Liberals accuse conservatives of using secret signals that only conservatives can hear -- dog whistles -- to send racist messages.  These accusations are in reality a reflection of what liberals think rather than accurate assessments of what conservatives are saying, like the pimpled teen who thinks that nearly everything is a dirty joke. 

Liberals, on the other hand, constantly have to hide what they believe in order to get votes -- getting rid of blacks by making abortion easily available in minority neighborhoods and advocating socialism are not winning campaign positions these days.  That's why almost every liberal runs for re-election as a conservative.  Fortunately, liberals are sufficiently un-self-aware as to let their true beliefs show through their verbiage on occasion -- an unconscious dog whistle, if you will.

Secretary Sebelius has stated that providing free contraception would reduce overall insurance costs because there would be fewer people for the insurance companies to pay for.

In doing so she provided insights, probably unwittingly, into how liberals think about Americans.  Her statement is flawed from numerous perspectives, but let's look at just two.

First, she is assuming that the average American who would not be born if she has her way would burden society, not benefit it.  She's saying that having more Americans is a bad idea, that people do not generate wealth, that we should be depressed over every legal immigrant and every new birth in America. 

After all, if people cost more than they are worth, they are nothing but a burden, right?  That has to be her reasoning; otherwise, why object to the birth of someone who will be a net contributor to society via years of taxes, and a future payee of health insurance premiums?

What Sebelius is doing is counting the medical costs for a person until he has his own insurance but not counting the premiums and taxes that person will pay.  Insurance companies work only so long as they make a profit.  Hence, on average, anyone who has health insurance has to pay in, over a lifetime, more than the insurance company spends on the average person.

As a result, the cost of insurance -- i.e., the amount they have to charge per person to stay solvent -- is independent, over the long haul, of the number of people they cover, assuming the ratio of healthy young people to less healthy older people stays constant.  By reducing the number of young people, however, the cost per insured person will go up since the ratio of older people to younger people will go up.

What happens in real life is that you pay health insurance premiums over your whole life.  When you're young, you're subsidizing the health care of your parents' generation.  When you're old, you're subsidized by your children's payments.  But if the number of young people goes down, then either they have to pay huge premiums or the insurance company won't be able to cover the costs of the older customers.

By ignoring the lifelong contributions of individuals, Sebelius is skewing the books.

Reality provides object lessons on why Sebelius is wrong about the impact of reducing the number of young people.  The train wrecks of public-service funding we're seeing in areas where the population is decreasing, such as Europe and Japan, are pretty clear signs that fewer Americans will not be good for Social Security, Medicare, or any other government health program.

By declaring that people are a net burden on society, Sebelius reveals that she believes that it is government that is the source of wealth and power, which it bestows on the people who are essentially parasitic -- their medical care is welfare, not a return for the money they pay in premiums/taxes for example.

The second insight Sebelius provides is that liberals doesn't really understand where babies come from.  Teen pregnancy has soared even as free contraceptives have been made readily available.  Why? 

The answer is simple.  Free contraception does not reduce teen sex; it increases it.  Most people will avoid sex if they think they, or their partner, can get pregnant.  That's one of the key reasons why, prior to the Pill, people were far less promiscuous than they are now.  Providing free birth control both tells people that casual sex is okay and ensures that people aren't kept from having sex because they fear pregnancy.  But since no form of contraception is foolproof -- thank either God or four billion years of evolution -- the more sex there is, the more pregnancies there will be. 

A typical woman who takes the Pill religiously -- even if she's an atheist -- has a 3-6% chance of getting pregnant in any given year.  If you doubt that, ask yourself why there are 1.4 million abortions in America each year.  Not that many people engage in sex without contraception; abortion is the necessary ancillary if you refuse to be pregnant but you want to have sex in a time when no one has invented a "perfect" contraceptive.

Even if you wish to ignore the impact of free contraception on the average sexual activity level, it's not obvious that providing free contraceptive and abortifacient coverage will reduce the number of pregnancies.  Unless there are a lot of women who don't use contraception just because of the cost and who don't abort the resulting babies, providing free contraception will not change the birth rate.

The reality is that people who engage in sex without contraception generally do so because they are either using abortion as their method of choice or, more likely, they were overcome by the heat of the moment -- something that no amount of free contraceptive coverage will change.

Sebelius is unwittingly revealing a core liberal belief.  Casual sex is a sacred right, and free contraception is necessary to ensure that that right has no adverse consequences. 

No one has died from being chaste.  Sex is something people enjoy.  If it's important to them, they can pay for contraceptives, just as they pay for their cable TV and bowling balls.  It's hard to believe that in a country where 77% of the "poor" have either cable or satellite TV, a significant number of people can't afford contraception.  Especially since a month's worth of generic contraceptives costs only about $20 -- less than two movie tickets or a DVD.

If liberals think like Sebelius does, it's no wonder liberals are sure they can keep kids from smoking (something liberals abhor), somewhat sure that they can keep kids from driving drunk (something liberals dislike), tenuous about the odds of keeping kids from using drugs (which liberals like), and 100% sure that they can't keep kids from having casual sex -- something that liberals celebrate.

Irrespective of how this current affair winds up, Secretary Seibilus has clearly stated that liberals view people as a problem, not a solution. 

It's not surprising, then, that liberals have no problem with their god, government, which they view as the source of all good things telling heretical adherents of other faiths what they can and can't do.

If you want to read more of my ramblings, drop on by obvioustalk.blogspot.com.