Being Female Is A Pre-Existing Condition. Stand Up for Equity In Health Insurance Coverage.
By Susie Madrak Wednesday Oct 21, 2009 8:00amInsurance companies come up with all kinds of clever ways to take your money and give nothing back. Gender discrimination is one way in which they'll try to screw you. (Even if you're a rape victim.) Imagine being told to get sterilized so they don't have to pay for another C-section! Are you going to take it?
We sent more than 10,000 letters to Congress in response to Peggy Robertson's story. Her insurance company had required that she get sterilized if she wanted to receive health insurance.
Members of Congress heard about it. The media reported on it. But we wondered, do our friends, family and neighbors realize how insurance companies have turned being a woman into a pre-existing condition?
Take your ticket for gender equity. Get yours, here: seiu.org/ticket
Women want equal coverage for the equal premiums they pay - plain and simple. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) is leading the charge, but we've got to get the word out. We built a tool to do just that - to demonstrate that it's time to deliver on health insurance reform. When you take your "deli counter ticket," you'll receive a unique number. Post the number, along with this automatically-generated status update on gender equity in health care to Twitter, Facebook, or in emails to friends: I'm [your number] against discrimination by health insurers. Women deserve equal coverage for equal premiums. http://seiu.org/ticket #fem2 #hc09
Right now, millions of American women aren't involved in the health care debate. They haven't called or written Congress. They haven't thought about health insurance reform much at all. But they're dealing with the health insurance system every day - paying more and getting less.
Women pay 30-40% more on the private insurance market as men. Common pregnancy and c-sections are considered "pre-existing conditions." And in some states, insurers can even deny coverage to victims of domestic violence.The bills before Congress will guarantee, once and for all, that women are treated fairly and equitably by insurers.
Login or Register to post comments.
HR 676 single payer, get the Wall Street Mafia out of health care.
Why Conyers/Kucinich (myself and many others!!!) who keep lobbying for H.R. 676 and calling it "Medicare for All" is kinda dumb. This article made me realize how incomplete and unfair Medicare has become:
http://www.counterpunch.com/cramer08182009.html
You, as usual, are right on the money when you suggest that a "Medicare" (as it is currently running) system for everyone would fall just as short for the rest of us as it does for America's senior citizens who are being gouged for "Medicare Advantage" etc.
We need a UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE SYSTEM that covers EVERYTHING from cradle to grave (including dental and vision) and that completely eliminates all for-profit insurance corporations from the PUBLIC health care equation.
And to think, part of Obama's health care reform will "trim Medicare funding"....
"We need a UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE SYSTEM that covers EVERYTHING from cradle to grave (including dental and vision) and that completely eliminates all for-profit insurance corporations from the PUBLIC health care equation."
This is EXACTLY what you need to demand. I think there are enough women in the U.S. offended by this crap from the greedy ba$tard insurance companies... time to tell them to eff off! you're not going to take it any more!!!
that MediCare is a lousy system that leads seniors to financial distress.
.
sarcasm
For the most part, seniors love Medicare and many would be in sad, damned shape w/out it.
I would take Medicare in a heart beat over the Insurance for profit industries.
go far enough in coverage and has limitations when it is desperately needed such as in paying for long term nursing home care.
It is a solid system to cover basics, but does not cover everything.
Many seniors who go into nursing homes mistakenly believe they will be covered, whether it is for a short stay or for the remainder of their lives. This is not the case.
MediCare only covers 20 days of nursing home care at the full reimbursement rate. From there, seniors have to pay a pro rate. In my personal example, that daily rate was $145 - $4350 a month. I was recently in a conversation with a nurse about possible employment at one of these private nursing homes. The job was basically as a pitchman to convince seniors to come to that nursing center and to "help" them figure out how to dispose of their assets like their bank accounts and homes so they would have the money to pay for their stay.
Guess where the person in this position was supposed to speak to these seniors and convince them to come to that nursing home? When those seniors were in a hospital bed nearing the end of their stay when the hospital decides they could no longer make them enough money to stay.
Nice, huh? And some of the many centers in this company's block of properties are owned by the same corporation as the hospitals where their "senior residents" are discharged from into the waiting claws of the nursing home industry where MediCare cannot and does not save them from losing everything they worked for over their life just to get the care they need for full recovery or eventual death.
Made my stomach turn because it was exactly the same thing my family recently went through. MediCare is woeful in end of life coverage and that is what my statement was about.
