Last week, in a calculated political move to retain control of the House, the Obama Administration imposed a total ban on abortions for women being covered by temporary Pre-existing Condition insurance plans, otherwise known as high risk pools.
High risk pools provide temporary coverage for people who can’t currently get health insurance because of a preexisting condition (in 2014, they’ll be eligible for health insurance as the expansion program is rolled out). Women covered by these high risk pools have, by definition, medical conditions so serious that companies are unwilling to insure them. So… if these women get pregnant, there’s a greater risk that they’ll need an abortion for health reasons, which is why New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Maryland’s temporary coverage would’ve potentially allowed for that option. But then the Obama Administration came in and said, nope! No coverage for you!
Via the Seattle Times:
Trying to head off more problems, the Health and Human Services Department announced last week the program will not cover abortions except in cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is in danger – exceptions traditionally allowed under federal law.
That’s a more restrictive policy than will be generally applied under Obama’s new health care law.
And why, you ask?
The turnabout comes amid growing recognition among Democrats that the nation’s unsettled political climate could cost them control of the House in the fall elections. The health care law remains a powerful motivator for opponents of Obama’s policies, and no issue stirs deeper passions than abortion.
So right now—and for the next four years—women with serious medical conditions will be denied the comprehensive coverage they might need if they experience a complicated pregnancy. I understand the politics at work here, but on a gut level—on a humane level—I wish that sacrificing women’s health didn’t translate into more votes for democrats.
Strait forward, I disagree with this policy. Abortion should be a right for any woman for ANY circumstance. I may suggest however, to minimize as much as possible the window for abortion and it be provided free of service, and paid for by unclaimed workman’s comp benefits. Instead of funding that monkey Dino Rossi. The people need back the money you stole……………..DICKHEAD!
I used to call myself a Republican. These days, I would vote control of the house to whatever party dosen’t have the presidency, just to keep them deadlocked. This, yeah this is a giant middle finger from Obama to everyone who voted for him. I can think of a lot of nasty things that can occur in a high-risk pregnancy that won’t kill you. Judah, I didn’t bother to keep up with your numbers, but all the methods of birth control have fairly remarkable side effects. Considering the alternative, most of us pick our poison, but to combine pills, IUD and condoms, well, quality of life would be an issue. Condoms decrease sensitivity and increase friction, regardless of lube, and that N-9 crap they inevitably come coated in causes yeast infections. Pills don’t bother me much, but some women experience hefty side-effects- everything from decreased libido to death via pulmonary embolism. IUD’s can cause months-long bleeding on insertion- that’s common. They can perforate your uterus, they can cause urinary tract infections, and quite a few women can have allergies to the copper they ‘re composed of. I think you mentioned periodic abstinence? Have you ever tried that? I have. It’s pretty burdensome, and I dare say not feasible for many. Abortion aside, I don’t need the latest lying, spinning, pandering politician second-guessing my and my doctor’s decisions, and I don’t need any more of my personal interests sacrificed for the common good. But, we just keep getting that, regardless of who is in office, don’t we?
The phrase “blaming the victim” comes from a cultural dialogue, 30 years ago, about how society treats rape victims. It is notable for describing a situation in which there was both blame, and a victim. A woman who has sex and who gets pregnant in spite of her use of contraceptives that she knows might fail is not a victim, and pointing out that she took a calculated risk and lost is not blaming her. Especially not if the thing she lost is a subsidized abortion. Not the right to an abortion, mind you — just the subsidy.
Every political issue has people who can’t see the forest for the trees: gun rights advocates who claim that requiring trigger locks deprives them of a vital constitutional right, and so on. The frustrating thing about arguing with people like that is that they’re not arguing the point — they’re arguing the issue. Right now, you’re one of those and there’s basically no point in getting into it with you.
Allison @50
Having insurance means people who are neither you nor your doctor get involved in your medical decisions. If it’s private insurance, the people getting involved in your medical decisions are bureaucrats. If it’s public insurance, the people getting involved in your medical decisions are politicians (and government bureaucrats). The alternative is to pay for it yourself. That alternative is still open to the women affected by this issue. It’s disingenuous to suggest that this case of interference is crossing some kind of sacred ethical line.
