Think Progress: Congressman Demands Pregnant Woman Explain Why Obamacare Includes Maternity Coverage

[geardaddy]

http://tinyurl.com/qacmmg6
(Video at link)
A lawmaker from North Carolina spent several minutes badgering a pregnant doctor about why Obamacare requires plans to cover maternity services, telling her it’s a service that people like him will never use, during a House committee hearing this week.

Dr. Mandy Cohen, who works for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and is due to give birth in about three weeks, appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday to testify about Obamacare’s impact on the insurance market. The hearing was entitled “Poised To Profit: How Obamacare helps insurance companies even if it fails patients,” so it’s a safe assumption that Cohen was up before a tough crowd.

During Cohen’s testimony, Rep. Mark Meadows (R) demanded to know why Americans are forced to buy coverage for services that don’t apply to them. He pointed out that he and his wife are in their 50s and don’t plan on using maternity coverage anytime soon. The doctor attempted to explain that maternity care is one of the ten essential health benefits that Obamacare requires new plans to include, but Meadows wasn’t convinced:

MEADOWS: So you have to buy maternity, even though you may never have a child?
COHEN: That is correct.
MEADOWS: Are there other things you have to buy that you may never use?
COHEN: It depends on your personal family situation and your medical situation. I’ll say as an internist, and a primary care doc, that sometimes you don’t know what that medical situation will be going forward, and that’s the nature–
MEADOWS: But maternity is one that you can probably analyze pretty well for someone who’s in their 50s.
COHEN: Right, but it’s a minimal essential benefit we wanted to make sure that all Americans had access to.

[Dawgs]

1. This guys obviously not a christian.

If he is, he's definitely a really bad one.

[geardaddy]

2. Bingo.

[Autumn]

3. I see his point, I bet his wife just went out in a fiels, squated down and poped one out.

Ran back home and got his dinner cooked.

What a fucking pig.

[geardaddy]

6. Agreed.

[House of Roberts]

4. How about prostate exams and surgery?

Don't the same policies cover those that are also sold to women?

The policies cover both genders equally. You're not paying for 'something you can't use'. It's a single policy that covers everyone. The differences in plans are the deductibles and co-pays.

[geardaddy]

5. Excellent point.

But we're talking about a chauvinist Repuke here.

[Kber]

7. So far the following should be exempt from coverage

1. Birth control
2. Abortions
3. Maternity care
4. Child delivery care


Untouchable coverage we won't even discuss cutting:
1. Prostate exams
2. Prostate cancer treatment
3. ED treatments
4. Condoms

Nope, no pattern there.

Edit: when I say "should be exempt" I'm talking about GOP opinion, not mine or any one else's here. Probably goes without saying, but just to avoid any confusion, I'm saying it anyways.

[geardaddy]

8. +1

[Kber]

10. Further clarification

I believe strong that all 8 items listed should be covered and are essential to preventing or addressing serious issues and / or to maintaining good health.

I believe covering these items is morally right and fiscally responsible. The moral and financial costs of doing the opposite are unacceptable.

[Freddie]

9. Insurance = everybody in the pool

One of the goals of the ACA is to eliminate medical underwriting (no pre-existing conditions), no gender surcharge and limited rate increases based on age.
A friend who lost his non-compliant private plan and has to pay a bit more now was griping endlessly about this very issue and then needed heart bypass surgery, which he had and was covered for. So he's paying for a young woman's pregnancy and she's paying for an older man's heart surgery? That's what insurance is about.

[Gormy Cuss]

13. It's stunning how some people have never learned how insurance is supposed to work.

Pooled risk keeps the costs down. The bigger the pool, the likelier the cost to individuals will fall.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

11. This knucklehead obviously doesn't understand the whole idea of insurance.

The basic idea, concocted when insurance was first invented - and it was a very good idea until some people decided they wanted to use it to make CEOs rich - is that a whole bunch of people would contribute some amount of money to a pool that would be used to compensate a loss by some contributors. The first insurance was for shipowners in about the 18th century, who faced disastrous losses if their ships were lost in storms or taken by pirates. So a risk pool was formed that would provide compensation for lost ships or cargo. Not all ships were lost, obviously, so the pool was sufficient to cover the losses for those that were. It was a great idea.

With respect to health insurance, it's likely that everyone will need some kind of medical treatment at some point, but some people get through life with a few bruises and sprains and minor afflictions, while others are not so lucky. Some people (men and some women) will never get pregnant. Some people (women and some men) will never get prostate cancer. But the more people who contribute to the pool that provides coverage, the less expensive the coverage will be, and the more probable that whatever affliction you might wind up with will be covered.

Even life insurance is based on risk vs. payout. Everybody dies, so there will have to be a payout eventually, but the younger and healthier you are the lower your premiums will be because there will be a longer time until the payout; thus your contribution to the pool will be sufficient to cover the payout. The older, sicker person's premiums will be higher because there will be less time until payout occurs.

Anyhow, the underlying concept of insurance is really simple. Everybody pays a (relatively) small amount into the pool, which covers all contributors. You might not get sick, or very sick, but your payments cover the risk that you will, as well as the payouts to those who are actually sick. The stupid congressman has no chance of getting pregnant, but he has a damn good chance of getting prostate cancer - one in 7 men get it if they live long enough.

[TreasonousBastard]

12. You have no idea how much I hate this selfish BS...

There is no "us vs them" here-- it just happens to be females who give birth, but it is a societal obligation to make sure the birth goes well and mother and child are healthy and safe.

Why can't these assholes admit that?

[geardaddy]

14. Because their motto is:

I've got mine, screw you.

[GeorgeGist]

15. Would he prefer abortion?

[haele]

16. Stupid man. His daughters and grand-daughters, sisters and nieces will use that insurance.

So, apparently he doesn't mind losing a daughter, granddaughter, sister, or niece - or his right-hand staffer, or trusted doctor during a problematic pregnancy or watch his best friend's family go motherless, or any of the above lose a baby to a preventable miscarriage or suffer long-term complications from an untreated problem during the pregnancy.

Idiot forgot he was the beneficiary of maternity care at one point in his life, even if it was poor or non-existent (which appears to be the case in many of these republi-can't politicians).

Everyone has the need to be covered under maternity care at least once. That is, until we start growing people out of artificial wombs.

Haele

[jwirr]

17. This attitude is one that abounds in the USA. The idea that somehow both parents are not responsible

when it comes to the children. By this I mean that we have faced the deadbeat parent for decades. All too many divorces are a case in point. The Judge sets child support and the spouse never gets it. We even have a department at Social Services to go out and collect the back child support.

Only if he is impotent or in a same sex marriage or never married can he say he is not using maternity services. They are his children also.