General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsShould women who need maternity coverage pay more for insurance than those who don't?
I know we shouldn't need a poll for this...
35 votes, 0 passes | Time left: Unlimited | |
Insurance with maternity coverage should cost the same as other insurance | |
32 (91%) |
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Insurance with maternity coverage should cost more than insurance without | |
3 (9%) |
|
0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided. | |
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Disclaimer: This is an Internet poll |
PowerToThePeople
(9,610 posts)CreekDog
(46,192 posts)should it not there?
Although I support a single payer system, that doesn't prevent me from having an opinion on what should be allowed when selling insurance since that's the system that we, and many other countries have.
I think you can answer the question.
PowerToThePeople
(9,610 posts)How many copies of collected metadata should there be and who should store them?
(more examples available upon request)
There are many things we have in place in this country that I do not need to have an opinion on other than "we should not do that."
What about insuring the impregnator for the pregnancy? Why does it have to be the mother who is insured for it? I know, that is silly (maybe). The whole question is moot with single payer, which is the just way to handle health care.
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)i stopped reading after your subject line.
please write smarter things if you'd like me to get through your entire message next time.
PowerToThePeople
(9,610 posts)too bad.
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)PowerToThePeople
(9,610 posts)Romulox
(25,960 posts)LWolf
(46,179 posts)Care. I want universal CARE.
Gravitycollapse
(8,155 posts)What about all of the other common ailments?
What makes pregnancy different from anything else? This is what insurance is for. It covers medical needs. Why is this even a question that is being asked by anyone?
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)they shouldn't have to pay into insurance that covers maternity if they themselves can't have a baby.
i think the posters who think that way are ridiculous.
Gravitycollapse
(8,155 posts)Point me in their direction.
Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)calimary
(81,695 posts)How 'bout that?
jamzrockz
(1,333 posts)cos women on average will run up more healthcare dollars than the average man even with cialis and viagra added. I am conflicted on this because I don't want to punish women who get pregnant but then you want to reward people who do their best to reduce world population by not giving birth. And you cannot reward one without punishing the other.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)The ACA spreads this disproportionate expense onto men. It's why, whenever you hear someone complain that their medical insurance went up 50% last year, it's always a man.
bettyellen
(47,209 posts)and we have been paying more than men, whether fertile or not for way too long.
and I don't think anyone progressive thinks women should be penalized for having the babies that in most cases they have already paid plenty for - in terms of carrying them for nine months. men have it easy in that respect. having babies doesn;t endanger their health or life.
Aerows
(39,961 posts)Who at one time had a mother that needed maternity care.
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)Last edited Mon Mar 17, 2014, 04:27 PM - Edit history (1)
One assumes that most of our birth-debts were paid for long ago, usually by our fathers' employment-based insurance.
Aerows
(39,961 posts)Or did you hatch out of a test tube, ready to work and purchase insurance?
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)...that I'm responsible for only mine and not that of my children, who are responsible for their own.
calimary
(81,695 posts)Glad you're here! I get what you're saying. Totally. But I still go there. And I feel as though that's something we ought to be pointing out. There's SO MUCH DAMN GRIPING about what are the intrinsic issues facing women in health insurance coverage matters. Given. But while there are people bellyaching about why they have to pay for coverage for our contraceptives and such, why then can't we mention the men's part? Hey - men have distinctive gender-based insurance coverage matters. Prostate issues. Urinary issues. And yeah, the Viagra thing. So if they're objecting to covering what matters to women - why then should we not throw that back at them and point out - hey, I'M not a man. I don't take or need Viagra. Why do I have to pay for that, then? It's that ol' door that swings both ways, seems to me. My point is - well, maybe the folks crabbing about the coverage of women's health needs should just shut up. Because nothing's ever bitched about or taken to task when it comes to men's issues.
ElboRuum
(4,717 posts)..."why do I have to pay school tax when I don't have any children."
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)CreekDog
(46,192 posts)Daemonaquila
(1,712 posts)It's really simple - it's never going to be a health issue for women who are incapable of childbirth or who know that the only children they'll ever produce are coming out in pieces at the end of a suction hose. It's as stupid for many of us to have to pay for pregnancy coverage as it would be to ask us to pay for care of our erectile dysfunction.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)Last edited Mon Mar 17, 2014, 11:03 AM - Edit history (1)
Crunchy Frog
(26,729 posts)who will be treating your illnesses and wiping your backside and maintaining an economy that will (hopefully) keep you fed and clothed and housed and entertained into your old age.