Correction my last: Allison@53
I get that bureaucrats in the insurance industry currently make the decisions, but as long as I pay my premiums, I can get good care. I don’t trust the government to provide that assurance. The existence of insurance has driven the cost beyond what most people can pay for straight up, which is another issue entirely. Many women in the high-risk pools don’t have the money to pay for their abortion straight up, and it’s my understanding that not all abortions are uncomplicated, $300 jobs, especially when a medical problem causes the need for one. This is generally why such patients obtained insurance. This isn’t your problem, which doesn’t make you wrong, it just allows you to be removed from the underlying issue that has people worked up- Obama has screwed over a group of his own voters, in order to win over another group of voters that he thinks has more power. That’s making his original voters angry, because the issue underlying the sacrifice is abortion, and that’s an issue many libs take to heart, and one that Obama leaned heavily on when courting their vote a couple of years ago.
Uh. Ha-ha? You’re kidding, right? Trial lawyers make millions of dollars every year forcing insurance companies to meet their obligations to their customers. Paying your premiums is hardly a guarantee that you’ll get what you paid for. And insurance companies do make ideologically-motivated decisions about who gets treatment and what kind of treatment they get. Ask an AIDS patient from the early ’80s. Oh, wait, you can’t — they’re all dead.
So… my opinion doesn’t count because I’m supposedly looking at the question too intellectually? Interesting. And you say you stopped calling yourself a Republican?
Judah, you don’t really understand. I realize this effects a very small minority of people, but it still is cruel to those that have to deal with it. I’ll give a personal example.
My mother has bad case of multiple sclerosis and pretty much raised the three of us by herself. During one of the brief periods my mother remarried, she got pregnant with twins in her mid forties. Our family completely relied on the state and government for income. If she had had those babies, she would have died. Luckily, the government funded her abortion (even though she wanted the kids, she didn’t want to leave us). Now this is no longer possible due to some right wing controlling religious bigots. This is not okay. I am not religious, I don’t believe that life started at conception, and neither did my mother. Why should these already sick, poor women have to pay for something they should get because they woul DIE otherwise. I’m just glad that my mother is going through menopause.
Judah, you’re explaining feminist history to ME??
Actually Judah, I was referencing William Ryan’s book, circa 1970, called Blaming the Victim, which explores our cultural bias which lays the fault of poverty on the poor, and blames the powerless for their lack of power. In this case you are blaming women for having chronic medical problems and suggesting that maybe they just shouldn’t be putting themselves at risk of pregnancy by having sex.
You keep going on and on about how women CHOOSE to have sex, so what do they expect? and they should pay the piper. People have sex and birth control fails and these women have medical problems that put them at risk in pregnancy. Excuse me, but abortion is a medical procedure, perfectly appropriate in these cases for prevention of complications of pregnancy, and these women are paying for medical insurance. The care should NOT be denied on ideological grounds.
Period.
Hey ladies, I have news for you: squatting on cocks has known side-effects.
Judah, take a look at the quote you pulled from my post and tell me where I said your opinion doesn’t count. What I did say, and what I think just about everyone here but you gets is that this decision disregards a block of people who put Obama where he is. I think he’s going to pay for that. Abortion is a big deal to many of Obama’s voters. If one woman can’t get an abortion because of this, that will be one woman way too many for Obama’s voters. And hey, my insurance is pretty crappy now, because I work part time and pay for it myself. It’s the $5K deductible type. It’s total crap, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to have to sue to get any claims through it. But, who am I going to sue when social security takes years of my tax money and goes bankrupt? Hell, this whole discussion is case in point- the government is every bit as untrustworthy as the insurance industry, they just don’t ever seem to be held accountable for their abuses.
Judah, you can talk all day about women could do to prevent pregnancy, but it does nothing for the women who are pregnant and require abortion services. What are your solutions for them?
@60 So does smoking, but we don’t deny care to them, do we?
I am trying hard, really, really hard, to think of another situation where payment for an appropriate medical treatment is withheld on ideological grounds.
Do we withhold cancer treatment from smokers because, hey! they should have known better? Do we tell HIV-infected drug users that they need to suck it up and pay for their own cocktails because it’s their own fault they got the virus? Do we refuse Viagra to men who have the health habits that put them at the risk of ED (obesity, smoking)? No and no and no!
