canadamus_prime said:
"closely-held company"? What the hell does that mean?
No less than half of the company is held by no more than 5 people. They can even sell stock on the open market, so long as 5 or fewer people hold half or more of the company.
MCerberus said:
The US supreme court has ruled that companies (most notably Hobby Lobby) are not required to provide birth control to female employees due to religious grounds because they are a "closely-held company".
...which is only an attack on women because while the ACA requires coverage of all contraceptives approved by the FDA for women (including things like cervical caps, diaphragms, and female condoms so long as a doctor will prescribe them), the law specifically limits that requirement to only applying to contraceptives for women, meaning vasectomies and condoms (and vasalgel when it finally hits the market) are not required to be covered in the first place.
Westaway said:
Hang on just one fucking second. Since when do companies provide birth control to their female employees? When did that become a thing? Can't women buy the stuff at the local pharmacy?
The ACA (aka Obamacare) mandates that contraceptives effecting female reproductive capacity must be covered without copay or cost of any kind with a prescription from a doctor. This includes literally anything that is FDA-approved for contraceptive use by women (but not men), from diaphragms up to surgical sterilization.
DirgeNovak said:
Yep. And this isn't about religious freedom. It's about saving money. Period.
If willingness to let the contraceptive mandate slide on religious grounds degrades women to "meh", then where would you put men on that chart, since the law doesn't even bother to include them as being people who should have control of their reproductive ability subsidized in the first place?
Eamar said:
Not all birth control = abortifacient. The copper coil and IUD, which this company is against for whatever reason, are pretty much the most effective contraceptives you can get (alongside the contraceptive implant) and they're something you have implanted for several years at a time, not as a one-off "morning after" type thing.
They aren't against all IUDs, just the ones they believe function by potentially preventing implantation (copper ones and the ones with progestin).
Vrach said:
So, wait, you guys can write condoms off as a medical expense? If you have a job, the company buys you condoms, birth control pills etc.?
In the US, according to the ACA (aka Obamacare), any FDA-approved form of contraception that is used by women and was prescribed must be covered, barring religious exemption (as of this SCOTUS decision). So, they aren't required to cover condoms or vasectomies but are required to cover diaphragms, female condoms, contraceptive sponges, etc.
RA92 said:
To anyone who thinks birth control only pertains to sex and asking why it's covered in medical insurance, hormonal birth control is used to treat many medical conditions and the contraceptive purpose is just ancillary to a woman's primary use of it. It can reduce a woman's risk of ovarian cancer, it can alleviate painful periods, it treats PCOS, and myriad conditions you can find here.
Also, some women can conceive but have a history of miscarriages and rather than undergo invasive hysterectomies choose to take a monthly pill to avoid the physical and mental trauma of pregnancy.
Your health insurance is aware of why you are prescribed a drug, you agree to that in one of the forms you sign when you visit the doctor. Being assigned hormone supplements as treatment for PCOS is not being prescribed contraception. The reason for prescription is relevant. The same kind of reasoning that led to about a decade in which stevia could be sold without restriction in the US as an "herbal dietary supplement" with only one string attached -- you couldn't mention that it had a flavor or use it as an ingredient in any foodstuff; if you did, it magically became an "unsafe food additive."
As for the latter, either tubal ligation (which is surgical but less severe than removing the entire uterus), or cervical caps, or diaphragms, or contraceptive sponges, or IUDs, or any of the other varieties that even Hobby Lobby still covers or just tell them what we tell men who don't want to end up paying child support -- "don't have sex or be sexually assaulted then -- it's not that hard." It's funny how "don't have sex" is apparently a reasonable thing to demand of men, but horrible and oppressive to demand of women though...
