Women in the United States saved an estimated $483 million on their out-of-pocket costs for the birth control pill, according to new data from the IMS Institute on Healthcare Informatics. The health care data company found that Obamacare has “dramatically reduced” women’s out-of-pocket costs now that insurers are required to cover preventative care without charging an additional co-pay.
Compared to the data from 2012, about 24 million more birth control pill prescriptions were filled without a co-pay in 2013. That means each of the women filling those prescriptions ended up saving an average of $269. Those savings can make all the difference for women who are struggling to afford the reproductive care they need. According to the IMS Institute’s data, there was 4.6 percent increase in prescriptions for birth control between 2012 and 2013.
One of the most common misconceptions about Obamacare’s contraceptive provision is the assumption that women are now getting birth control “for free.” In reality, however, these women are accessing birth control through their private, employer-sponsored health insurance plans. Women do pay for the benefits included in those plans, both by working at their job and by paying a monthly premium. Under Obamacare, the difference is that they don’t have to pay an additional out-of-pocket cost for the preventative health benefits specific to their gender.
This is why if you are a woman, you MUST vote Democratic!
Obviously I think you also should if you are a man, but for women it seems like a no brainer.
This is the party that is fighting for an increased minimum wage, passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and has made it impossible for insurance companies to treat being a woman as a preexisting condition.
By the way, let me just mention, that this kind of access to birth control is far more likely to bring down the number of abortions in this country then the Republican approach of shaming women and shutting down Planned Parenthood clinics.
But if we let the Republicans regain the Senate, or take more seats in the House, this kind of progress will slow down immensely, or disappear forever.
Well at least until we get Hillary into the White House that is.
Attention, all of you conservatives who are against birth control. If women have access to birth control, they won't have an unwanted pregnancy, and you won't have to watch another video about a woman's choice.
ReplyDeleteThey are too stupid to even realize that. Or too stubborn. Or too something. They somehow think teens will not have sex if there is no contraception, but they are against teaching their BOYS to control themselves. Therefore, any unintended pregnancy is because the GIRL is bad. This is the whole point...keep women pregnant and out of the job market. Keep them out of colleges, where they might learn that they have worth without a man. Horrors!!
Delete$483 million for birth control, you say?
ReplyDeleteThat's good to know.
Once Obamacare is repealed (and replaced with GOPOOPcare - which is the popular moniker for the conservative's "hurry up and die" health care plan for the 47% - that's $483 million that can be redirected to tax cuts for the wealthy or military adventurism in countries with poor, dark-skinned people.
GOP2016!
"C'mon, The 1800s Weren't So Bad, Were They?"
Contraception - the "pill' - took it for years and years and never had a mishap (unwanted pregnancy). The best thing in the world to use, ladies.
ReplyDeleteThank you, President Obama, for helping keep the abortion rate down.
Vote out Republicans wherever and whenever you can - they are AGAINST contraception. Idiots!
Did you read this Gryphen? Why it's so hard to take the press seriously, this is what they focus on:
ReplyDelete3. “Please say something spicy about the president, or at least a high-level adviser.”
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-05-07/why-i-don-t-tell-the-media-everything
I just responded to a poll where I answered the questions positively as to President Obama. They sent me a note and said my vote would not be counted in the poll - something about my email address! But, yet I got their note! Obviously a poll done by Republicans! They assuredly don't like the majority of us that favor our POTUS!
DeleteFolks, President Obama is doing a good job in spite of the crap the Republicans are throwing at him - the worst the country has ever seen in my lifetime and I'm in my 70's!
Americans voted him to the office TWICE and the Republicans still cannot accept it.
Thank you President Obama and VP Biden (and the Administration) for the outstanding job you are all doing IN SPITE OF THE ASSHOLES!
Vote Republicans out of office (and, don't elect new ones!) across the land when next we vote! Get your friends and family members out - support your party, which is hopefully Democratic, Independent or Non Partisan!
How bad has the money-in-politics situation gotten? A new study by researchers at Princeton and Northwestern universities found that, and I'm quoting directly here: "When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
DeleteIn other words, if you can't afford to hire a lobbyist or raise money for politicians, your opinion literally does not matter.
