You can take my post however you want, but I assure you I meant no male bashing. I don’t think men who need viagra are a joke, despite what you think. Also, if an insurance company covered Replens but not Viagra, they would also be wrong, as the two drugs are meant to treat essentially the same condition, sexual disfunction, except that one is for men and one is for women. I do not think that Viagra should stop being covered.
Apparently, my “male bashing” is so subtle, that you are the only one who sees it.
If you don’t think Viagra should stop being covered, then why did you bring it into the discussion in the first place? How did it affect your problems at all?
Is it because it’s a “funny” drug for a “funny” condition? You did mention erections in your OP?
Replens, afaik, is an over-the-counter drug that doesn’t require a prescription whereas birth control pills and viagra do require a prescription so not just anyone can get them. Quite a big difference between your statement and the OP.
I saw no male bashing in the OP. Just complaining that one drug is covered, no questions asked, and the other drug has to have some kind of special documentation in order to be covered.
If your insurance company doesn’t cover your pills just go to your local health department and get them. Shouldn’t cost you more than $5-10 a month if you go there.
You’re the only one seeing any male bashing here…well, ok calm kiwi did a wee bit, but she was just kidding, and she said it’s her time of the month, so it’s allowed.
The OP never stated she didn’t want Viagra covered, she just doesn’t see why it should be covered, if birth control pills are not also covered if being used to treat a medical condition or reproductive dysfunction.
Which incidentally, is gasp exactly what Viagra is used to treat. A reproductive dysfunction.
Look, the only thing she was trying to say was this: I have a condition, cramps, this condition is exclusive to me as a woman. I need this pill to help, but they will not cover it.
Impotence is a condition. A condition exclusive to men. They need this pill to help and recieve it.
What’s the difference? That’s the only question being asked. Please stop nitpicking and hijacking the poor girls thread.
This issue makes me insanely angry. I work at a legislative research firm that studies health insurance and pharmaceutical issues. Thank goodness many states are taking action to prohibit this…they’re called “mandated benefit” laws, which require health insurers to cover certain things. I have seen lots of bills that require insurers to cover birth control. Maybe I can find a list of the states that do this.
It just doesn’t make sense to me. Wouldn’t covering birth control be cheaper than covering pregnancy, birth and care for the child? Birth control is probably the most commonly taken medication for women of child-bearing age. Birth control is a necessity, not a luxury! It is outrageous that insurers don’t cover it.
I’m not sure I see an insurance problem here. You insure against a risk. In this case there’s no risk but a certainty of paying out. When I apply for medical insurance they ask me about my medical history and all pre-existing conditions are automatically excluded.
The insurers need to make a profit so they stay in business. That means drawing the line somewhere. It’s not nice, but it’s fair.
Of course there’s a “risk” to the insurance company. I sure as hell didn’t pay out of pocket for 9 months of pre-natal care, a $5000 C-section bill, and the subsequent well-child care after my son was born. The insurance company did. Or am I misunderstanding your meaning?
Even with the smilie, that quote’s the closest thing I see to male-bashing in this thread. Now, I can’t tell whether it actually is without knowing the poster’s posting history, but such statements generally aren’t useful to raise the tone of discussion in these matters.
I also am unclear, qts. ICs that cover Viagra also are not preventing risk, only paying out. What is the further potential risk for untreated impotence? I’m not sure if the cost of Viagra has dropped yet, but if memory serves, it’s an expensive drug. There are a lot of BCs that are cheaper than Viagra.
And, to the OP, you read my mind! I was just thinking last night that it’s suprising I haven’t seen a pit thread about this very topic. (I’m also having my period right now, too! OMG! We really do bleed together!!!)
In all seriousness - seriously - my question is that there are a host of other dysfunctions that could be treated with drugs and covered, but are not because they aren’t deemed medically necessary (like hair loss?). Realizing that Viagra treats a dysfunction, can anyone educate me on how the determination that an erection is medically necessary was made? (I’m not bashing, I’m curious.)
