When Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius took questions from the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health about President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2013 budget proposal last Thursday, she commented that a reduction in the number of human beings born in the United States will compensate employers and insurers for the cost of complying with the new HHS mandate. The mandate will require all health-care plans to cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that cause abortions.
“The reduction in the number of pregnancies compensates for the cost of contraception,” Sebelius said. She went on to say the estimated cost is “down not up.”
I have a few questions for Sebelius. If supplying contraceptives for “free” is really the most cost effective way of handling women’s health care, then why haven’t insurance companies picked up on this before?
Why is the United States government concerned about population growth when the birth rate in the United States is at its lowest?
And what about 30 years from now when there are fewer working tax payers then there are elderly people whose health care costs are typically the highest among the population– will fewer babies being born today help health care costs in the future? I doubt it. Parts of Europe and Japan are now finding out that an aging demographic actually creates economic challenges rather than solves them.