But don't go into a hopeless despair spiral just yet. On May 1, Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig launched Mayday PAC: a crowdfunded Super PAC with the sole mission of forcing Congress to get money out of politics. The response so far has been overwhelming: They've raised over a half-million dollars in the first week alone.
http://www.upworthy.com/a-brilliant-plan-to-give-billionaires-who-try-to-buy-us-elections-a-taste-of-their-own-medicine?c=hpstream?c=huf1
ObamaCare is working — and the GOP is shifting its attack
ReplyDeleteAfter pounding Democrats on ObamaCare for the last several years, Republicans have a big problem. The law is working and their message is falling flat.
This was confirmed again by testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee yesterday in which health-care-industry executives surprised Republican lawmakers. They said the law has not led to a government takeover of the industry, that most enrollees are paying their premiums as required, and that premiums are not certain to go up next year as Republicans claim.
With more than 8 million people enrolled in health plans through the ObamaCare exchanges, many Republicans know it's much harder to repeal the law now than it might have been several years ago. And they tried more than 50 times already without success.
So GOP lawmakers have suddenly pivoted to a new message, accusing the Obama administration and Democrats of staging cover-ups.
Yesterday, Republicans voted to hold former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify.
Today, the GOP will establish a select House committee to investigate the 2012 attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Both actions — on party-line votes — reflect the GOP realization that attacking ObamaCare isn't sustainable. Instead, Republicans hope to rekindle controversies of the past as a distraction.
http://theweek.com//article/index/261245/with-obamacare-working-gop-shifts-attack
I helped an elderly neighbor renew her medicare coverage. We found a plan that had MORE benefits for about a hundred dollars less than what she was paying before (230 and change) and she was delighted. She got a letter that her plan got "pooled" with another group and her new monthly premium comes to 17 bucks. She had me call because she couldn't believe her eyes. They said it would be zero if we lived in a state that accepted expansion of medicare. For someone on a fixed income, that's a windfall!
DeleteI wish POTUS and the Dems would toot their own horns over this, and use it in their campaign ads.
Obama’s transformational presidency
ReplyDelete...His biggest legislative accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act, is a landmark because it establishes the principle that health care should be considered a right, not a privilege. Democrats such as Harry Truman — and Republicans such as Richard Nixon — sought for decades to move the nation toward universal care. The fact that Obama succeeded where others failed is, in itself, a huge achievement.
Perhaps as important, however, is the fact that while Republicans still claim they want to repeal Obamacare, the debate within the party centers on how best to expand health insurance coverage. Returning to the way things were before the ACA is not an option.
Health care is part of a larger suite of issues on which Obama has swung the pendulum back to the left. He made the case, for example, that more regulation of the financial sector was needed. Republicans were forced to give way. The president has been hammering away in speeches about the need for an increase in the minimum wage. Republicans haven’t caved on this yet, but in the end they almost surely will because of widespread public support for it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-obamas-transformational-presidency/2014/05/08/d30a7190-d6e6-11e3-95d3-3bcd77cd4e11_story.html?hpid=z3
FYI Gryphen:
ReplyDeleteThese 7 Republicans Will Serve On The Benghazi Select Committee
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) on Friday announced the Republican members who'll serve on the select committee to investigate the Benghazi attacks of 2012.
They are:
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), Chairman
Rep. Susan Brooks (R-IN)
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH)
Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS)
Rep. Martha Roby (R-AL)
Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL)
Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA)
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/the-7-republicans-on-benghazi-committee
Carney: GOPers Admit Benghazi About ‘Trying to Raise Money and Motivate Their Base’
DeleteRepublicans have confessed that the effort is not aimed at uncovering the truth but to increase campaign donations and excite the GOP base.
“House Republicans, in what is a blatantly political and partisan effort, voted to start another investigation into this matter,” Carney began, “presumably because the six previous investigations by Congress, by Republicans, were somehow not adequate.”
“It’s unfortunate that House Republicans continue to pursue this in a highly partisan manner,” he added. “And, in fact, they themselves have acknowledged how political it is and how oriented it is toward trying to raise money and motivate their base for a midterm election.”
