Ace has an excellent post on the nasty political fight over abortion and birth control currently being fought not just in Washington, but nation wide:

By the way, you know what Plan B costs? $20-30 or cheaper.

In order to spare women the costs of having to shell out twenty bucks once or twice a year (and that would be a lot, wouldn't it?), Obama's determined to run roughshod over religious liberties.

And it's not even sparing them the costs, of course. Insurers do not have piles of magic free money. What they pay out must always be a fair amount less than what is paid into them via premiums.

This is just adding an additional cost to premiums, then giving it back (minus administrative costs) to the final client.

It saves no one any money. Women using it are actually just paying for it via their premiums. (Well, women using it are being subsidized by women who have no need for it or refuse to use it; but that's an odd subsidy, isn't it?)

And all for a $20 pill. Something that costs less than a pizza with three toppings.

This is not about money. This is about imposing a Preferred, State-Endorsed Culture on people from the top down.

It's about forcing the insurer to compromise his own beliefs. It's about co-opting him. It's about using state coercion to pummel him down into conformity. It's not about saving the end-user that $20 (which is not saved at all, but simply paid in premiums).

Raw. Political. Dictatorial. Power. Entirely for its own sake. Stop it. Stop it now.