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Old 11-27-2013, 08:33 AM   #243
infinite monkey
Person who doesn't update the user title
 
Join Date: Mar 2011
Posts: 13,002
Just one of many articles outlining the short-sighted ignorance illustrated by Adak in his railings against paying for care he thinks he doesn't need, or care that he thinks doesn't affect him.

Quote:
In an era when political discourse is regularly laced with fact-free fulmination, it's tempting to just let it go. But we just can't pass up the baloney being spouted even in Congress about how unfair it is to require all insurance policies under the new health care law to cover maternity care -- even policies sold to, perish the thought, men.

It shows such colossal ignorance of how insurance works. (And possibly of how pregnancy occurs.
Here's a hint: It takes two to tango.)
This festering controversy burst into the spotlight a few weeks ago during testimony from Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, when Rep. Renee Ellmers -- yes, a woman -- of North Carolina asked her: "To the best of your knowledge, has a man ever delivered a baby?"

Ellmers appeared to think she had nailed the secretary with airtight logic. Insurance industry executives must have cringed.

In a functioning insurance marketplace, healthy people pay into the pool with the understanding that when they someday need care, they will get it. The greater the number buying policies covering a broad range of conditions, the lower the rates can be.

So women pay for policies that happen to cover treatment for prostate cancer -- which, by the way, they don't even cause -- and Viagra for men.
And men, often known as "husbands" and "fathers," pay into the pool for maternity coverage, which would be unaffordable if only women of childbearing age paid premiums for it.


The core of Ellmers' argument is: I shouldn't have to pay for anyone else's care. That's an argument against insurance itself. Instead of paying premiums, everyone should just save up to pay for chemotherapy, blood pressure medicine and kidney transplants in case they're needed. Of course the inability of nearly all Americans to do that is the reason the private insurance industry developed.

Conservatives' choice of maternity care as an avenue to discredit health care reform is the latest volley in what some see as a GOP war on women. It makes no sense for a party posturing as pro-life: The inclusion of maternity care in the Affordable Care Act, as well as requirements to cover newborn and pediatric care, are the ultimate pro-life policies. They ensure care for moms and basic protections for children outside the womb, which should help reduce the rate of abortion. Kids who get medical care are more likely to succeed in school and grow up to be productive citizens rather than a drain on taxpayers.

Those who carp at maternity coverage in insurance policies show they understand neither the insurance market nor this basic fact: If mothers get the care they need to give birth to healthy children, every single American is better off.

Dads included.

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/c...ent-goes-heart

p.s. I think men should pay for their own hard-ons. (hards-on?)

Last edited by infinite monkey; 11-27-2013 at 08:41 AM.
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