Charles Krauthammer makes pertinent points about the “free” birth control aspect of ObamaCare

These aren’t new points, but I like the way Krauthammer expressed them, as part of a longer article about the problems with ObamaCare and the fact that those problems, after going underground for a year, have burst into the light again:

Serendipitously, the recently issued regulation on contraceptivecoverage has allowed us to see exactly how this new power works. All institutions — excepting only churches, but not church-run charities, hospitals, etc. — will be required to offer health care that must include free contraception, sterilization, and drugs that cause abortion.

Consider the cascade of arbitrary bureaucratic decisions that resulted in this edict:

1) Contraception, sterilization, and abortion pills are classified as medical prevention. On whose authority? The secretary of health and human services, invoking the Institute of Medicine. But surely categorizing pregnancy as a disease equivalent is a value decision, disguised as scientific. If contraception is prevention, what are fertility clinics? Disease inducers? And if contraception is prevention because it lessens morbidity and saves money, by that logic, mass sterilization would be the greatest boon to public health since the pasteurization of milk.

2) This type of prevention is free — no co-pay. Why? Is contraception morally superior to or more socially vital than — and thus more of a “right” than — penicillin for a child with pneumonia?

Read the rest here.