The saying goes: watching legislators make laws is like watching the butcher make sausage. Today, after it looked like the sausage was going to taste really bad, HB10-1021 came out of the Senate looking good.

Women to get contraception and maternity coverage
HB10-1021 originally required Colorado health insurers to include contraception and maternity coverage in policies offered to individuals, a mandate that insurers already follow for group insurance from employers.

Senate committee takes meat from the bill
The bill passed the House, but was gutted in the Senate's Business, Labor, and Technology Committee. The Committee ripped out mandatory contraception coverage with an amendment that insurers only had to offer the coverage in a least one policy type. It did the same with maternity care. That way, insurers could continue to offer policies without contraception or maternity care to women needing individual insurance, about 130,000 people in all.

Health care cheaper and more complete for men
The effect of the amendment would be to make health insurance with contraception and maternity coverage very expensive for women, while holding down costs for those who don't need such coverage, mostly men. Meanwhile, women with this insurance would continue to pay for the Viagra and prostate coverage that men do receive in these policies.

Foster puts universal contraception coverage back in
In the bill's second reading, sponsor Joyce Foster (D-Denver), managed to remove the Committee's change and offered her own: insurers would have to include contraception coverage in all individual policies and include maternity coverage in the majority of their offerings.

This amendment turned up the heat in the Chamber, and the sausage began to sizzle.

Some people find contraception morally repugnant
Kevin Lundberg (R-Berthoud) first argued against a mandate placed on insurance companies. "Whenever you put a mandate on medical insurance, you make it more expensive and drive some out of the market." He then objected to the contraception piece, arguing that some contraceptives are abortifacients, specifically IUD's and morning after pills.

Others find mandates repugnant
Nancy Spence (R-Centennial) also cited the mandate as a reason to vote NO. "The bill will drive up premiums and will elimnate some women from being able to purchase insurance." Neither addressed the issue of the 20,000 women with unplanned pregnancies this year. Or the March of Dimes research that gives Colorado a D grade because we have so many premature babies.

Scheffel tries to reverse the amendments
Mark Scheffel (R-Parker) tried to move the bill back to where it was out of the Business, Labor, Technology Committee. Betty Boyd (D-Lakewood) said the insurers had agreed to the new amendment.

NO MATTER! Ted Harvey jumped in that the committee had voted unanimously to trim the mandates. The Committee wanted a menu of policies, with one policy offering contraception coverage and another offering maternity care.

Romer argues a different morality
Chris Romer (D-Denver) has three daughters. He jumped into the frying pan. "We're at a point in time that health care needs gender equality. We're not telling people how to live their private lives, but there's a social contract that says we should speak to everyone equally, no matter their physiology."

Harvey objects to Romer's version of social contracts
"Social contract!" cried Harvey. "Senator Romer does not have a social contract with me and my family. The only contract is to keep out of our lives! It's not to increase our costs or increase our taxes, but stay out of my life and protect my civil liberties, period!" Harvey didn't follow up on the moral issues around abortifacients.

After the squeezing and shoving, the sausage moved through the grinder and the frying pan and came out...with a bill that covers women for contraception and a majority of policies offering maternity care. The bill will get a third reading soon. PEN, CCW

 

This post was published on March 11, 2010. Permalink »