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Perhaps the last thing President Obama wants to talk about during the rollout of his signature health care law is sex. Too bad. Obamacare and sex are at this point inextricable.
For example. A video circulated on Wednesday showing a woman at an event at the University of Central Arkansas offering college students condoms. This is an event so unremarkable on a college campus as to be hardly worthy of filming. But what sets this video apart is that the event dealt with the Affordable Care Act. Literally nothing happens in the video besides that a woman pours a bunch of condoms on a desk. But that's enough for comments like this, from "kapnkd4" at Fox Nation: "Americans most certainly need them with OblowzoCare - We are in for a huge skrewing because of it!"
The comments also mention Sandra Fluke multiple times. Fluke, you'll remember, was the graduate student who testified before Congress in support of mandating coverage of birth control. Birth control and safe sexual behavior are a key part of sexual health, of course. But Fluke's argument quickly transformed into a Rush Limbaugh-led attack on her morals and outrage from conservatives at the idea that she would ask that her employer pay for this health need. Which quickly became anger at the Obama administration demanding taxpayers cover people's prophylactics and treating their sexual transmitted diseases. The former argument is strained; the latter, clear-cut.
#gotbrokencodom #gotherpes #gotpregnant #gotchildsupport pic.twitter.com/3vPOEP6WG0
— max read (@max_read) November 26, 2013
This isn't a tricky calculus. Young people don't have as many health needs as older people, so one pitch used to entice them is that their coverage will include birth control and treatments for sexual health issues. And the administration needs young people to sign up: their premiums (which absent a mandate likely wouldn't exist) help keep costs lower for everyone else since young people get sick less frequently. See the arrow? Need young people, so you talk about sex, and then watch as everything becomes about sex. Sex sex sex sex sex sex.