This could be absolutely true and not contradict studies that show money given to family planning reduces overall societal costs. Here’s what another of your cites said:
These two quotes are not in conflict. Here’s another:
I have two comments here. First, I have no difficulty believing that increasing the number of birth control users will reduce the expense associated with pregnancies. It’s pretty self-evident. What this does not tell me, however, is that covering birth control will produce such an increase in use. One of your other cites would contradict this. Again, I would speculate that most women–a majority approaching 100%–with health coverage pay for their own birth control if their policies don’t cover it. You say this yourself. They are not doing without.
Second, I have to see more detail of the math behind Pharmacia and Upjohn’s estimates. They have a particular bias in this matter, wouldn’t you agree? I’m not saying they’re wrong, but I don’t accept an out-of-context cite from a pharmaceutical company in a Planned Parenthood report regarding the need to cover birth control pills, not without additional details. Again, I would assert that health care insurers are very self interested–if this would save them money, they’d do it. That seems equally self-evident to me.
And I’ve already pointed out that the math you asserted in another post wasn’t supported by one of your own cites.
There is no red herring. And sometimes emotion is a reasonable response. One can be both rational and emotional.
I began taking birth control pills for medical reasons when they were first available in the early 1960s. My insurance has never paid for them. And certainly they were never used frivolously. Preventing an unwanted pregnancy is serious business. So was taking care of some of the other problems that I had that were medical necessities.
Viagra is not in the same category. It is strictly for pleasure. If you don’t take it you won’t be sick and missing work or school. That’s what would happen if I didn’t take the pill when it was medically necessary. It does make me angry that the medically necessary pills were not covered and the pleasure pills were.
No. It has never been that. It is the same old blind ignorance and cockiness that keeps showing up. Look at it this way. There is no evil male cabal in Hollywood plotting to keep women out of movies either. But open your eyes to movieland reality. I picked one at random the other night from television and counted twelve males before I ever saw one female. And she didn’t even have a speaking role. Movies don’t look like real life and no one seems to notice. That’s not because of some evil scheme either, but it happens!
On the medical side, women have been left out of many health studies for years. This is particularly true of cardiovascular disease. When someone mentions “heart attack,” we almost always think of a male. The truth is that after about fifty or fifty-five, a woman is about as likely to have a heart attack as a man. That’s what they found out after they began to include women in their studies.
Well, to makes this analogous to the point I was making, I’ll say that if movies with more substantial women’s roles attracted more movie goers, I firmly believe they’d be made. Let’s not forget that about half (I assume) of movie goers are female. Hollywood, despite being the great artiste poseur it is, bottom line likes to make money. They offer the product most likely to do so.
If anything, this would understate the cost of covering certain risks for women, which would reduce their rates (at least as far as that particular coverage contributed to it).
I was responding specifically to** lowbrass’s ** “quality of life” issue/quality of sex comments. If that’s what he believes, for men to have their insurer provide for these issues, then he should agree it’s okay for women to have the same.
And re: Planned Parenthod - the pill is an essential part of preventing unwanted pregnancy (the “planned” in Planned Parenthood). I’m sure you would agree that Viagra is not.
No, I should apologize. I shouldn’t post late at night when I’m tired. You’re right that I took his analogy incorrectly. I guess it was supposed to be aspirin= OTC and codeine=not OTC and my initial response didn’t make sense. Sorry about that - it looked like you were being sarcastic, but I over-reacted.
Anyway, that’s all irrelevant because OTC isn’t the reason they don’t cover Rogaine.
I’m just trying to say that this idea that “They don’t cover X that’s for a woman but they cover Y that’s for a man, therefore it’s discrimination”, is bogus, especially when X and Y aren’t even in the same category. There are going to be some drugs that men use and some drugs that women use, and there isn’t some shadowy conspiracy that’s deciding to only cover the “man” drugs.
First of all, not all policies cover rogaine and viagra.
Second, 90% of the time (or more) it is NOT the insurance company deciding what is and isn’t covered. It’s the buyer of the insurance. And in the US, that almost always means your employer is making the decisions to cover or not cover something. Granted, the more that’s covered the more expensive the premiums, but I work for a large insurance “empire” and the companies will most certainly cover anything the purchaser is willing and able to pay to have covered.
Third - don’t forget, in the US health insurance is tied to employment nearly all the time. If a woman is on steady contraception and remains employed, the premiums will have to be paid over decades - it will add up. If she has a baby and quits working, then she’s no longer employed and somebody else’s problem. Thus, over a long period of time is can be cheaper for whoever is paying for the insurance for her to get pregnant and stop working than to stay on contraception and keep working. Isn’t the free market wonderful?