The fact is that everyone has a stake in the new people who come into the world.
mike_c
(36,281 posts)When we buy insurance, pooled risk only works because others agree to accept our health risks and we agree to accept theirs. We can't have it both ways, i.e. having others carry our risks without our carrying theirs. I'm male and post-reproductive. I will NEVER need maternity care. But my nearly certain heart disease, cancer, or other degenerative disease can only be covered if I pool my risk of health care costs with that of younger, reproductive women. Solidarity, sisters!
you're in the pool that covers their care and they're in the pool that covers yours.
If we start excluding people who can have a medical expense we can't have, everyone will have something not covered.
elleng
(131,683 posts)insurance covers ALL RISKS, that's what it DOES!
Daemonaquila
(1,712 posts)I have paid my whole life for a private policy that excluded pregnancy. That was a standard option, and a fair one.
seabeyond
(110,159 posts)uppityperson
(115,683 posts)Warpy
(111,559 posts)How about those prostates, boys? Even if you don't get cancer, chances are you'll need a TURP if you live long enough.
How about jacking the male rates up because men have higher accident rates when they're young and higher alcoholism, suicide, and reckless behavior risks as they get older?
Men have been requiring women to pay triple premiums in case they get pregnant for long enough. It's high time you guys realize that anatomical risk is universal and we will all get sick and need health care.
Romulox
(25,960 posts)mercuryblues
(14,578 posts)a woman could not get pregnant without the help of the male. As a matter of fact, if it wasn't for males women could not get pregnant at all.
I propose this: While males have sperm capable of impregnating a women, men should pay higher premiums than women.
Romulox
(25,960 posts)that it's weird to defend for-profit insurance and then decry the way actuarial principles work.
DefenseLawyer
(11,101 posts)"You mean I have to pay for something that doesn't directly benefit me?"
"Well, yes, but by spreading the cost of insurance across a wider, less risk prone group, it actually makes everyone's insurance cheaper. "
"So you're saying that I have to pay for something that doesn't directly benefit me????"
LittleBlue
(10,362 posts)I hate this debate because no one should have to make that choice.
It's like arguing about to what degree you should be burdened for wanting to live. Pure insanity when this country has such immense wealth.
PowerToThePeople
(9,610 posts)Ok, give it to me.
DURec your post.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)along with most other medical expenses. And I say that as a DUer who is probably more pro free-market and capitalism than most. This is something that should not be treated as a free-market commodity.
undeterred
(34,658 posts)Yes. Everyone pays for everything. There is a common good. And that is especially true in the case of insurance for medical needs.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)If that wasn't so then everyone would be paying the same rate (subsidies aside).
So there really isn't a single "pool" but rather a number of different ones..
pnwmom
(109,032 posts)pay more -- subsidies aside. So in that sense, it equals out.
The point is to encourage younger (usually healthier) people to enroll.
If you charged women more for getting pregnant then you'd have to charge more for all the other people with genetic conditions (such as XX chromosomes) that can lead to health conditions. And the ACA was designed not to charge more for preexisting condition,. . . even the preexisting condition of XX chromosomes.
hunter
(38,381 posts)What's the problem?
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)but not those of a pregnant woman. wtf.
WhaTHellsgoingonhere
(5,252 posts)Are you aware of this?
MiniMe
(21,731 posts)Everybody pays a part of everything. That is how they can pay for all ailments.
DebJ
(7,699 posts)jeff47
(26,549 posts)If I could pay the same rate that the insurance company negotiated, maternity care and childbirth cost more than $50k per child. Only complication was c-sections. Without those, it would have been about $30k per child.
And that's paying the rate the major insurance company could negotiate. The "normal" rate on the bills was at least double.
So your "solution" of paying $100k per child isn't practical for those outside the 1%.
DebJ
(7,699 posts)gentlemen who feel that the full cost of a birth should apparently be solely upon women.
Including, apparently, the woman that brought them into this world.
Walk away
(9,494 posts)MADem
(135,425 posts)Some people only need it in the FIRST NINE MONTHS of their life.
Others need it more frequently.
But EVERYONE needs it.
And yeah, I was yelling...!
Mr.Bill
(24,430 posts)if you were ever involved in a birth. You know, like when you were born.
Skittles
(153,485 posts)EVERYONE has a vested interest in healthy babies
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)unfortunately, even at DU, it isn't ridiculous to all.
Skittles
(153,485 posts)predictible
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)riqster
(13,986 posts)That isn't how the product works. Insurance works by getting a large pool, and spreading the costs across those who use more or less of it.
Which is why National Health Care is gonna happen someday. Given the costs, we need a pool composed of all Americans to have a sustainable model.
Again.
madville
(7,413 posts)No for extra charges for maternity coverage. The argument could be made for additional charges for smokers, alcoholics, drug abusers, the obese, etc.
MillennialDem
(2,367 posts)the athletic and the tall.