Watch the clip below via MSNBC:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/carney-gopers-admit-benghazi-about-trying-to-raise-money-and-motivate-their-base/
Krauthammer Warns GOP: Benghazi Committee ‘Very Dangerous Political Waters’
...Krauthammer added that organizing this committee is a “very high-risk operation” that needs to focus solely on understanding what, exactly, happened in the aftermath of the 2012 attacks on the U.S. consulate. If the committee deviates at all into a “political circus,” he reiterated, it will hurt the GOP.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/krauthammer-warns-gop-benghazi-committee-very-dangerous-political-waters/
For nearly two years, he has been the designated legal attack dog on the Internal Revenue Service and Benghazi controversies. This week he became chairman of a new Benghazi select committee, making him de facto leader of the GOP’s strategy to whip those issues into an apocalyptic constitutional narrative.
Deletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/09/trey-gowdy-gop_n_5295522.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
Well, I was about to comment that the usual wackjobs haven't been chosen, but then I realized that Pompeo's name seemed familiar and did a quick check of his legislative history.
DeleteAnd now I see that Westmoreland was under fire in 2008 for calling the President and First Lady "uppity".
After a little more reading it appears that it's just a new, slightly less familiar batch of right wing tea party crazies on this committee.
What a continual waste of taxpayer's money, 10:46! We have the worst United States Congress in history 'supposedly' serving the folks that elected them.
ReplyDeleteVote Republicans out of office (newly running or those running for reelection across the nation. They are anti women, anti contraception, anti abortion, many are racists, members of the KKK, folks that are trying to obstruct voting rights of blacks and brown citizens, are just plain hateful and nasty, give themselves raises and stop the flow of Food Stamps to those in need!
Don't forget, in addition to being anti-everything that helps anyone not named Koch, today's GOP has proven itself to be downright cruel.
DeleteThey have blocked any and all positive legislation and supported anything that would deliberately hurt women, children, veterans, seniors, the poor, minorities...
I heard on NPR that four of these folks have ALREADY been on previous benghazi committees. Can they not wrap their brains around anything else? Jobs? Infrastructure? Equal Pay? Minimum Wages? True education? Nope...they are Koch puppets, determined to bring Hillary down before she gets going. And it will not work. There is nothing more to find, but evidently we have millions of spare dollars lying around for these committees.
ReplyDeleteIf four of them were on previous Benghazi committees and they didn't find any evidence of liability on the part of the President and Secretary of State the first time around, doesn't that mean that either:
Delete1. There IS no evidence because neither of them did anything wrong
OR
2. Those four were really bad at investigating the Benghazi incident?
Either way, it would be like putting my chubby, 53-year-old body on the Olympic Track Team and saying, "Well, she never finished any race she was entered in this time, so let's put her on the team next time and we're SURE she'll bring back the gold medal!"
Not only has this provision of Obamacare prevented many, many abortions, but it has also, in the long run, prevented many cases of child abuse and neglect in situations where the mother could not or would not take proper care of the unwanted child.
ReplyDeleteIt's so infuriating to think of how much good this President COULD have accomplished if the GOP was not hellbent on obstructing everything he and the Democrats tried to do.
This would have been inconceivable a year ago. (pun intended). The more stories like this I read, the better I feel about the Democrat's chances at winning elections and seats. All that money can be put to much better use. Most of it, to borrow a term, is just common sense. They're streamlining the process while cutting fraud and making it easier for the economy and for people to get into and stay in the middle class.
ReplyDeleteAre you really stupid enough to believe that Obamacare saved $483 million on birth control pills last year?
ReplyDeleteAll Obamacare did was to shift the cost from going to the store and paying for birth control pills to paying for insurance and adding in a couple extra layers of cost, ie administration of the insurance and profit for the insurance company.
This adds to the cost of birth control pills, it doesn't subtract. The only way to really save on them would be to find cheaper ways to produce them and sell them.
I just love people who don't understand basic math.
"Thank God women aren't good at math and paid out of pocket for years because birth control pills weren't covered by insurance and saved insurance companies the cost of the medicine and the cost of administration etc. "
Delete"Dora" from "Saving Nemo"