Editorial: Consequences of 'free'

By Boston Herald staff

Make no mistake, the decision by the Obama administration to have the Affordable Care Act deliver birth control at no cost - not even a co-pay - was a political, not a medical, decision.

And it has now come back to haunt them, providing nearly endless fodder for lawsuits - the most recent heard by the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday.

Some 50 businesses have sued over the issue of covering contraceptives, although the cases before the High Court yesterday involved two companies that objected only to covering certain kinds of contraceptives that may work after an egg has been fertilized - methods they consider akin to abortion to which the families that own the businesses have religious objections.

The court's liberal trio of female judges asked a series of questions about whether private businesses whose owners have religious objections to, say, blood transfusions or vaccinations could exclude coverage for those.

"Everything would be piecemeal and nothing would be uniform," Justice Elena Kagan said.

Immunizations are indeed listed in the ACA in the same category of "preventive care" as contraception - which is otherwise largely a laundry list of screenings. The only prescription drugs on that list are contraceptives.

So the ACA requires no-cost screenings for diabetes, but not for the drugs that could treat it. It requires free screenings for osteoporosis for women over 60, but not free Fosomax. It requires coverage for depression screenings, but no one gets free Prozac. And don't even get us started on why contraceptives are a more critical need than life-saving cancer medications.

The fact is that once a person walks into a doctor's office and walks out with a prescription - the nature of that drug ought to be between patient and doctor with co-pays determined by insurers. It's no one else's business - not an employer and certainly not the government's what that prescription is for.

The consequences of "free" here are enormous. Even young women know that.