Conservative millionaires and billionaires don’t see any need for health insurance to cover birth control when aspirin is cheaply available.
Ben AdlerAt the Conservative Political Action Conference last week, Ann Coulter mocked the Obama administration for requiring health insurance to cover birth control by saying “birth control costs $20 a month; an abortion is $400 or $500 at the most, you don’t get insurance for that.” First of all, Coulter is wrong, or lying. Perhaps she’s never been without insurance herself and she doesn’t understand the difference between a co-payment and what something costs without insurance. Twenty dollars per month might be what one pays for the pill with insurance. Without it, you can pay over $100. This is, in other words, precisely what you have insurance for.
But just as disturbing is how economically out of touch such a leading conservative is. Coulter doesn’t think $240 per year for contraception or $500 for an abortion is unaffordable to anyone. Clearly, she’s never met many normal Americans. There are, in fact, milions of people—especially teenagers—who don’t have that money at their disposal.
Conservative callousness about the financial hardship of preventive medicine is not limited to Coulter. Foster Friess, a billionaire investor who is funding Rick Santorum’s Super PAC, went on MSNBC to discuss Santorum’s campaign. Asked whether Santorum’s exteme Christianist views are too conservative to win a general election, Friess dismissed such concerns. “This contraception thing, my gosh, it’s [so] inexpensive. You know, back in my days, they’d use Bayer aspirin for contraception. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.” It’s nice to know that wealthy 61-year-old men who exercise outsized influence over our political process have such compassionate and modern views on women’s reproductive health.
You can watch the video here:
Ben AdlerTwitterBen Adler reports on Republican and conservative politics and media for The Nation as a Contributing Writer. He previously covered national politics and policy as national editor of Newsweek.com at Newsweek, a staff writer at Politico, a reporter-researcher at The New Republic,and editor of CampusProgress.org at the Center for American Progress. Ben also writes regularly about architecture, urban issues and domestic social policy. Ben was the first urban leaders fellow, and later the first federal policy correspondent, at Next American City. He has been an online columnist, blogger and regular contributor for The American Prospect. He currently writes regularly for The Economist's Democracy in America blog, and MSNBC.com's Lean Forward. His writing has also appeared in Architect, Architectural Record,The Atlantic,Columbia Journalism Review, The Daily Beast, Democracy, Good, Grist, The Guardian, In These Times, New York, The Progressive, Reuters, Salon, The Washington Examiner and The Washington Monthly and has been reprinted in several books. Ben grew up in Brooklyn, NY and graduated from Wesleyan University. You can follow him on Twitter.