainer.
And the fact that there are off-label uses for birth control pills doesn’t argue for subsidizing the sale and distribution of all varieties of birth control: at most, it argues for testing and, if possible, approving the currently off-label uses.
I pretty much agree with George. As near as I can tell, Ms. Fluke is arguing primarily that taxpayers should subsidize her sex life. Solving her friend’s problem is just a convenient side-effect of getting her what she wants.
She’s a professional activist.
Many of the formerly-off-label uses have been approved by the FDA in recent years. So they’re no longer off-label.
Her testimony was ludicrous.
If contraception really and truly is for an actual medical purpose, insurance can cover that… Doctors do that all the time. But to cover recreation… I don’t think so.
Indeed. But if it’s for recreation, she really should be using condoms, which don’t regulate any medical conditions. So, how does her story about her friend have any bearing on that?
I think Rush is a jackass, personally, and I think those who say he was excessively rude are right; no need to lower yourself to the level of OWS and others. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t /also/ a jackass. Too many folks have this “either/or” thing going on, where if you oppose someone, they assume that you must automatically support that individual’s opponents. I’m comfortable saying they should both shut up; Rush for lowering the tone of discourse, and her for lowering the intellectual level of discourse.
I read the transcript. The numbers she gives for costs are ludicrous, unless she’s, well, what Rush said.
I don’t listen to Rush very often, but I did happen to be listening for part of this tirade. I admit, I laughed out loud.
Was curious about the numbers myself. I asked my sister, who’s a Pharmacist.
The $5 pill at Walmart is only $5 because it’s generic and off it’s patent. Most of the rest are actually pretty expensive.
Oh yeah, that $5 pill? Only effective in roughly %20 of the women who take it.
Sis said Fluke numbers were actually pretty low compared to here in Denver.
The woman is a free loader. I’ll bet she would demand the government subsidize her flood and wind damage insurance if she had a home in a particular part of Palm Beach. In reality, prostitutes do pay for their own birth control. This makes them more honest than most lawyers, a super-majority of talks show hosts and all political activists.
I have heard the argument that if this was covered that the cost would come down because of it to where it is for some medications that are available for $4 a month over the counter at Wally world and the like for generics…my reply is that if our tax dollars are going to go for free medication why the hell wouldn’t we be doling out or subsidizing those $4 meds that take care of conditions like high bp, cholesterol, diabetes, asthma or other more critical ailments instead of taking care of someones social life concerns…
Drudge has a link this morning how Carbonite’s stock has dropped in the past two days. Sort of a repeat of Snapple when they dropped Rush
Customers are canceling Carbonite in droves. They were already in negative cash flow trying to expand servers and personnel to meet demand. It is a closely held company but I imagine there are major stock holders asking uncomfortable questions. A number of the companies that canceled were shaky, AOL, Sears, soon it will be there turn to be boycotted. The Limbaugh audience tends to be employed and educated middle class. Piss them off and they can hurt you.
I’m a fiscal conservative. From a strict fiscal conservative standpoint, it is very much a smart buy to provide free access to hormonal contraceptives. Insurance companies also believe so (they were the ones who lobbied for the mandate to get around “Religious Exemptions” on the part of employers, which this increases the cost of covering the entire insurance pool.
First off, there are many different kinds of hormonal contraceptives. The pill available at Walmart only works for roughly %20 of the women out there. The others are usually vastly more expensive than $5/month, but are still far cheaper than paying for the complications of the conditions they are also uses to treat.
Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, Endometriosis, painful cramps, excessive menstrual bleeding, even higher chances of cancer are all treated by hormonal contraceptives as well as dozens of other medical conditions affecting roughly a quarter of the women in this country.
Bottom line, on average it costs roughly $12,000 to cover a woman’s birth control over the entirety of her fertility, and you get to roll into that same number treatment for over two dozen maladies affecting a quarter of the female population in the pool, on top of preventing unplanned for $30,000(minimum) pregnancies. That’s a no brainer.