Further, if that were the case, why would insurance companies include coverage for Viagra? What possible health risk could an man suffer as a result of impotence? Omitting alternative physically invasive solutions, that is.
The issue isn’t whether an erection is medically necessary; the issue is whether the inability to have an erection means that a body part was not functioning as designed. One could make the argument, for example, that non-treatment of something like acne isn’t going to cause the sufferer any further physical problems, but nobody is arguing that insurance plans shouldn’t cover acne for that reason.
Contraception is different because it is intended to prevent a body part from functioning as designed. (Not that I think insurance plans shouldn’t cover it for a whole host of other reasons; just outlining the difference in reasoning.)
Jeez, Ludovic, get a grip. If it helps your analysis, you should know that a) I am male, b) I take Viagra, c) It is covered by my insurance, and d) I think that the failure of an insurance company to cover birth control pills, for whatever reason desired by the patient, is wrong and counter-productive in the long-term. My statement was a statement of support, made in a (hopefully) jocular manner. Sorry it went over your head.
Depends on your point of view. You can very easily make the case that people were ‘designed’ to die off, and that any old-age treatments are preventing a body part from normal function. BUT, what is normal or natural is very often at odds with what we want, and therefore shouldn’t even be in the running for comparing various types of medicine.
I don’t remember for sure whether insurance covers female fertility treatments, but the American Infertility Association says that 12 states have mandates to cover it and three have mandates to offer coverage at additional charge. That leaves a lot of states where it is probably not covered. To be consistent, they either should cover female fertility treatments or not cover Viagra.
Insurance companies also cover many things to prevent the one universal thing all our bodies do after birth, which is dying. I guess some could argue that the body is designed to die just as much as it is designed to live, reproduce, or do anything else.
They also cover things the body was not designed to do. (I’m sorry, but after witnessing it firsthand, it is clear that the female body was not designed to give birth to triplets – luckily for my wallet, the insurance companies don’t differentiate according to how many kids are going to be birthed.) Some would even argue that the body was not designed so all 50 or 70 year old men should be able to get erections and procreate and that men in a certain age group don’t need Viagra because the body wasn’t designed to get erections at such ages.
My point is, the “body as designed” argument is not applied universally at all. There are things that are covered that aren’t really a design of the human body and there are things that are not covered that are a design of the human body. I think it is pretty reasonable to expect insurance companies to cover birth control, even for the purpose of birth control rather than any of its alternate purposes. Covering it without making people jump through hoops would be even better.
Now, you’re on to something. If you consider contraception a preventative treatment, which is in the case of preventing pregnancy (a medical condition) it is, then insurance companies should provide coverage as they would provide coverage any other preventative treatment, such as vaccinations, preventative dental care, blood pressure medication, defribrillator implants, etc.
I really don’t think it should be denied just because always treat a debillitating condition. The plus side of blanket coverage is avoiding having a woman jump through hoops to get treatment for a condition which could easily be solved.
a) is irrelevant. You don’t need to be female to male-bash.
I don’t see what b) and c) have to do with anything, either.
I agree with you on d)
That being said, did you actually read my post?
I said:
A) I don’t know what spirit the post was intended in.
B) Regardless of the intent, it cannot raise the tone of discussion on this topic. I didn’t say it would unavoidably drag the discussion into the craphole for eternity. Would it hurt you to say “I agree that BC should be covered, too”, without dragging misandry into it? Plenty of people DO believe the disparity in coverage is a symptom of misogyny, even those who wrap their statements in nicey looking smilies.
I wouldn’t have even commented on your post, except that others had already posted objections to supposed male-bashing in the rest of the thread. My post, if you had read it, was merely opining that yours was more male-bashing than the others, yet they chose to pick on the other posts rather than yours. Your post, while not the shining example of a perfect post to me, certainly is not unabashedly misandristic enough to comment on on its own merits, and I did not. I did so only in comparison to other posts, in other words, yours was the worst offender, and not so bad, at that.