Now of course whenever BMI discussions come up everyone and their mother posts about how they are 12% body fat (or lower). I'm not going to do that here. I am athletic and do lift weights and run etc - my body fat could certainly be lower though, especially if I wanted to be a professional athlete or fashion model.
That said, the reason my BMI is bullshit is mostly because of my height (6'2). I fit in the overweight category, because BMI takes my height to 2nd power instead of to the 3rd power (or uses an exponent between 2 and 3, such as 2.5). As you grow taller you don't just grow in 2 dimensions, which BMI assumes.
Romulox
(25,960 posts)If that's "not fair", then we need to change the entire system.
TBF
(32,208 posts)that is where I come down, and further it is not just nationalizing health care. The profit motive is only good for billionaires.
Romulox
(25,960 posts):
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)fail
Romulox
(25,960 posts)CreekDog
(46,192 posts)ok?
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)And on the other hand, stop giving a tax discount for kids. People want to have 2 kids?, 10 kids?, fine, should not get a discount on income taxes for kids.
CBGLuthier
(12,723 posts)One extra layer of profit the world could do without.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)CreekDog
(46,192 posts)cause that's the question, the question isn't single payer, which i support too.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)"profiling" people by actuarial means (e.g. via pre-existing conditions, age, sex, etc.) as well as excluding or charging extra for certain conditions or services seems to violate the principle of shared risk that supposedly justifies insurance in the first place. But that's already become part of the business model of the general insurance racket. Young people pay more for auto insurance just because of their age, even though some of them are no doubt very safe drivers. Old people pay more for health insurance even though some of them use very few medical resources. And on and on.
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)one of the reasons for the poll is because of the complaints by a few here that Obamacare doesn't charge more for maternity coverage.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)The ACA's 'age rating bands' would prevent insurers from selling nongroup coverage to an adult age 64 or older for more than three times the premium they charge to a 21 year-old for the same coverageallowing for a 3:1 premium ratio based on age.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)My disgust with the insurance model obscured my reaction to the point you are trying to make here.
Let me clarify something about my underlying position.
Regardless of whether we are discussing a system like our current mess or a more rational national health plan, it is wrong to discriminate against women or to seek to demand "maternity insurance" or whatever you might call it.
I believe that it is not just women, but society as a whole, that benefits from providing adequate maternity services, including health care. Does anyone seriously want more children gestated and born under less-than-healthy conditions? No matter how cold-hearted you may be about motherhood or children, you're going to end up paying a lot more for the tragic consequences of that social choice than the few extra bucks you might save on your insurance bill. And you may be sure that there will be kids born to mothers who couldn't afford that "add-on," or who just didn't expect to get pregnant.
I would go further and say that society as a whole, not just women or any other group that has traditionally been treated unfairly, benefits when that society enacts policies and practices forbidding discrimination against any of its members.
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)I support single payer, but where this model doesn't exist, laws need to protect people from discriminatory practices.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)djean111
(14,255 posts)Universal Health Care.
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)But will receive about 30% less services over his lifetime. It isn't fair, but it is practical. The pool works best when it's large and sliced up into as few actuarial criteria as possible.
Put another way, I think that medical insurance should be one of the things that we get as a benefit of being a taxpaying citizen, and I wouldn't support higher tax rates for women because they get more benefits.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)"Health insurance" is the wrong way to reach that goal.
PASS.
Response to Jackpine Radical (Reply #57)
CreekDog This message was self-deleted by its author.
Sheepshank
(12,504 posts)the woman is unable to get PG without the additional genetic material offered by a man, he has some responsibility to help produce a healthy infant. The cost should be shared, therefore the insruance should be the same.
With that same thought, the cost should also be shared for abortions and birth control.
In the article posted abut women over a lifetime may use more medical intervention, because the live longer...says nothing about the "burnden" of covering maternity. So if a dud lives to be 85 or more, he should be cut off form all health care after the median age of 76? The argument is stupid on it's face that women should be charged more. Universal health for all!!
Avalux
(35,015 posts)Here again - anyone who suggests such a thing is attacking women. Pregnancy is a normal biological process that women undergo when they decide to have children. There may be complications to the pregnancy, but pregnancy itself is not a catastrophic illness.
Stupid stupid stupid idea.
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)Avalux
(35,015 posts)CreekDog
(46,192 posts)SoCalDem
(103,856 posts)Response to CreekDog (Original post)
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CreekDog
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Demo_Chris
(6,234 posts)oldandhappy
(6,719 posts)I have a really really hard time with the anti-women's health stuff. OK I got that off my chest.
polichick
(37,152 posts)OmahaBlueDog
(10,000 posts)All insurance policies for persons of childbearing age (12-50) should be priced to include pregnancy, complications of pregnancy, pre-natal (including basic child care and breastfeeding training), and post natal. The pricing should simply be built in, and be spread to both genders -- since it does actually take both genders to make a baby at some basic level.