Once again, these women are the ones for whom pregnancy might be risky. They’re diabetic, they have cancer, their health might be compromised by pregnancy (which, hello?, I do know a thing or two about, since I do high-risk OB care). If they choose to take on those risks and continue the pregnancy, fine, but why should an abortion be something they to pay for out-of-pocket?
attitude devant, You can’t think of another case because pregnancy is a unique situation. Some believe the fetus to be a separate person who dies in an abortion. Some don’t, but some do, and those that do are effective in their opposition to the procedure. The arguments that women shouldn’t have sex because they might get pregnant are specious, but then again, quite a few people seem to see abortion as an issue of control, rather than of life. For most, though, the potential life is the problem. That’s most people, I think, but you never hear them in debates, because the crazy people are the only ones arguing anymore.
Thank you AllisonM. We providers are very concerned when coverage for abortion is denied because abortion is an increasingly marginalized service, and when it gets marginalized to special clinics and away from doctor’s offices and hospitals (as when coverage is denied), it creates targets for the crazies.
But one in three American women (that’s one in six Americans) has had an abortion. This is not marginal or rare. These are hardly unique situations. These women are our mothers, our sisters, our daughters, and our wives.
Study after study shows that the majority of Americans support abortion rights. Americans are fair-minded people, in general. So why is the administration caving on as aspect of this issue that isn’t even “choice”-related? Reproductive care IS health care. This (abortions for women who have good medical reasons to seek them) is health care at its most basic.
No. I was telling you why the phrase you were using was loaded and inappropriate. Not that I don’t find your incredulous tone about me explaining feminist history to YOU kind of funny.
No, I don’t. What I keep saying is that there are a bunch of ways to reduce the likelihood of pregnancy and that if you can’t use one, you can probably use another and that, short of that, if a woman can’t afford an abortion and getting pregnant MIGHT KILL HER, it might be a good idea not to have sex. There are plenty of medical conditions and economic circumstances that make having sex a bad idea. This is, evidently, one of them.
Oh, I get it. I just think it’s bullshit. I think it’s a relatively uncommon problem that affects a relatively small number of women and that it’s being blown up into an issue for all women and all abortion rights advocates everywhere because some people on the left are stupid enough to want to conflate the right to have an abortion with the right to have the government pay for it. It’s a bad idea on its face, and a bullshit argument in any event, and it will end up costing the Democrats more than it gains them.
@64 — Private insurers do, actually, do most of the things you mention. They raise premiums or reduce coverage for smokers, they don’t pay for viagra, they have pre-existing condition policies that cut out big swaths of people — mostly poor people who live with environmental factors that increase their risk of certain kinds of illnesses. And, again, in the early ’80s, it was extremely difficult for AIDS patients to get various treatments associated with their illness.
Jesus, people.
OK Judah, thanks, what I thought you were saying was: Hey, if you’re chronically ill, just don’t have sex.
That turns out to be exactly what you were saying. Wow. Just wow.
(also, just for fun, google “blaming the victim.” The first two references are the Willian Ryan and his ideas. We don’t see anything about rape until the third entry—your idea that the phrase only references rape is odd, and possibly unique to you)
Jesus, yourself!
Judah, way back in June, you were a big poster on the prison rape story. My recollection is that you were passionate in saying that convicts should be protected from rape, that saying that they were less deserving of protections because they were tried and convicted was unacceptable.
Why do you write off these women? I’ve asked you before and you haven’t answered: do you think your sexuality dies when you get a chronic illness? Do you think someone is less human because they’re sick? You don’t seem to think they’re less human if they’re convicted of breaking the law. Why the difference?
You keep telling me this is a just(!) a constitutional issue, but it’s really a healthcare issue. This is not about choice, it’s about what is needed to maintain health for these women. Why do you insist that their sexual lives and their health are trivial?
@67 Abortion is not uncommon. Just because your friends and family and SO don’t talk about the abortions they’ve had, doesn’t mean they haven’t. Even if it is rare, and this law only ended up directly effecting a few women, it has the possibility to effect ANY woman. I’m not pregnant right now, am in a stable relationship, have job security, good healthcare coverage, am not sick, and have a BC implant. But I have no idea what the future may be so I need to make sure it’s available and affordable. The govt does not have the right to put me at risk and deny covering a medically necessary procedure.
@70
The issue under discussion here isn’t abortions generally. It’s abortions for women in a certain risk pool, somewhere between women whose lives are obviously in danger as a result of their pregnancy and women who are in no danger — an increased risk pool, that still falls short of clear risk.
Yeah, that sounds really fun. I’ll do that.
