Sunday, March 25, 2007

The War on Choice In All It's Forms

Is the war against women.
Posted by olvlzl.
In their continuing war on women, the Republicans’ mean spirited and just plain stupid Medicaid legislation will lead to more unplanned pregnancies. The cost of birth control is going through the roof for many college students.

The change is the result of a chain reaction started by a 2005 deficit-reduction bill that focused on Medicaid, the main federal health insurance program for the poor. College health officials say they had little idea the bill would affect them.

Before the change, pharmaceutical companies typically sold drugs at deep discounts to a range of health care providers, including colleges. With contraceptives, one motivation was attracting customers who would stay with their products for years.

Another reason the discounts made business sense was that they didn't count against the drug makers in a formula calculating rebates they owed states to participate in Medicaid.

The results, predictably, will include more unplanned pregnancies and more need for abortions. That’s so certain that you know the people who wrote this into the bill and who voted for it know beyond doubt, that would be the result. It's high time that we all hold these people accountable for the results of their phony morality. This won't save money, it's not going to have the effect of preventing college students from having sex, it's only going to cause more of what conservatives falsely claim is what they intend.

Morality divorced from its results is phony morality. You don't get to throw a rock and pretend that you didn't know it would hurt the target.

Democrats in Congress should fix this one right away.