everybody has said nearly everything I wanted to say better than I could have, but this really struck a nerve with me:
And I'll let you in on a little secret: I completely agree with him on this point. It's not really a medically vital thing.
This is the #1 beef I have with the right on how we view health care in the United States vs how literally everyone else views health care. IMO, "Medically Vital" should not be entering the equation when it comes to health care. Strictly speaking, my type II bipolar does not
require anti-manic medication - i am not really a danger risk to myself or others - and I can survive on the 4 hours of sleep I get every other day without ambien to battle my mania-induced insomnia. These issues are not medically vital, but they massively affect my quality of life and my long term health. In the US, insurers and politicians seem very disinterested in either of these issues. I know this is the case with my insurance company, as it's actually more expensive to buy either my Lithium or my Ambien with my insurance than it is to just get it on the store plan at my pharmacy. But my premiums are absolutely outrageous, so I am paying for health care that does nothing for me because my insurers think that if blood isn't coming out of my eyes, I need to just bootstraps it up and shell out my own hard earned money (which, I already am, since my employer is subsidizing my insurance costs out of my paycheck, and since the government is subsidizing the uninsured out of my taxes) to pay for my medicine.
You know, when I really think about it, if I couldn't afford my pills and my insurance wouldn't cover it, it probably would save the government a lot of money in the long run, since I would probably just bootstraps it up by putting a bullet in my fucking head. my QOL has improved so much since I started taking Lithium and Ambien that I don't think I could go back to living the way I used to.
Beyond that, the Republican party is not campaigning against birth control because it's not medically vital, they're campaigning against birth control because they have an issue with women having control over their own bodies. Last I checked, they weren't starting a rallying cry to take Viagra and Propecia away from government workers and medicare recipients.
edit; for the record, I'm not saying we should throw open the floodgates and allow people to start putting boob jobs on their insurance, but here's an example of a (mostly ) not-at-all medically relevant procedure that should never be denied by an insurer:
Cleft Palate repair. (warning: gross) A person with a cleft palate can have a healthy, full life. The only time it's medically relevant is in infancy, where a cleft palate can cause feeding issues, but if they live past infancy, well, beyond the suicides and depression, it doesn't reduce your lifespan at all! But most insurance covers Cleft Palate repair, despite it being a purely cosmetic surgery, because living with a wedge cut out of your face tends to carry some social stigmas with it.
I guess we could argue that birth control is totally way different, but the social stigmas of a teen pregnancy are the same or worse, and the long-term effects on the success of the teen mother later in life are almost certainly worse.