Women will be penalized for using birth control to prevent pregnancies.

Talk about trying to control a woman's body and her actions through the government. What will be thought of next. I think it is unfair and judgmental for the government to press this kind of an issue.

Your entire post is misleading. Currently there is a law requiring health insurance companies to pay for contraception and this bill will repeal that law. Everything else in the article is a blatant lie. This bill provides an opt-out for employers, like religious institutions, to the health care mandate regarding contraception. That mandate would force even religious institutions to provide coverage for contraception. This bill simply reinforces the first amendment rights of those employers. They have a right to opt out if they have a religious objection. When people have to lie and spread unfounded fears, it is because they have no real foundation for an argument. In this case, there is no valid argument against protecting a Constitutional right. And if you file a claim with an insurance company that purposely contains false statements and misrepresentations, that is insurance fraud. Insurance fraud is a crime and an employer ought to have the right to fire you if you try to defraud them.

You're misrepresenting the law completely. A woman will NEVER be penalized for using birth control to prevent pregnancy. A woman WILL be penalized if she LIES to her employer to get FREE birth control. Don't lie and you'll be just fine. That's the cost of getting FREE birth control. If I lie about a medical condition to get painkillers, muscle relaxers, or other prescription meds, I can assure you I'd be fired just as easily and face possible criminal charges.

Great. I agree completely. Arizona has been impressing me lately. I should move there perhaps.

HIIPA has abolutely nothing to do with medical CARE, it has to do with insurance and health information privacy and insurance portability. http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs8a-hipaa.htm Now, you are asking for a benefit from your employer. You are asking your employer to provide free medication. Your employer has the right to put stipulations on that benefit, and say no to providing you with free medicine if he doesn't want to provide it. THAT is why the government needs to stay out of people's private lives. If you don't like your employer telling you no, how do you think your employer feels about being told he must? It works both ways. No one owes you free birth control. I sympathize with the employer. He's willing to pay for it if there is a medical need such as endometreosus but not if it is going to prevent pregnancy. That should be his choice after all, he's paying for it. We have become an entitlement society. Someone always owes us something, but we don't owe anyone anything.

Are you serious? Nothing is as preposterous as that bill. I don't follow politics "as I should" cause half or more of it is all bull, but this takes the cake. I pray for the women of AR. Thats all one can do for them. They can always move out if they don't agree and I were them i would all high tail it out of there unless something was in dire need of keeping me there.

alrighty then....this has to be by far the stupidest thing I've read lately for sure! What....they want to pay the high cost of child birth and time away from work over preventing pregnancy?? I keep saying that I want to move to Arizona because of warm winters....I think I need to re-think that! Marsha

The government has their nose in just way too much of everyone's business. It's a prescription that is offered only to women so in a way it is discrimination. Why exactly does the government want to impose this to begin with? I get it when it comes to religious organizations. Does the employer pay more for insurance that covers birth control along with other prescriptions? Truthfully, I would think that most employers would want to give their employees the option of birth control coverage. On the flip side, I get why an insurance company would not cover it and that would be mainly because it is an optional prescription. When I was younger, many insurance companies did NOT cover birth control. I always had to pay for mine.It is optional and not for a medical condition. Most dental insurances will not pay for braces unless you can prove that they are absolutely needed for reasons other than cosmetic. When I had cancer of the cervix that was starting to spread, I had to fight with my insurance company to cover it. They only covered 2 gynocological visits per year and I was exceeding my so-called limit. I fought it and won. The cancer was diagnosed in a gynocology visit and a specialist in this field was doing the surgery but it was cancer. It was quite ridiculous. I had to get my family doctor who hadn't seen me for this sort of stuff in years to give me a referral. Insurers offer different plans at different rates. If I were an employer, I would want to offer my employees a plan that covered things like birth control.

The only reason birth control is used for these condition is because it is the cheapest option. There much better medications out that do a much better job. I know this because my oldest daughter has endometriosis and the birth control only worked as far as keeping the condition at bay. It wasn't until she was put on better medications that there was any significant improvement in her condition. I think the better argument would be to make the better medications more affordable.

Sometimes I think women must actually be as dumb as the guys who write this legislation think they are. Women are in the majority and have the power to control their own lives. Instead, many of them are willing to hand control over to men who think that women are not quite fully rational. I just cannot imagine that I would ever vote for somebody who has publicly vowed to turn the state into a moral arbiter with all the weight of law to back it up. Anybody who runs for office on a platform of state scrutiny and judgment of the private details of my life will never have my support. Women are the majority of eligible voters and they could stop this kind of nonsense in its tracks--if they were just willing to do so.