Nope. By implication you’re calling an appellate judge thick, because the ruling agrees with what I’m saying.
Right, some are getting support DIRECTLY from their husbands, because they share expenses.
You’re the one who brought up the issue of the man’s responsibility to support his children. Now you’re trying to say it’s off topic. Then you shouldn’t have raised it.
Exactly. But they are both delicious. 
I see what you mean about one treating a problem and the other preventing a problem. But that doesn’t change anything for me. So let’s focus on drugs that are preventative. We don’t deny people with allergies coverage because the drug prevents an allergic reaction, for example. We don’t deny people muscle relaxers to prevent back pain. Don’t both of these alter the body’s natural way of functioning? I still have trouble understanding why some people believe that birth control should not be covered (other than the insurance companies that stand to make a profit.) Why should it be an exception?
There’s always the morality argument, which you pointed out. That I can understand. But I don’t agree with it. People’s morals are all over the map. We make laws to protect people’s rights, not their morals. I don’t think it is right for women to be denied having medications covered just because some people out there think it is immoral and the insurance companies just don’t want to pay.
You’re changing the argument now. You started this thread claiming it was discriminatory, and that it’s unfair to give men Viagra and not give women birth-control (which isn’t even true). Now you’re just saying you don’t understand why birth-control isn’t covered.
There’s a difference between “I think birth-control should be covered” and “I think it discriminates against women not to offer birth-control, and the government should step in and force men to pay higher insurance premiums to compensate.”
Kidchameleon is right, birth-control and Viagra are not in the same category. Or am I being “thick” again? :rolleyes:
I think birth-control should be covered and I think it discriminates against women not to offer birth-control, and men ought to pay higher insurance premiums to compensate.
Fortunately, you’re not in charge of the insurance industry
A good thing for men who don’t want to help shoulder the cost of reproductive services, anyway.
Actually, at my company men get paternity leave, the same amount as women get for maternity. I know a few who timed it to coincide with the end of their wives’ leave, so she stayed home the first 12 weeks post-birth then he took the 12 weeks following.
Admittedly, that probably is unusual both in that my company gives the leave equally and that we’ve had as many men use it as we have… but men DO get “new child leave” in some places.
Of course not. Then again, people with allergies end up paying more in medical expenses than someone without allergies. As it should be.
Charging women less per visit because they have more checkups would be blatant sexism.
The converse is true in auto insurance. Women pay less in car insurance because they drive fewer miles. The two main reasons for this are pretty simple. One is that SAHMs don’t rack up as many miles as their commuting husbands. The other is that when a couple is driving together, the man drives more often than the woman does.
Would you argue that women should pay more for car insurance to offset this imbalance?
That sounds fair to me!
I checked this thread when it had only been going for a page or so, and after reading all the early man-bashing posts, I didn’t feel like posting. Looks like all those people claiming Viagra and birth control were somehow synonymous have been called out though. I still think it bears repeating: A woman can have sex with or without birth control, and if insurance won’t cover the pill, there are over-the-counter alternatives. (As there are for allergies and muscle relaxers, I might add.)
A man with impotence will never have sex again without Viagra. And there are no alternatives.
Would you trust a man to take the pill?
This isn’t shot at you, or women in general; it’s a shot at men. If I were a woman, there’s no way in hell I’d trust my body to the promise that a man had faithfully taken a pill every day for the last month. (If the male pill were similar to the female one.)
Yup, this is another issue on which men can’t do right. Women (mostly the ones who get paid to scribble stuff) have been complaining for years that there isn’t a male pill. Once the prospect of one appears on the horizon the tune changes to how men might lie about being on it when they aren’t, or not being on it when they are, both being equally evil (and, of course, both options having been available to women for a couple of generations) - or being too plain feckless to be relied upon to take it. And the last one’s odd given that men’s options post conception are a darn sight more limited than women’s.
Presumably Ghanima wouldn’t want what was going on in her reproductive system to be anyone’s business but hers, if there were something in it that she wanted removed. It only gets to be anyone else’s business when she wants to pick my pocket to pay for her contraception. That seems fair. :rolleyes:
Pregnancy is hardly debilitative in the usual sense. I hardly think the 9 month hassle is the main reason that people use birth control, compared to the 18 year commitment that follows. Nor is it truely unwanted, as most folks end up having kids. They just don’t want them all the time. Who’d want allergies or back pain? Those are truely adverse conditions that people would love to be cured of. We have alternatives to ‘cure’ people of pregnancy and those are usually covered, but younger folks want the option of choosing their pregnancy later in life. Heck, I have some friends that state firmly that they don’t want kids. Yet they haven’t made the commitment medically. For some reason, they’re keeping that option open…
If they’re anything like me, it’s that doctor after doctor has told them that they need to be at least 35 and married, preferably with two kids already, before they can decide that they want permanent sterilization.
You might look at it as ‘keeping that option open’ because I’m on Ortho Tri-cyclen, but the reality is that I can’t do a tubal ligation on myself (which by the way has a higher failure rate than correctly taken hormonal birth control pills). Without the help of a doctor, there’s no way to ‘make the commitment’.
IOW, it’s not 100% their choice whether they ‘make the commitment’. Perhaps they want to, and can’t find a doctor willing to operate.
I had to shop around for a while, but I was eventually able to get an IUD when I was 27 and unmarried with no kids. You might want to look into it - it’s cheaper and easier than BCP.
Here’s another data point that you that are frothing at the mouth may ignore in favor of vitriol.
My plan pays for birth control pills, pays for pregnancy & birthing costs. It doesn’t pay for Viagra even if the ED is the natural result of my medical problems.
It also doesn’t pay for Gastric Bypass or any other expense that may be related in any way to medical weight loss (even not paying out on my endocrinologist visit which was not directed at causing weight loss but which is, in part, a reason for my weight gain).
They did pay for my vasectomy so at least the BC part is balanced.
This bears repeating. It is federal law that both men and woman are entitled to 12 weeks of leave following the birth of a child. Your company is not doing anything special by allowing the leave, if they didn’t they would be in serious trouble.
Exactly. Yet some are still whingeing about the supposed “fact” that the evil women-hating cabal covers Viagra and not birth control. They completely ignore the fact that sometimes it’s the other way around.
How conveeeenient. :dubious:
You haven’t demonstrated that women incur a greater cost for reproductive services. Therefore, you have no basis to declare that anything needs to be “shouldered”.
Even if there were such a burden, why should men shoulder the cost? If pregnant women are to be subsidized (and they already are, by the way*), why shouldn’t they be subsidized by non-pregnant women as well as men? You seem to be arguing that you deserve financial gain merely for your potential to get pregnant. Talk about feelings of entitlement. 
*for example - the lab charge you pay for a covered ultrasound is far, far less than the actual cost. That’s as it should be, but it’s arguably subsidized by all the non-pregnant insurance users.
Fair enough, but there’s still a host of benefits available to pregnant women that are quite obviously not used by men.
I’m just trying to counter this absurd notion that women are somehow paying all their pregnancy expenses out of their own pocket. That’s just not true.
My wife’s pregnancy costs were covered out of *my *pocket…