We’ve already beaten the horse to death, and I apologize, but I wonder whether a depressingly large number of people truly can’t stand health insurance covering basic care for women or if it’s only a few people who are really loud.
So again, we find ourselves following Republican talking points into the unstructured abyss, ignoring what we already know about our world and how our biases paint over it. What I mean is, I see you guys have done a lot of feeling about this. But thinking would’ve been better.
Conservatives are prudishly upset at financially supporting health care that is peripherally sex-related. At least, that’s why they think they’re upset. The truth is they’re forgetting how health insurance works, what they already fund for others and what others fund for them.
Health insurance pays for plenty of sex—related products and services, and we never lost any sleep before. It covers Viagra, and although the medication has other uses, it primarily enables sex for sex’s sake. This alone isn’t a bad thing! It’s just perspective on what we already fund — for men.
Health insurance also covers treatments for sexually transmitted infections, prenatal care and childbirth. Childbirth! The sacred endgame of this entire elementary—school value system, even when everything goes according to plan, is _still_ a product of sex. And we’re glad to fund it. This is how health insurance works.
We do realize the entire concept of insurance is, by definition, people pooling money to pay for each other’s needs, right? Imagine a young boy climbs a tree and falls out. His parents take him to the ER to X—ray and encase his broken leg. Insurance helps cover it. Are we up in arms, declaring our indignation against the decadent, wasteful practice of climbing trees? No, this is just why insurance exists.
The act of sex alone incurs no public cost. We’re not paying for sex, just like we’re not paying for tree—climbing. We’re paying for health care. We do it constantly and expect others to do it for us.
On average, women’s health care is more expensive than men’s. This is not because men’s care is “average” and women’s care is an outlier. That categorization is very problematic. It insists that a man’s needs are the “norm” and dismisses a woman’s needs as her own fault. Being a woman is a pre-existing condition in American health care. This is textbook male—dominant nonsense.
If I had to reframe the entire issue, I would ask, do you really think the companies responsible for citizen health should be praised for refusing basic health care on a sexually discriminatory basis, especially when we still lack a publicly supported alternative to profit—seeking insurance? Or, do you really think women don’t deserve basic contraceptive coverage because of someone ELSE’S religious beliefs? Did conservatives forget about the doctor—patient relationship already?
We need to grow up. Sex is fundamental to human life. Pregnancy is a health concern — expensive and potentially dangerous — and birth control can regulate pregnancy and serve other legitimate medical uses. Refusing its coverage is refusing health care. It’s that simple.
Not wanting to pay for what you dislike is not an argument. It is an inconvenient reality of societal life. An American solider killed 16 Afghan civilians a few days ago, and we pay his salary. We pay for his housing, his food, his disgraced uniform, his gun and the very bullets he fired into his victims. We paid for the fuel he used to torch their bodies. You be damn sure we’re morally opposed to this, but we’re not getting that money back.
The thing about public policy is that it’s, you know, public. And there would be no need for policy if everybody always agreed.