Actually, no, you do not have to take it. Many women never take oral hormones as contraception. There are alternatives, some of them quite effective. It would, of course, be nice to have those covered, too. Sometimes they are. Mostly they aren’t.
What propaganda have you been listening to? Yes, the Pill is a good thing, women controlling their fertility is a good thing, but it is NOT like a vitamin or calcium supplement. It really is NOT “necessary” for a woman’s good health.
Whose paying for the insurance? If you drop out of the work force because you’re raising kids, it’s cheaper for them than if you stayed working and kept buying contraception.
Of course, there’s the argument that her spouse is still working and his insurance covers them all. Well, that’s why insurance for a married couple costs more than for two single people. Some employers (including mine) have a “single+1” option for childless couples, people with a dependant aged parent, or single parents of single children - but if you’re “single+2” you wind up paying the same as “single+3” or “single+14”.
If you could order a year’s supply at once - what sort of facilities do you have for storing them for such a long period of time? If not done properly they will lose effectiveness – which is not good for birth control. Stashing them in a dresser drawer or, worse yet, a bathroom cabinet, is not good enough.
Oh, so they do have a mechanism for you to get a script filled early - it just takes a little effort on your part…
Look, there is NOTHING stopping you from filling multiple months of perscriptions for birth control – it’s just that YOU have to pay for it, full price. Now, I acknowledge this is not as easy or as wonderful for you if you just called up and had the insurance company pay for it, but remember this Very Important Fact: insurance companies are NOT your friend!
Because you CAN overdose on the Pill - ask anyone who has suffered through the “morning after pill” side effects, including fun things like vomiting. Abuse of them can make you sick. Excessive doses can increase the risk of cancer, blood clots, heart attack, and stroke. At proper doses these are rare problems (although they can and have occured), overdoing it would greatly increase the risks.
Truthfully, I am quite concerned that you are taking this medication in apparent ignorance of potential adverse reactions, side effects, and contraindications. Please do educate yourself a little more thoroughly on the subject.
I don’t believe I made such an argument. You are trying to extrapolate a more general argument, that was never made, from a specific discussion. To review:
I said that just because a drug used by men is covered and a drug used by women isn’t covered, doesn’t mean they’re deliberately trying to screw women over. As a counter-example, I pointed out that not covering Rogaine doesn’t mean they’re trying to screw men over.
RedRoses then argued that the reason Rogaine isn’t covered is that it’s not medically necessary, whereas The Pill is medically necessary.
I countered RedRoses’ “medical necessity” argument by pointing out that The Pill isn’t medically necessary when used for birth control, so it would be in the same category as condoms, which aren’t covered. I then pointed out that Viagra is medically necessary, so using the “medical necessity” line of reasoning would lead to the absurd conclusion that Viagra should be covered but the pill shouldn’t.
Do you understand that this is completely different than my saying, “I think Viagra should be covered but not The Pill”?
When did this message board get so literal that people no longer understand rhetorical arguments?
So you’re saying that “being worried about something” is an equal medical necessity with having an organ of your body function as it is supposed to? So then getting free condoms is an equal medical necessity with kidney dialysis?
Again, you are straying from the argument of whether something is a “medical necessity”.
Seems rather tortured reasoning to me.
Look, I think The Pill should be covered, so I don’t know why you’re acting like I suggested otherwise. All I’m pointing out is that it doesn’t constitute discrimination against women when an insurance company doesn’t pay for free birth control. It might be short-sighted, it might be unfair, but it’s NOT discrimination.
So write your Congressman. I never said I think Viagra should be covered.
ALL I said was that you can’t argue that birth-control IS a medical necessity while at the same time arguing that Viagra ISN’T a medical necessity.
I’m not sure they don’t. I’m not a physician, but aren’t there therapies for women as well? Don’t they do estrogen therapy or something? You’ll have to correct my ignorance on this.
But that’s apples and oranges. I’m not going to say it again. If people want to continue to be so obtuse that they refuse to believe that these are 2 different categories, then I’ll leave you to it.
I think this is what’s throwing you off. What you’re not understanding is that there are some insurance companies that DON’T COVER BIRTH CONTROL. The Pill happens to be a prescription drug, so this is leading to all kinds of red-herring arguments about whether something is a prescription drug or not.
So again, companies that don’t cover The Pill do so because they DON’T COVER BIRTH CONTROL, not because they hate women.
I’m not so sure that they do. Movies about women, if they are well made, tend to do reasonably well. So do movies that have women in co-starring roles.