I’m not writing anyone off. That’s how you’re choosing to interpret my statements, so I’m disinclined to get into an argument with you about why I’m doing something I’m not doing so that you can show me how wrong I am about the thing I’m not saying. Otherwise, against my better judgment, I’ll spell this out for you: prison rape is unconstitutional because the Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment; actually building a prison system that enables and condones prison rape violates that prohibition. The right to an abortion is protected (and this point is extremely debatable) by the “penumbral” right of privacy. That’s the right to have one, not the right to have it paid for. The right to have it paid for is a creature of statute, and can be taken away as easily as anything else the government gives you — road funding or public schools or any of the rest of it. It doesn’t address a constitutional right. It addresses money.
There. That was a nice long paragraph. I’m sure there are fifteen or twenty things in there you can misunderstand and mischaracterize. Knock yourself out.
Judah, in pasting my comment above you cut me off in mid-phrase and didn’t quote the end of my sentence, which was a question:
do you think your sexuality dies when you get a chronic illness?
I really am interested in your answer. Have you ever thought about it?
(And, please, I’m not talking about abortion rights as I’ve said a gazillion times. I’m talking about medically appropriate health care.)
And what if a woman can’t afford it that needed abortion? You’ve yet to give that answer.
Yeah, I suppose I might have thought about the question once or twice during the four years I nursed my father until he died of AIDS when I was 17. But never mind all that. Please, tell me more of your views about illness and sexuality, and what sort of measures are reasonable to expect from someone who might die from sex. I want to know what you think, because you’re obviously such a fucking expert.
That phrase doesn’t mean anything. Like, seriously — nothing. So basically, you’re talking about your opinion. Guess how relevant that is.
Actually Judah, I AM an expert. Truly and for real. And we are sexual creatures, as the man said, from the cradle to the grave.
I’m sorry about your dad. Now I understand you way better. Seriously, I do.
Imagine if your dad had access to a really great AIDS cocktail that could have saved his life, and he had finally gotten insurance to pay for it. And imagine that he had some other medical problem that threw him out of the protocol, a treatable problem, but one that had to be addressed or he couldn’t get the drugs he needed. And suppose no one would give him that treatment under his new insurance, for arbitrary reasons having nothing to do with him or his illness, but just because. He could buy it, but you guys were broke from paying for all the other stuff, and it was a real hardship, meaning you (Judah) or he might do without food, or something. And you had very limited resources to tap, and limited time to tap them…..
Wouldn’t you be outraged? Why are you not outraged now?
No, you’re not. You might be some kind of professional, and you might even be good at your job, but you’re not an expert and your tone-deaf responses to this issue and your pathetic, “now imagine…” scenario prove that, at least to my satisfaction.
My dad got sick in 1982. If you think I never had to stand by and watch the federal government say, sometimes in as many words, “Well, AIDS only kills gay men and junkies, so we’re not going to spend any money providing care or trying to find a cure,” you’re an idiot. I understand the scenario you’re describing perfectly, and I’m telling you that your moral math on the subject is self-serving and wrong. The Obama presidency is saving lives. It’s repairing American relations abroad, it’s getting funding for programs at home that will keep today’s children from becoming tomorrow’s criminals. And he’s protecting the rights of women, GLBTQ people, and ethnic and religious minorities. He may not be doing it as quickly and effectively as we’d all like, but he’s working on it. And undercutting that presidency because of a break in funding for a procedure to treat a preventable illness (dangerous pregnancy) for a minority of women who are in a risk category for pregnancies that falls short of a clear threat to the mother’s life is a bad call. Only a small percentage of women meet those criteria, and only a small percentage of those women won’t have friends or family who can loan them the money or a credit card or whatever to cover the bills and get the procedure that will save their lives. And of that tiny tiny minority, I’m reasonably confident that someone somewhere can afford to backstop for them. Maybe state government, maybe private money — whatever. Keeping in mind through all of this that the fucking abortion isn’t exactly risk-free either.
I have no illusions about Obama not being a political sell-out, but I was convinced when I voted for him in the primary, and I remain convinced, that he is as far to the left as we can get on most issues that matter. Pushing points like this one won’t push Obama to the left, or get us another president who goes farther to the left. What it’ll do is, it’ll keep Democrats home in November 2012, and hand this county back to the people who gave us Bush. And we’ll see what abortion rights look like under whoever the fuck that president turns out to be.
That’s my position on this. It’s a reasonably informed position based on a broad historical and political perspective. You don’t agree with it? Fine. But for the love of god, stop trying to convince yourself that the only reason I don’t agree with you is because I’m too thick to recognize how smart you are, and how much you know.
