Democrats are banging the “War on Women” drums again, arguing for more subsidized contraception, and once again they have a well-heeled ally: the drug companies.
The latest battle is over interpretation of the Obama administration’s contraception mandate. Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Mathews Burwell issued a statement Monday that effectively accused insurance companies of violating Obamacare’s contraception mandate. Insurers were covering the total cost of some methods of birth control, but not all.
The insurers say they make coverage decisions based on effectiveness — for instance refusing to cover more expensive hormonal methods if cheaper hormonal methods are available. HHS dismissed the insurers’ argument with a statement Monday, spurring a batch of articles with headlines like “Free Contraceptives Must Be Free, Obama Administration Tells Insurers,” as NPR put it.
HHS’s statement was spurred by a letter from Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, Wash., to Secretary Burwell, imploring HHS to whip the insurers into shape on covering birth control. Thirty-eight Democratic senators signed Murray’s letter. Murray’s letter, in turn, was spurred in part by “two reports by the National Women’s Law Center based on national surveys.”
Every major news account of Murray’s letter and the subsequent HHS statement cited the Law Center’s reports. Not one of these outlets—not the New York Times, the Seattle Times, The Hill, MSNBC, National Journal, or any other mainstream outlets to cover the story — mentioned the role in the study of pharmaceutical giant Bayer, maker of pricey name-brand birth control pills and intrauterine devices. The company has an obvious interest in forcing insurers to pay for their more expensive contraceptives, not just the cheaper ones.
The most important study feeding the recent kerfuffle was the Law Center’s “State of Birth Control Coverage” report. This report concluded “There are some women, however, whose insurance companies are still charging them out-of-pocket costs for their birth control in ways that do not comply with the ACA.”
The Law Center based its findings on insurance company plan documents, correspondence with insurers, and on data they gathered by operating a hotline, called CoverHer, “which women can call when they face problems accessing the birth control benefit to which they are entitled,” as the birth control study puts it.
The Law Center operates CoverHer with grant money from Bayer — a fact the Law Center alluded to in its study and which spokeswomen for the Law Center and Bayer both confirmed for me, but was unmentioned in the recent media coverage of the study or the hotline.
Bayer is a German drug company that makes and markets many forms of birth control, most notably an IUD called Mirena. The Law Center’s study said that insurers often required women to pay a co-pay for IUDs. Bayer also markets a sterilization procedure called Essure. Insurers covering only some costs of sterilization was another major complaint of the Law Center’s study.
Spokeswomen for Bayer and the Law Center both said that Bayer wasn’t involved in crafting the study.
Nonetheless, it’s noteworthy that Beltway Democrats’ latest women’s healthcare fight was fueled in part by Bayer money. It’s interesting in part because it clashes with the populist rhetoric coming from the Left — especially while pushing Obamacare — for years.
Obama in the 2008 campaign ran an ad specifically attacking top drug lobbyist Billy Tauzin by name. In a 2009 Rose Garden speech, Obama attacked “the drug companies” as “special interests” seeking enrichment from the status quo and at the detriment of families.
The latest partnership between drugmakers and the Democrats’ War on Women wing is also noteworthy because it’s part of a longstanding alliance.
Barr Pharmaceuticals, which last decade sold the morning-after contraceptive Plan B, had a special business partnership with Planned Parenthood that allowed Planned Parenthood to reap 300 percent or 400 percent profit margins on selling the drug at clinics. Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood funded Democratic politicians’ campaigns, and Democratic politicians in turn pushed legislation to subsidize Plan B.
Currently a former lobbyist for Barr Laboratories, William Schultz, is Burwell’s General Counsel at HHS.
Finally, Barack Obama’s 2008 haul from the drug industry — $1.2 million according to the Center for Responsive Politics — was, by a margin of half a million dollars, the most any candidate has raised from the industry in history.
The alliance is natural between the companies selling birth control and the politicians running on offering “free birth control.” But it might cast a different light on the Democrats’ War on Women if it were presented as what it is: subsidies for Big Pharma.
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