President Barack Obama’s strategies regarding birth control and health care seem to have sparked off a major controversy among many factions. The epicenter of the controversy seems to be the government’s attitude towards an individual’s belief system or religious affiliations. By default, there is another significant issue that has come to the forefront, quite by accident.
Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand applauds the insurance companies for their ‘forced coverage’ of birth control. Around 99% of American women were taking birth control measures and for most women, this was the basic health care, she added. She stated that unless we stop confusing ourselves with health care and health insurance, we would be heading towards national bankruptcy, which was certain. However, she added that many will try to argue stating that we are already there.
In order to be able to see sense, we must take a review of what health insurance actually means in the mathematical sense. The whole concept of insurance was centered on the risk to the individual and also spreading the risk to the others as well. This is how insurance plans work and these conceptsare fairly simple. If we take the annual expenditure for the insured pool and then divide the expense by the size of that pool and call the result ‘N’ and charge every person in that pool an amount that is more than ‘N.’ Then the insurance cost for the individual would be a direct function of expenditure incurred by the entire group. So, if each person gets insured against some kind of low probability medical & financial catastrophe, then the annual insurance costs may be quite reasonable if it is spread throughout the pool. For instance, if there is one in a million individual who will get hit by a $1 million catastrophe and if there are a million people who are joining the pool in order to get themselves insured, then theoretically speaking, it will cost the insurer just $1 per person. So, each person will be more than happy to pay $5 and sign up. Even under unusual circumstances, the insurer will stay in business and will be in a position to meet the million-dollar claim quite easily.
With regards to birth control, the only thing that is worrisome is the fact that we would be spreading the risks of unwanted pregnancies among a larger pool. So, if this coverage is forced on a large pool, we are sure to incur the wrath of many who might disagree.
