Copyright 2000 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
St.
Louis Post-Dispatch
December 22, 2000, Friday, FIVE STAR LIFT
EDITION
SECTION: EDITORIAL, Pg. C14
LENGTH: 439 words
HEADLINE:
PARITY AND THE PILL
BODY:
HEALTH
CARE
FOR just a moment, ignore the word contraceptive
and all the political baggage it carries. Think instead of those tiny pills
containing the hormones estrogen and progestin as you would any other
medication. Because fairness, not contraception, is at the heart of last week's
controversial Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruling. The ruling has
been widely reported to require that employer-provided health
insurance cover contraception if it also covers other
preventive health care. In fact, the health insurance plan that
prompted last week's ruling did cover contraception -- in the form of vasectomy
or tubal ligation. What it would not cover, "regardless of intended use," was a
class of medications used not only to prevent pregnancy and the need for
abortions, but also to control severe menstrual cramping and to help prevent
ovarian cancer.
Despite the modest cost of oral
contraceptives, which could be added to health
insurance plans for about $ 22 a year, such prohibitions are
not unusual. Yet many plans, including the one that prompted last week's ruling,
routinely cover the anti-impotence drug Viagra. Viagra costs about $ 20 for two
doses. Given that, it's difficult to argue, as the employer in this case did,
that contraceptives were excluded because of cost. It is
illogical and fundamentally unfair that a plan that would pay for pills to
enhance male sexual performance would not pay for pills to prevent pregnancy,
cancer and cramping. On the basis of economics alone, the cost of birth control
pills is minimal compared to the medical costs of pregnancy and ovarian cancer.
And yet, health care costs are a crucial consideration. The price of
health insurance has been rising quickly in recent years, and
most companies will experience double digit premium increases next year. Driving
those large premium increases is the rapid growth in prescription drug prices,
which has far outpaced the overall rate of inflation in recent years. Anything
that adds to the number or size of covered benefits will surely push premiums
even higher. Already, many small business owners complain that they're being
forced to re-evaluate, scale back or even drop health insurance
coverage for their employees.
The prospect of an additional $ 22 in
annual premiums isn't likely to cause most companies to drop employee health
insurance. Instead, most will probably make adjustments --
slicing some rarely used benefits to compensate for the added cost of
contraceptive coverage.
In this case, equality was the
issue. The commission saw what was at stake and lived up to its name.
LOAD-DATE: December 22, 2000 
