Politics

Obamacare Is Inextricable from Sex, to America's Glee and Horror

Perhaps the last thing President Obama wants to talk about during the roll-out of his signature health policy is sex. Too bad. Obamacare and sex are at this point inextricable.

By Philip Bump
This article is from the archive of our partner .

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.

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.

We had an example on Tuesday, when funny, funny jokes traversed the internet arguing that Obamacare would lead to more men getting STDs, as at left. And now, this video from Arkansas which all but proves the point. Obamacare is about facilitating free, crazy, immoral, diseased sex among young people. Here's "liberalwackos" on the Arkansas video.

I pray for my kids and grand children. The people and parents in control of this country are mentally deficient thanks to their drug usage in the 60's and 70's and taking God and the bible out of our lives. We have some really sick people in our government and educational systems.

Because a woman is offering condoms to college kids.

To be fair, the professional sex industry isn't running away from the topic. A local television station in California profiled a group of Nevada escorts who were pleased because they'd been unable to get health coverage pre-Obamacare. For many people, this is a good thing, the idea that women in a possibly higher-risk profession would be able to get the healthcare that they need — and since they probably make above the minimum income requirements to qualify for subsidized coverage, precisely none of that coverage will be paid for by the government. "Hookers For Obama" was their offered mantra, but, really, it could have been "Hookers Subsidizing Your Healthcare."

Earlier this month, the porn site PornHub decided to announce that it could fix Healthcare.gov in short order, given how much traffic the site was used to handling. (And, presumably, a decent number of sign-ins and financial transactions.) "I think that would be pretty inappropriate and something we would not be interested in doing," the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' Julie Bataille said to reporters, according to NBC. Because the government is not exactly trying to highlight the sex-Obamacare thing. (Incidentally, there are zero hits for the term "Pornocare" online, suggesting that conservative commenters still have one realm to explore.)

Americans have sex, America. The idea that the government should not "promote" sex is an old one, emerging probably at some point during the drafting of the Constitution but most notably in the fight over sex ed in elementary schools. This is an old country founded in part by Puritans (happy Thanksgiving!) and deeply committed to religiosity. That means that an effort to expand health care would necessarily have needed to get past a few sex-related speed bumps, from Sandra Fluke to who knows what. There are more sex-battles to come, and no one is particularly happy about it except the escorts.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.