When have I ever mentioned Obama, or advocated not supporting his presidency? You’re confusing me with someone else. I think this was a stupid political move and bad public policy (not to mention it’ll cost more money than it will save), but that’s all. My point (which you never really seemed to get) is that your “reasonably informed position based on a broad historical and political perspective” is all focused on the politics and trivializes the actual cost to the individuals. That’s all. And as a clinician who works with women all day, every day, I am all about what public policy looks like at the individual level.
One thing that is continually surprising to me about the way you write is your assumption you know all about reproductive care for women when you are remarkably ill-informed. No offense or anything, but you are. For instance, in spite of what you say, abortions are actually very, very, very low-risk procedures. Compared to the statistically much more frequent and more severe complications of pregnancy and delivery, they are several orders of magnitude less risky. And you seem to know very little about how limited birth control options can be, or what a success rate for a method translates into in numbers of pregnancies even among the most consistent users. Or of the very serious complications different methods can have. And your assertion that women in these risk panels can just not have sex is…..bizarre. Truly it is. (I know you think my claiming expert status in this issue is out of line, but since I prescribe contraception, deliver babies, do abortions, and care for chronically ill women pregnant and not, including counseling them about sexual issues related to their illnesses, I’m as close to an expert as SLOG gets on this one….)
Obviously I offended you in talking about AIDS. I am sorry. I am substantially older than you — I was in medical school when your dad got sick. That first wave was horrible. We didn’t know what we were dealing with at first, and the response of the Reagan administration (which you characterize quite accurately) was despicable. (I will never, as long as I live, forget that in the middle of all that horror that idiot was trying to dismantle the CDC). I lost dear friends in that time—I have some idea of what that might have been like for you.
If you were interested in a conversation, I would talk to you about your stance on legal rights for the prison population (which I share, btw), I could point out that the constitution gives me the right to counsel, but that my access to counsel if I can’t pay is a less secure right. I could then draw a parallel to abortion access, but I don’t think you can have a conversation about this.
And I will sign off here. I couldn’t grok something fundamental about your posts–there was something puzzling about your insistence on talking about legal rights, about refusing to see this as a public health issue. I understand you better now.
The entry all these comments are about is about how the Obama administration did this for political reasons. Try to keep up.
Then you said:
What I actually said was:
“Very very very low risk” (whatever the fuck that means) is not risk-free. Additionally, if a patient has a health condition that makes pregnancy risky, it seems to me that some of those conditions might also make an abortion riskier than it otherwise would be. Meanwhile, since you totally misquoted the thing I’m supposedly ill-informed about, please provide another example of an assertion I’ve made about women’s health that’s ill-informed. Oh wait, you can’t, because you’re “signing off”.
You have no basis for any of those claims. None. I didn’t quote any numbers about the effectiveness of any method of birth control, nor have I posted anything claiming to be an exhaustive list of available methods, nor have I made claims or denials about complications that may result from using a certain method or methods of birth control.
Again, not an iota of supporting anything on your assertion. Just your special magical status as an expert. Of course, I’ve seen plenty of people take significant breaks from sex — sometimes for years at a time — when they or their partners became HIV+. But never mind all that. Some educated idiot on the internet told me that nobody can ever stop having sex, so I must have imagined it.
None of that makes you an expert on human sexuality. It makes you a qualified expert on certain aspects of human sexual biology. There’s a difference, and the difference is significant to this discussion.
Uh-huh. Boy, that sounds vaguely familiar… oh wait. There it is. Waaaaay back up at @54 where I said you couldn’t see the forest for the trees, that you weren’t arguing the point, you were arguing the issue, and there was no point in getting into this with you. You sure proved me wrong on that one.
No, I’m reasonably confident that you don’t. But keep asserting that you do. That’s really working for me.
Jesus wept.
Hey attitude devant, if you’re still around, I’d like to ask you a question. It’s somewhat off topic, but I wonder. Is there any good reason for birth control pills to require a prescription (and a costly and hassle-some OBGYN visit?) I think having them behind the pharmacy counter would increase ease and compliance. Current guidelines only suggest cancer testing for every third year now, so why the the annual pelvic exam?
Is this impacted if Jim McDermott’s amendment to allow single payer national health plans goes through?
Obama is a lying scumbag!! He needs to be impeached asap!