I'll leave it to brighter minds than mine whether fertility treatment should be covered. I'm of two minds there.
alc
(1,151 posts)but don't seem to know what it means. We use the word in the sense of how the government may insure (guarantee) a loan - they guarantee it will be paid back and they will pay it if the company (or country) fails to be able to repay it.
But the ACA set up commercial insurance in the sense of a group of similar people sharing risk - a group of people with similar risk pay into a pool, then when a small percentage of them are affected by the risk, they are covered by the money in the pool.
What we want is government to insure (as in "guarantee" that health care costs will be paid. But we are trying to accomplish that from "shared risk pools". I don't want to "share risk" with people who are not like me, just like I don't want my home insurance to cost the same as Romney's or my auto insurance to cost the same as LeBrons or my health insurance to cost the same as someone who could need 10x or 100x as much coverage as me.
If I'm sharing risk with "people like me", then it does matter if I (or they) smoke, exercise, are obese, or can get pregnant. If the government guarantees payment for all citizens, then none of those things matter. The main thing that happens when the government tries to guarantee health care by forcing us into pools is that we get less transparency on how the premiums are used vs what we'd get on how taxes are used. The other thing that happens is that we fool ourselves into thinking about "shared risk" (and we talk about that a lot) rather than health care for all (which is supposedly the goal of the ACA).
Aerows
(39,961 posts)If the answer is yes, then insurance should cover pregnancy. Just because you are already here doesn't mean that someone didn't pay for you to get here.
Donald Ian Rankin
(13,598 posts)Health insurance is a commercial product. What you get should be what you pay for.
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)Health insurance is a commercial product that must not discriminate by gender or medical condition. What you get is what others should get: the health insurance you need at the price someone else would pay for what they need.
96. Yes, but the state should provide free-at-point-of-use healthcare, rendering it moot.
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Health insurance is a commercial product. What you get should be what you pay for.
Donald Ian Rankin
(13,598 posts)Commercial health insurance should not be a form of welfare or a social safety net; it's a form of gambling, nothing more and nothing less.
Bookmakers should be free to set their own odds, and the idea that they should take all bets at the same odds is daft.
"The health insurance you need" should be "none" - people should not be required to gamble in order to pay for healthcare.
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)post that nonsense at FR not here.
i'm right, you're wrong, and that was a sexist post to call maternity coverage welfare.
what's the matter with you?
PowerToThePeople
(9,610 posts)99. do not call maternity coverage welfare
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post that nonsense at FR not here.
i'm right, you're wrong, and that was a sexist post to call maternity coverage welfare.
what's the matter with you?
No such thing was said. Reading comprehension skills could use some work. I do not know, but your posting patterns here lead me to think you have ties to the insurance lobby. Yes or no?
Please take some time to re-read the posts in this topic of yours. Better yet, print them all out and have someone else read them to you. You are taking many things said here incorrectly.
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)but if you want to agree with libertarian BS, that's what you've gotta do.
TheKentuckian
(25,035 posts)davidn3600
(6,342 posts)It's the fact that women will use medical services more often than men over the course of the average lifespan, yet we pay equal premiums now. The reason insurance companies were charging more for women wasnt because they hate women...it's because women make more medical claims on their insurance plans than men do.
Meanwhile, men still have to pay more than women for other forms of insurance. Health insurance is really the only type of insurance where women paid more than men.
Ultimately though, I am not necessarily a fan of Obamacare because this law does not fix the biggest problem with the system, which is cost. Even with Obamacare, people are paying for insurance that they will possibly never use because they will never be able to reach their high deductibles. So they will continue to skip needed tests and preventative doctor visits.
Compared to the rest of the developed world, our system is simply too fucking expensive.
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)i'll await my answer before discussing anything else with you.
davidn3600
(6,342 posts)And that's a completely different problem than what's being discussed here.
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)you have never complained about the wage disparity that favors men over women.
that's sexist because when (you say) women are favored, you complain.
when men are favored, you are silent or you rationalize.
pretty self serving there.
davidn3600
(6,342 posts)Just the other day I posted an article about how in domestic Hollywood films women only make up 15% of leading protagonists. How many replies did that post get? Zero. No one seemed to care other than the one person that gave it a rec.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024653208
Have I ever talked about wage disparity? Sure. I've done that before here but I dont talk about it every single day. If I see a worthy story about it browsing through the news. But the media doesn't discuss it very much. I think the last article I saw about it was a couple months ago talking about how the millenials are closing the gap. If you look at just single women under 30, they are making 93 cents to the dollar that their single male peers make.
Romulox
(25,960 posts)making huge $$$$$$ off of this.