Ms. Fluke was arguing for getting the school out of her doctor’s office. Something that any conservative should support, and something that the insurance companies support to the extent of lobbying for a government mandate.
She wasn’t asking for everyone else to pay for her medical treatments, she was asking for the insurance she already paid for to cover it, at net benefit to the rest of us.
I’ve got 3 sisters and a mother that I respect. One of them suffers from a malady treated by hormonal contraceptives. She doesn’t deserve to suffer because the conservative movement doesn’t understand birth control, and she definitely does not deserve to be called a slut or a prostitute. What Limbaugh did was despicable, and he should be made to pay.
Do none of you have women in your lives that you respect?
If her insurance company is required to pay for it then, unlike Obama, they cannot just print money, so they have to get that money from somewhere. To whit, the premiums that everyone in that plan pays. So, yes, she is asking for us to pay for it. Money doesn’t grow on trees, so if they are forced to pay out, they will have to take money in from somewhere to cover the added cost.
Also, your numbers are ridiculous, in the extreme. “$30,000(minimum)” for a pregnancy? My wife was right on the border of being declared “high risk” with each of her three pregnancies. She had gestational diabetes with each, and she has a partial uterine septum. We paid out-of-pocket for everything, so we know exactly what we paid. Average total for each, including all the supplies to deal with the GD, right up through the birth, and aftercare, was $5,500.
Note that the average I gave was the total cost to cover, including prenatal, prescriptions for prenatal supplements, medical visits, ultrasounds, the actual hospital bill for the delivery, postpartum care as well as the initial infant care. That’s without a C-Section. The total picture is what the Insurance companies are looking at.
Also note that most hospitals are subsidized via charities and other state and federal programs to heavily discount the rate paid by non-insured medical care recipients. My entire family is in the medical field and can tell you with certainty that your average pregnancy is going to cost an Insurance company on average $30,000 assuming that there are no complications that might lead to a C-Section or other emergency procedures.
And you’re right, money doesn’t grow on trees. The entire reason Insurance works is because they are hedging at all times that only a certain percentage of those in any given pool will need access or coverage for medical procedures in any given period of time. Adjustments are made according to certain risk factors as well as certain cost mitigation factors. Insurance pools are run by some very intelligent people, having known a few actuaries and capable myself of performing derivatives on fourth degree polynomials in my head the math they are dealing with makes even my eyes blurry. But the bottom line is that these Actuaries know what they’re talking about, the bean counters are always right as some may have heard the old turn of phrase.
The insurance companies want to provide free or low copay birth control to the women in their pools because over the long run (again keep in mind this is a hedge bet against more than a certain percentage of the pool needing major medical care) it lowers the cost of providing for that pool by preventing several maladies (again, affecting over %25 of the women in the pool) and evening out and slightly reducing the number of pregnancies in the pool in a way that is more predictable. This all makes providing the agreed healthcare to that pool cheaper. I don’t know how else to put it than this: free or low copay access to effective birth control lowers overall healthcare costs spread across any insurance pool. Ask any actuary.
Remember, it’s the Insurance companies that lobbied for this. They wouldn’t be pushing for it if it didn’t justify the cost of hiring the lobbyists, and they’re not stupid enough to drive customers away by looking for excuses to raise premiums, they wouldn’t be in business if they were. Insurance is cut throat business.
Note the word “total” in my post? It means that. Everything, from prenatal vitamins (starting when we decided to start trying to get pregnant), to all diagnostic tests, consumable supplies (including enough diabetic test strips to last a typical diabetic for a year), birth fees, and absolutely everything else. $5500. Your number is ridiculous.
And no, that was not subsidized in any way. We were doing quite well at the time, and not only paid full price, but actually donated a bit to help others who might be struggling (obviously, /that/ is not included in the $5500, since it’s not part of the cost).
