An even better example

that there are many examples of health insurance plans paying for small routine predictable costs does not refute that it is idiotic to REQUIRE them to. or, said another way, to require us to purchase such plans

This may be true, but if someone doesn't want an insurer to pay for contraceptives because, "zomg, birth control pills are a 'small, routine, and predictable cost'" but is totally cool with insurers paying for tons of other things that are small, routine, and predictable, then perhaps that persons' opposition to paying for birth control pills is actually based on some thing else???

QFT

This might be reasonable if people had as much choice in their health insurance plan as they do with their auto insurance plans or with their preferred carbonated beverage, but they don't. Instead, it's in the public interest that the fundamentals are covered to ensure that people have access to the basics wherever they choose to work.

afaik everyone here is totally cool with with insurers paying for birth control as long as it is voluntary on both sides. i would be just as displeased- actually much more so - by a rule that required employers/insurers to pay for routine doctor visits or gym memberships

If it saves the insurance company money or makes them money, I don't care. There's probably a lot of stuff my insurance company covers that I don't want. And unlike auto insurance or homeowners, I can't really shop around for getting what I want. There's a lot of dumb stuff that people want to pay for with auto insurance, like tow trucks or people to bring them gas when they run out, or other dumb **** that I tell them to take off my account and I don't pay for it.

Mandating it is a completely different story. Ideally, I would only have high deductible insurance and just pay out of pocket on nearly everything else. But incentives are such that it would be dumb of me not to take a plan covering far more stuff than I'd ever want since my employer gets a nice tax write-off for it, and a lot of potential employees are idiots and would rather have a nice plan rather than the cash in their pocket (which they have no idea how much the employer is spending, even with the tax benefits removed).

By the way, way awesome for the right to take their ham-handed attempts to turn ObamaCare into some assault on religious freedom, spin it through the normal channels of right-wing radio mouth-breathers, and turn THAT into an attack on all women, everywhere. The right-wing noise machine used to be pitch perfect in turning nonsense into fodder that damaged Democrats. Now it just seems like an ever-growing liability. Like are any of these clowns useful anymore? Seems like they grow less so year-over-year.

i can see your point, but i don't think the solution is to keep making more stupid rules to try to fix the old stupid rules. the solution would be to abolish the tax benefit of getting health insurance through your employer

Employer based health insurance existed well before the tax benefit of granting it was created.

Someone posted it earlier, Rush *wants* Obama to win. Having Clinton and Obama in office is the best thing for him.

qfLOL

I mean I boggle. Economy still pretty tepid. Gas prices rising quickly. What does the right wing want to talk about for a month? BIRTH CONTROL, like, a product 95%+ of America at least secretly adores. Like I kind of got the whole "make ObamaCare an attack on religious people," but then like, the right lost the reins of the horses, and so in the past two weeks, the message is now just "SLUTS wanna **** on the government dole if wiminz want the birth control abortion pills," which makes Obama like the new champion of women's rights, defending access to a popular product, and he's now the protector of some aggrieved college student accosted by some fat millionaire toad who yells on the radio. Seems like the right is on the precipice of the inmates taking over the asylum in the movement. Like how did they even get to this point? I boggle.

so what? why do you want it to be required/incentivized? you just pointed out what a problem it is that people can't shop around for insurance because they are pretty much forced to get it through work.

and anyway, the reason employer-based health insurance boomed in the first place was as a means to get around WWII wage controls. it's not as though it is inherently better or anything.

Nobody is irreplaceable - just ask Glenn Beck.

I saw a lot of these "dramas" - though for much smaller stakes - back during my days in the broadcast biz. A twenty-something disc jockey with good Arbitron ratings (and an overinflated ego) starts thinking he knows more about how to run the radio station than his boss. Eventually he's openly criticizing both the program manager and the station's owner. Before long he's cursing the man who hired him to his face. Once he becomes too much of a PITA, they fire "the star" and replace him with someone else.

Once sponsors start abandoning your employer, your "one of a kind" value starts rapidly diminishing. Add the [potential] cost of having to defend a multi-million dollar lawsuit and you are suddenly slipping out of that "un-fireable" catagory.

Former DJ

Problem: the big pile of duct-tape and band-aids doesn't work like I want it to

Solution: more band-aids

No it boomed because it was the only way that Insurance companies had to sell their product profitably, the medical profession loved the enlarged market that the Insurance companies created, and the workers receiving the Insurance liked the idea of, like, not dying if they got sick.

does not compute.

you dispute that wage controls had anything to do with it?

Republicans are like 3 days away from coming out anti-sex.

I lol'd. They'd even lose Utah doing that.

he's replaceable, just ask charlie sheen. they'd find someone else

Does being unintentionally spot on count?

PEEEEEEEEEEEEEETAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRR

Not possible. " Multiply and replenish the earth" Republicans love sex, just at the right time, right place, and with the right person. Anything else and civilization will collapse and god will be sad.

This is patently wrong. If you spend any time reading/listening to what Rush has said from day one about Obama, he sees him (as many others do) as a threat to the country, based on his ideology and policies. There will always be liberals for him to talk about, or football, or new media. He would have just as much to talk about with president Romney. Don't kid yourself for one second that he secretly wants to have him win to criticize...it's just waaay off the mark.