One problem is that while women are willing to see movies that have more than 50% male cast, men don’t usually return the favor. They refer to most movies with women in lead roles as “chick flicks.” There are exceptions like Kill Bill. In general, white men want movies about white men. The rest of us accomodate.
Meanwhile, women my age who are retired and have lots of free time and extra change in our pockets bemoan such things as the fact that the best choices on my birthday boil down essentially to an animated film about cars and another film about how Superman actor George Reeve died.
Gender discrimination is so pervasive that people don’t even notice it.
By the way, the very day that I found out that men’s rates were higher on car insurance than women’s, I called to protest. I thought that rates should be based on driving record. I knew that my new husband was a better driver than I was and I thought that was terribly unfair that he had to pay more than I did.
I am against gender discrimination – not just making things better for women. I am for fairness. No one should be checking to see if you have a dick or a vagina before they know which set of rules to apply to you.
Perhaps you misread my post- I pointed to both longer life expectancy AND reproductive health services. Aside from the differences in our reproductive systems, men and women are pretty much the same. Men may be more at risk for certain things like heart disease (although the gap is shrinking), but our physiology is not so drastically different. Longer lives and more reproductive services should account for the vast majority of the difference in expenditures. So, I’m not sure what you’re refuting here.
This is just as much a response to you as an expression of my argument in general, so I apologize if everything I say doesn’t specifically address what you said.
I don’t know how much the US birthrate would drop, if at all. A lot of women get abortions (which often ARE covered by health insurance), so there might not be a huge difference in the birthrate. It would save money, though. See my previous post- every $1 spent on contraception saves $4 due to unintentional pregnancies. That’s public money, though, so we’re talking about things like Medicaid, welfare, and WIC.
But the US has the highest unintentional pregnancy rate of any industrialized nation- approaching 60%. The other industrialized nations we’re being compared to, by and large, have better health care systems- I’m not familiar enough with all of them to comment on the specific system. Systems that cover contraception, at least, I’d be willing to bet. I mean, unless people in Europe are having a lot less sex than we are. Women who are able to often do buy their own contraception, but not all are able to. Where I live, I shopped around at local pharmacies, and the cheapest I could find was still $40/month plus tax. A young, low-income woman living paycheck to paycheck is going to find that hard to pay.
And as for condoms, which have been brought up in this thread more than once- many people, like me, are allergic to latex. They do make polyurethane condoms, but I’m suspicious of their effectiveness, since they haven’t been around as long and there’s not as much data. If I’m in a monogamous relationship with a disease-free partner, I see no reason to bother with a method like condoms. Even if polyurethane is just as effective as latex, condoms have double the failure rate of the pill with normal use. With perfect use the numbers look even better, but we are all human and forget to take a pill now and then.
The reason I think some of the posters here are up in arms is that they do think the pill is medically necessary. Personally I think it is necessary when prescribed strictly for birth control purposes and not for something like hormonal problems or whatever. (I believe this applies to ALL types of prescription contraception- the pill, diaphrams, the patch, the ring, IUDS, whatever. And while some insurance companies do cover the pill, they often don’t cover the others) No, it is not medically necessary in the same sense as heart medication, for example. Women will not die without it.
But without it, they do have to deal with things like longer, more painful periods- or irregular periods; hormonal problems that result in acne (this is for ortho-tricyclen specifically); fear of unwanted pregnancies; termination of said pregnancies, or when these pregnancies aren’t terminated, the burden of dealing with a child that one was not expecting. But one could also argue that medication for depression is not medically necessary- and this is coming from a person who is clinically depressed- one will not die without it, other options like psychotherapy or support groups are available. It is in every respect a quality of life issue.
As to the economic incentive- I understand that private insurance companies are in this to make money. They are, and there’s nothing I can do to change that, and for many people this might be a general “I hate insurance companies!” rant in the guise of one particular issue- contraceptive coverage. But saying that insurance ompanies don’t cover contraception because they won’t make money off it is silly- they don’t make money off anything they cover, they lose money. Every additional service or drug they cover means they make less money. I’m sure they’d love to be able to exclude services like chemotherapy, that’s got to cost a pretty penny.
And this is where the discrimination argument comes in. Despite the fact that some jurisdictions have already decided that companies that don’t cover contraception, but cover prescription drugs, are discriminating against women, there are plenty of companies that still don’t cover it. Or they cover the pill, but not IUDs, or the patch, etc.