Your math skills do not impress me. Derivatives, for all the press that calculus gets, are nothing more than basic algebra. Once you know the rules, they are trivially-easy. (if we’re trying to be silly braggarts, my undergrad was quite literally rocket science, at a rather well-known school in Taxachusetts, so math brags ain’t going to impress me)
Insurance companies want to provide as much as they can, by government mandate, because then they can raise their premiums. “Sorry, we have no choice; the government demanded that we cover X, so now we need to charge more.” There’s no reason for insurance (which is supposed to cover unexpected catastrophes) to cover regular expenses – it would be like expecting my homeowners’ insurance to pay to replace my roof just because it is getting old – except that there are these nonsensical government mandates that require it. Nonsensical, unless you realize that the insurance companies are making a profit on all these “extras” that they are required to provide. And if the premium increase is the result of a government mandate that applies to all of them, it doesn’t drive any customers away, because /every/ company will have the increase. That’s why they lobby for this nonsense: it’s free profit for them.
Eric –
If oral contraceptives are the method your sister’s doctors choose to treat her condition, then they would be covered by insurance. She would not be getting a prescription for “birth control” pills, but for a medical condition for which that particular medication is the best treatment. I’ve seen that very prescription method used three times in my immediate family, and none of the prescriptions are for “birth control” pills, but to treat other medical conditions.
That is not the case with Ms. Fluke. She wants somebody else to pay for her promiscuous lifestyle. Rush merely called her what she is.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/boxofficebuz/transcript-of-testimony-by-sandra-fluke-48z2
That is the entirety of Sandra Fluke’s testimony.
If you can read that and still agree with Rush Limbaugh spending three days on his show attacking her character, her parent’s character, calling her a prostitute, a slut, a round-heeled harlot, the woman trying wailing for another pill so she can bang the 57th guy for the day, and then demanding sex acts from her, we have nothing further to discuss, because I’ll quite frankly be puking up the last of the faith I had in conservatism.
Just because Rush is an idiot, does not make her right. They’re both wrong.
Good article on Reason on the subject: http://reason.com/archives/2012/03/07/sandra-flukes-protection-racket
“Cost aside, the essence of Fluke’s argument is that reproductive freedom requires free birth control. By the same logic, religious freedom requires kosher food subsidies, freedom of speech requires taxpayer-funded computers, and the right to keep and bear arms requires government-supplied guns.”
Insurance doesn’t work that way.
Subsidization requires taxpayer money. This is nothing of the sort.
And if there’s one Fact that I’d like to drive home: Free or low copay birth control LOWERS the cost of providing healthcare to a given insurance pool. It lowers premiums in the end. See my above comment.
Your “Fact” (ooh – with a capital letter, even?) is false. Go get some quotes on insurance plans that cover birth control, and those that don’t. Tell me which is more expensive…
If the government is going to mandate that something be covered, and then mandate that folks buy insurance, then there’s no practical difference between that and any other tax. They’ve just eliminated the IRS as a middle-man and made you directly write a check to the insurance company. It’s still a tax.
Understand that the way of the Left is passive-agressive, to be constantly “offended.” What Rush said or whether it exceeded propriety isn’t, in the end, the real issue. The real issue is TRUTH. If conservatives really want to “win,” to survive, to preserve what’s left of this Republic, they will need to speak some hard and ugly truths and, in fact, “offend” a lot more people than they are now. We continue to play the Left’s game–and we are losing.
I like the fact that she is a 30 year old known activist… and not your average 23 year old college student…
Jim
But she’s a “law student.” Convenient, how they mention that, but not her age, eh?
She also thinks that insurance companies should be forced to pay for sex reassignment surgery. Among many other things.
Nothing against transgendered folks; if they need that surgery in order to be happy, I say they should go for it. But that fraction of them who think others should be forced to pay for it, and the many more “activists” and such who latch on to demand such “for” them, are way out of line. If I need a Ferarri to be happy, does that mean I can demand that others buy one for me?