Money Is Fungible, Contraceptive Edition

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Hey, guess what? Contraception is back in the news! HHS proposed a new set of of healthcare rules today that would allow faith-based nonprofits to opt out of contraception coverage entirely. Instead, their insurance carriers would be required to provide contraceptive riders at no cost. If an organization is self-insured, they’ll notify their plan administrator, who would find an insurance issuer to provide “separate, individual health insurance policies at no cost for participants.” The cost would be offset by adjustments in “federally-facilitated exchange user fees that insurers pay,” whatever that means.

As you can imagine, this is likely to have no impact on the debate at all. Conservatives who are outraged about contraceptives being covered by health plans will remain outraged. The rest of us, who think covering contraceptives is a great idea, will be perfectly happy to accept this kludge.

And, let’s be honest, it is a kludge. There’s no such thing as “no cost.” If an insurance carrier covers contraceptives, that’s a cost they’re going to make up somewhere else. And that somewhere else is in the premiums for the main policy. There’s really no way around that.

In other words, money is fungible, a subject that liberals and conservatives alike treat with abandon depending on whether they happen to like the consequences. In this case, liberals are willing to accept the fiction that the money for contraceptive coverage is somehow “segregated,” and conservatives aren’t. When bailed-out bankers pay themselves big bonuses and swear that not one dime is coming from bailout funds, the roles are reversed. All good fun.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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