I don’t have hard and fast numbers, but I’m sure the insurance companies reflect the state of affairs in the rest of corporate America, and the percentage of women holding top jobs is rather low. For many women, contraception is absolutely necessary, unless they plan on spending the better part of 30 years birthing and rearing children. And many women would agree with the statement that, if genders were reversed, and men could get pregnant, then contraception and pre-/post-natal care would always be covered. As per previous posts, pregnancy was not required to be covered until 1978, and mammograms and Pap smears until the 1990s. These services, I’m sure everyone would agree, are vital to women’s health, even if you don’t believe that contraception is. Hence women feel that they are being discriminated against.
As has already been pointed out, in America, most insurance is purchased through employers, because the cost of individual coverage is astronomical. So a lot of people really do have no choice when it comes to insurance providers. I took whatever my company offered, although I seriously considered refusing coverage because it really did me no good. Contraception was not covered, and though regular doctor’s visits had only a $15 co-pay, gynecological services (since they were deemed “specialists”) required both a referral from my regular doctor and a $40 co-pay. Medical experts agree, women need yearly gynecological check-ups from the age of 18 or the age sexual activity begins, whichever is earliest. Another example of idiotic insurance company policy that costs women money. I don’t need a fucking referral from my doctor, you’d be hard-pressed to find a competent medical authority that didn’t say unequivocally, yes, women need annual gynecological appointments. So it didn’t matter that I had health insurance, I still couldn’t afford going to the doctor. Thank Og I’m still a student, with a low enough income that I can go to the Health Department in a pinch. (Yes, it is cheaper for me to use the Health Department or other such sliding-scale clinic than my own health insurance. That my employer pays $300/month per employee to provide) Not everyone has that option.
So, depending on your views of contraception, etc, you may not agree that women get a shitty deal with insurance companies. But I’m inclined to believe that, though there may not be some evil male insurance cabal plotting ways to fuck us over, at the very least, insurance companies serve men’s needs better than women. A lot probably has to do with the fact that the people making the decisions don’t have vaginas.
Speaking for myself - I’m not per se unfriendly to the notion that discrimination is practiced by the insurance industry. On the other hand, I haven’t found the arguments here to be persuasive so far.
Emotion can of course be an appropriate response to an outrageous situation, but we haven’t yet established that such a situation exists, and absent persuasive evidence, emotion is a weak platform to argue from .
Absent a substantial drop in the birthrate, no money is being saved. The only way that could work is if insurance companies are spending more on abortions than on contraception. If that’s the case, I’d say you have a very strong argument in favor of coverage.
The Pill is definitely covered here in France, but I’m pretty sure it’s state coverage and not insurance. I’ll confirm later, and see if I can get some information on how this came about.
The whole ‘medical necessity’ argument may also be something of a red-herring, the more pertinent question here is whether contraception is the responsibility of insurers . In a nutshell, insurance companies have two mandates – to provide insurance, and to make money for their stakeholders. Insurance companies don’t lose money on collision insurance or hip replacement surgery because a large majority of the people paying for coverage will never use the service. That’s the basic nature of the insurance business, spreading the risk. This is not the case for contraception. I completely agree that contraception is vitally important, and has potential health consequences, but the same could be argued for food, water etc. which certainly qualify as health necessities.
What it may come down to is giving contraception a ‘special-status’, and having government money pay for it. In the US that would involve opening the whole can of worms of Christian fundamentalism as well as the putative dropping birthrate.
OK, fact is there aren’t enough vaginas to go round, so we can’t all have one. OTOH, here in Europe health care administration and human resources are often run by women, so this is also an assertion that requires evidence…
You’re certainly consistent in applying your principles, which is to be applauded. And I believe there is definitely at least an argument to be made here. Less so for medical coverage, where one can’t will oneself (for the most part) not to give in to the medical issues predictably associated with the subset of the population one belongs to (whether that’s gender, or whatever). And that’s the essence of insurance–determining risk based on known probabilities, then assigning a cost for the insurer to assume that risk.
We probably agree on this in 99% of all situations. Where we seem to disagree is that whether or not you have a vagina or dick DOES in fact have a predictable effect on certain medical conditions or requirements. And I don’t see anything discriminatory or arbitrary in recognizing that.
I think you’re misunderstanding how this works, and I don’t mean that to sound condescending. I have worked at an insurance company for 23 years, and I have some experience (at least indirectly) in how this works. Yes, every coverage costs the company. That falls into the expense side of the profitability model. The question is whether that coverage will create more revenue–i.e., can you collectively charge customers more than you’ll pay out–than it will cost them. I’m over-simplifying, but not too much.
