A bit of humor, and something unfair to McCain

First for some humor.

Friendly Atheist has a blurb about a female tennis star who did a photo spread for Playboy. He posted this photo with his article:

That reminds me a bit of this old Skip Jenkins Show post which featured this photo:

Of course, who could forget Jesus Jeans:

Hmmm, I suppose that is one way to sell Jesus to straight males.

Bush of Batman Were these things said by Bush or Batman?

Hat tip to Liberalsmustdie.

Politics

Fact Check points out that the premise of the reporter’s question is flawed:

Planned Parenthood is running a TV ad showing John McCain painfully groping for an answer to a reporter’s question: “It’s unfair that health insurance companies cover Viagra but not birth control. Do you have an opinion on that?”

McCain had good reason to be flustered. The premise of the reporter’s question is a myth. We couldn’t find any data that show a disparity between health insurance companies that cover Viagra and those that cover birth control. The full range of contraceptives, in fact, are covered by more than 86 percent of private insurance plans written for employers. [...]

The ad implies there is a significant disparity between the number of insurance plans that cover Viagra and those that cover birth control. But that’s not the case. A 2004 report by the nonpartisan Guttmacher Institute found that in 2002, 86 percent of the plans that insurance companies typically wrote for employers covered the full range of approved reversible contraceptive methods (birth control pills, hormone injections, implants, IUDs and diaphragms), and only 2 percent covered no methods at all.

The worry that Viagra, but not birth control, is being included in health care plans is out-of-date, according to Adam Sonfield, who coauthored the report. He says that when Viagra initially became available and insurers began to cover it, “there was concern that this was the case and that insurance companies really were covering erectile dysfunction drugs but were not covering contraception.” This concern, he says, helped spur efforts to get contraception coverage mandated in 27 states, and contraceptive coverage rates shot up as a result. Sonfield’s study, which asked insurance companies about employer-sponsored plans, found that coverage of contraceptive methods had tripled from 1993 to 2002. Sonfield says that the number of plans covering birth control likely has continued to increase over the last six years, though he stresses that U.S. health care is still short of complete coverage.

There probably are, however, some insurers who do cover erectile dysfunction drugs and don’t cover contraception, Sonfield told us. Guttmacher estimates that about half of all Americans with employer-provided coverage work for employers that self-insure, paying their employees’ medical claims out of pocket. And it is certainly a fact that some of these employers have, at least in the past, paid for Viagra but not birth control. For instance, in 2005 Union Pacific Railroad, a self-insuring company, was sued because it covered erectile dysfunction drugs but not contraceptives. A 2007 appellate court decision ruled that the company did not have to provide birth control coverage, but by that time it had begun to offer coverage under the terms of an earlier court decision. Other companies may still cover Viagra but not birth control, although in 2000 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that plans of this sort violate the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, an amendment to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII applies to employers with 15 or more employees, employment agencies, labor organizations, and state and local governments.

As for Viagra, independent studies of coverage are sparse, but the ones that exist don’t show that the drug is covered more than birth control.

But it is true that McCain voted against mandating that birth control be covered by insurance plans:

When we asked Planned Parenthood whether insurance companies were denying coverage for contraceptives, the group pointed us to the text of a 2003 amendment introduced by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), which would have prevented insurance companies from denying such coverage. The text of the amendment includes the claim that “half of traditional indemnity plans and preferred provider organizations, 20 percent of point-of-service networks, and 7 percent of health maintenance organizations cover no contraceptive methods other than sterilization.” This could be referring to a 1993 Guttmacher study showing that 49 percent of indemnity plans did not cover contraceptives, and that less than 20 percent of large-group indemnity plans and PPOs and less than 40 percent of point-of-service plans and HMOs covered the full range of reversible contraception options. By the time the Murray amendment was written, that information was 10 years out of date. Now, it’s 15 years old and irrelevant, given Guttmacher’s more recent findings.

Incidentally, McCain voted against the Murray amendment. In 2005 he voted against a similar amendment, this one proposed by Hillary Clinton. Whether or not he lacks an informed view, as he said, he has in the past opposed legislation to enact a federal mandate for contraceptive coverage.

So asking McCain why he voted “no” is ok.