Must be one of those girly things
Mar. 10th, 2006 10:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ebonlockAll your uteruses belong to us:
Today the United States Senate is considering a bill that would have a serious and damaging impact on health coverage for women across the United States. The Health Insurance Marketplace Modernization and Affordability Act (HIMMAA), introduced by Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) would allow insurance companies to ignore nearly all state laws that require insurance coverage for certain treatments or conditions, such as laws that require them to include contraceptives in their prescription plans.
[...]
For years, many insurance plans covered prescription drugs, but refused to cover birth control pills and other prescription contraceptives for women. In the past decade lawmakers in 23 states have remedied this inequity and enacted contraceptive coverage laws. Under HIMMAA women will lose contraceptive-equity protections currently guaranteed by state law.
Ok, a little TMI here, apologies to the easily squicked. I take birth control pills. Is it because I'm a flaming slut whoring her way through the male population of the Bay Area? No, though you'll have to take my word on that. Why do I take them? Well see I've got this little problem, if I take them everything's fine and my body works like it should. If I don't I tend to start bleeding every two weeks and then become anemic. And you know what? I'm not the only woman with this problem.
So if this bill were to pass my insurance company and that of many other women too, could well decide that as the meds I'm taking are just contraceptives that they don't need to cover them any longer. Me and a whole helluva lot of other women would be seriously screwed...and not in a fun way either.
Here's your multiple choice question for today:
Was the Health Insurance Marketplace Modernization and Affordability Act (HIMMAA) created to...
1) Screw consumers and rake in even bigger bucks for the insurance companies
2) Clamp down even further on female sexuality
3) All of the above!
Digby says 3:
They deliver for their primary masters, the insurance companies by "streamlining" the state laws that require the companies to cover certain health needs. This mandated coverage is often aimed at women's reproductive health. Insurance companies prefer not to be required to cover anything they can get away with not covering --- and the theocrats in the republican party want to make birth control more difficult to obtain if not against the law all together. This is one of those times when the interests of the big money boys and the bedroom police can work comfortably together.
[...]
But more than anything else we must accept the fact that these people are serious. They want to outlaw abortion and they want to curtail people's access to birth control. They aren't lying. And as they've shown with gun rights, they are in it for the long haul. We must be just a stubborn as they are and seek to wear them down rather than let them wear us down.
This is not an issue for tweaking. Let's tweak on the Ten Commandments or public funds for parochial schools or something else if it is necessary to adjust for this family values crap in order to win elections. State mandated forced childbirth and denial of access to birth control cannot be negotiated or finessed. This one's going to have to be fought out head to head, day to day to a final reckoning. That's what they are going to do and if we don't recognise that and act accordingly, we will lose.
Today the United States Senate is considering a bill that would have a serious and damaging impact on health coverage for women across the United States. The Health Insurance Marketplace Modernization and Affordability Act (HIMMAA), introduced by Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) would allow insurance companies to ignore nearly all state laws that require insurance coverage for certain treatments or conditions, such as laws that require them to include contraceptives in their prescription plans.
[...]
For years, many insurance plans covered prescription drugs, but refused to cover birth control pills and other prescription contraceptives for women. In the past decade lawmakers in 23 states have remedied this inequity and enacted contraceptive coverage laws. Under HIMMAA women will lose contraceptive-equity protections currently guaranteed by state law.
Ok, a little TMI here, apologies to the easily squicked. I take birth control pills. Is it because I'm a flaming slut whoring her way through the male population of the Bay Area? No, though you'll have to take my word on that. Why do I take them? Well see I've got this little problem, if I take them everything's fine and my body works like it should. If I don't I tend to start bleeding every two weeks and then become anemic. And you know what? I'm not the only woman with this problem.
So if this bill were to pass my insurance company and that of many other women too, could well decide that as the meds I'm taking are just contraceptives that they don't need to cover them any longer. Me and a whole helluva lot of other women would be seriously screwed...and not in a fun way either.
Here's your multiple choice question for today:
Was the Health Insurance Marketplace Modernization and Affordability Act (HIMMAA) created to...
1) Screw consumers and rake in even bigger bucks for the insurance companies
2) Clamp down even further on female sexuality
3) All of the above!
Digby says 3:
They deliver for their primary masters, the insurance companies by "streamlining" the state laws that require the companies to cover certain health needs. This mandated coverage is often aimed at women's reproductive health. Insurance companies prefer not to be required to cover anything they can get away with not covering --- and the theocrats in the republican party want to make birth control more difficult to obtain if not against the law all together. This is one of those times when the interests of the big money boys and the bedroom police can work comfortably together.
[...]
But more than anything else we must accept the fact that these people are serious. They want to outlaw abortion and they want to curtail people's access to birth control. They aren't lying. And as they've shown with gun rights, they are in it for the long haul. We must be just a stubborn as they are and seek to wear them down rather than let them wear us down.
This is not an issue for tweaking. Let's tweak on the Ten Commandments or public funds for parochial schools or something else if it is necessary to adjust for this family values crap in order to win elections. State mandated forced childbirth and denial of access to birth control cannot be negotiated or finessed. This one's going to have to be fought out head to head, day to day to a final reckoning. That's what they are going to do and if we don't recognise that and act accordingly, we will lose.
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-10 06:52 pm (UTC)It is such a shame that we continue to live in a male dominated world, when it really is the women who have the biggest influence on things--
Actually. There's a thought: it needs no saying that in the normal course of things, a mother has more of an influence on her children than the father. Why, precisely, are mothers raising their sons this way? Why are they allowing their sons to pass such into laws? I mean, I dont' mean to be sexist and imply that women aren't taking a part in this as well--but really. How can women be allowing this to happen?
We are, essentially, doing this to ourselves.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-10 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-10 07:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-10 07:27 pm (UTC)It is absurd...
Date: 2006-03-10 07:40 pm (UTC)I will support any manner of socialized medicine, no matter how bad, as long as the result sticks it to the insurance companies.
And somebody needs to remind all the self-described "cool Republicans" that this is their party. Talk all you like about national security and individual liberty and low taxes and whatever. Irrelevant. If you are a Republican, you are supporting the outsourcing of morality to the American Taliban. Period. Paragraph. Full stop.
And any Democrat who doesn't hang this around the neck of every Republican they know is an idiot not to.
Re: It is absurd...
Date: 2006-03-10 08:06 pm (UTC)