Companies determine that there are certain core coverages without which their policies will be very unattractive. Chemotherapy would likely be one. These benefits, which simply must be included, get costed out, with certain restrictions and included in the price. Benefits outside of this core are examined similarly, and insurers have teams of actuaries examining this from every angle, relative to the potential market, in particularly to their effect on the profitability model. That typically boils down to three things:
[ul][li]Will this coverage produce a revenue–meaning, I can increase the cost of coverage for it, and it will not overall reduce revenue, or perhaps will increase it, as a result–that will equal or exceed the expense of covering it? The answer to this could make it a no-brainer.[/li][li]Will this benefit be so attractive that it will net increase the number of people purchasing this contract?[/li][li]Will this benefit reduce an expense elsewhere, to an extent that will make the extra coverage actually contribute more to profitability? An example of this is how many policies will cover fitness center memberships, because this coverage reduces their expenses for cardiac care.[/ul]Now, again, this is a bit of a simplification. But the actuaries, in conference with the marketing department, crunch numbers ad infinitum, making decisions on what to include also relative to what the market will bear relative to total cost–there is often a watermark price above which, buyers will just turn up their noses, regardless of coverage. If something isn’t covered, it’s either because it’s not profitable or because the actuaries f@#$ed up. But you could put it another way. If it’s not covered, it’s because the insurer has determined that buyers are not willing to pay for the amount it would require them to get this coverage, while still permitting the insurer to obtain its profit.[/li]
So the fact that a firm will cover one area where that coverage will cost them money, but not another area where that coverage costs them money is not discrimination. It’s not the arbitrary decision you seem to think it is.
I agree with Stratocaster. No persuasive evidence has been presented so far in this thread that insurance companies are intentionally discriminating against women.
It’s also worth observing that most men and boys and up sharing economically with women and girls for all or part of their lives. If a private insurance company starts covering pregnancy, it’s probably more of a wealth transfer from couples with children to couples without children than a wealth transfer from men to women.
It also appears that folks like RedRoses don’t really care about the fact that women directly reap a lot more benefits than men from programs like social security and medicare but pay the same tax rate for both programs. To me, this means that she fundamentally doesn’t care about discrimination, she’s just interested in feeling like a victim and/or grabbing as much resources as possible for her group at the expense of others.
Whoa, I understand that this thread is in the Pit, but you’ve got a lot of nerve making accusations like this. I don’t like “feeling like a victim” or fucking others over so that I can reap more benefits. I don’t feel like getting in a huge debate about all the other types of gender discrimination out there, but any woman will tell you that it does still exist. It’s just so subtle in a lot of ways that many don’t even notice it.
A lot of my problem with contraceptive coverage has to do with insurance companies themselves, but that’s a whole other debate. I will say this, however. I understand that insurance companies are trying to make money, and that this issue is complicated. But compare insurance companies to government programs like Medicare- administrative costs, i.e. paperwork, often account for up to 30% of private health insurers’ expenditures annually. Medicare- 2%. So maybe insurance companies ought to worry about being more efficient, and they’d be able to cover contraception without losing money.
I have a question for you men out there- if you are trying not to get a woman pregnant, or do get one pregnant, are you not financially responsible in some way for that? In other words, have you forgotten that women don’t just spontaneously conceive? Do you feel that it is the woman’s responsibility entirely to obtain contraception and pay for pre- and post-natal care? Because, with the exception of married couples with the wife on her husband’s insurance, the woman’s insurance covers these costs. And when women pay more for insurance, and pay out of pocket if their insurance company does not cover contraception, it means that her sexual partners are getting a “free ride” so to speak. So why shouldn’t men help to defray these costs? Unless you’re celibate, every woman you sleep with has birth control costs, and pre-/post-natal costs should she get pregnant. Of course there are men, like the poster upthread, who will split the cost of birth control, but not all.
I believe, from all the articles I’ve read recently, that this is called “risk sharing.” Just like one of the services provided by insurance companies is treatment for heart disease- you pay for this service, even if you never need it. Just like you could go your whole life never having a car accident- you still pay car insurance “just in case.” So men pay a little extra to defray the costs of contraception and pre-/post natal care, even if they never get a woman pregnant, “just in case.”
Of course, if you believe that women are solely responsible for these costs, you won’t agree with me, but you would also have a very immature and irresponsible attitude regarding sex.
For me, that’s the main issue here- it seems like some people are forgetting that men are just as responsible for reproduction as women.
So why shouldn’t men help to defray these costs? Unless you’re celibate, every woman you sleep with has birth control costs, and pre-/post-natal costs should she get pregnant. Of course there are men, like the poster upthread, who will split the cost of birth control, but not all.