Insurance is a scam all over. Not just in health. They will raise your auto and property insurance based on your credit score/record. They also apply this law unevenly as they shield their biggest and best customers from the same scrutiny. I've seen proof of this just recently.
Is there anything to prevent insurance companies from using the credit checking policy as a reason to raise your health insurance? If not. Not much reform going on here.
The over-paid, greedy, heartless, nabobs who run the insurance companies in this country seem to believe that just being human is a pre-existing condition. I hope they all rot in hell for the pain, suffering, and DEATH they have inflicted on us all.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/21/insu...
now. And I won't even try.
http://www.prankplace.com/product.aspx?d=Sill...
And yet Viagra prescriptions are covered.
SCHWING!
You could say Viagra sales are surging.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IYx_tRnpVg
but a Viagra commercial somehow didn't catch the mute button and I got sucked into watching it. When the voice at the end came on with the "warnings" I nearly spit my beer all over the room when he said..."seek medical attention for an erection lasting more than four hours."
FOUR HOURS????
if I was with someone who had one for 2 hours, I'd be dialing 911 myself.
seek more diapers.
healthcare are ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS bringing up "Would you want a govt bureaucrat coming inbetween you and your haelthcare? well woodja?"
'Pro life' mofos. All about squirting out as many babies as possible, and this private 'healthcare' mandate on fecund women who've had trouble in the past (really, you can go vaginal after a csection. I know several women who have) is alright with these assholes? I guess because the 'industry' makes up 1/6th of the economy? What's the product? Profit for a select few...
I saw this on the news the other night and almost burst an artery. This is only one of 11 states where that bullshit is against the law.
The first thing they are doing is hijacking the positive word 'Public Servant' and replacing it with the negative word 'Bureaucrat'.
That is sometimes called 'loading' the question.
It should always be called propaganda.
The Reptiles have been doing this for one hundred years, they have gotten very good at it.
They have gotten so good at it that many who otherwise mean well, start repeating their loaded language.
hand out free copy's of The Tibetan Book of the Dead to everyone then say . . "see it's all one big lie, the grand illusion, what we are doing to help you out of your money and put you in the poor house"
Insurance denied to child because he is too small, another demands mom be sterilized
Same woman, different companies. And just the other day, "We won't insure that big baby" Can't get it if you're big, small, or a female baby maker. But they'll buy daddy's stiffie pills.
don't you? Pretty pathetic and appalling... not to mention how effed up and sad it is all at the same time.
Of course they will be fighting Republicans for Rape. It is going to be difficult but we are the majority are we not?
if you squint through the smoke just right.
The smiling jerks on that page, they all seem to say, "Yeah sure. I've raped. Why WOULD I vote against it?"
I once worked at an agency that provided as part of its services a battered women's shelter that also took abused children in.
Shouldn't the stay at a facility of that nature be covered as part of mental health and preventive services?
----
This is an utter disgrace. That it is allowed in any country says a lot about the people who live there.
What does it say about America?
I think you know what it says about America.
The reason that insurance premiums are higher for females than for males is because females have higher medical expenses than males.
It is Mathematics, not discrimination. Peggy is cute though.
health and looks also so they are exploited for maximum profit.
in your statement all the way to Canada...
Was that meant for me?
who started this thread. You both are in the same line.
not listening with an open mind. You think I am attacking women when in fact I am just tossing out a truth this is what capitalists do.
It has to be confronted.
do you know how the reply and post buttons work?
Fucking hell, I just answered a question about who someone was posting to, not commenting on any shit you were saying.
Jesus.
it's hard for some folk to figure out how these comments work and line up. Thanks for pointing it out.
where a reply is 90 miles away from the replied to, I stick the edge of my arrow on the left edge of the reply and scroll up, til I hit the first comment sticking out...but that was so obvious, I mean you were one comment away, stepped back the same as hers...like I said, *Jesus*
like you said... :)
Keep up the good work.
And thanks. I love being appreciated.
Er...you were talking to me? :P
it was BO referring to BO Bill... knock it off with the attack crap, will ya?!
to which men contribute. I mean I never believed in that virgin birth shit, and even if it WERE true, no one is claiming that these days. It takes a man, too. Courts recognise this in child support and paternity cases.
THIS IS WHY WE NEED UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE. If just for women only. If you men want to take that attitude, by all means, buy your own gd over priced 'health' insurance.
it's true it can't be denied.
way out there. Diabolical in fact.
.....that even righties could agree to this.
See, it's bad if the government directs women to be sterilized but it's just dandy if a for profit company tells them that. Do you got the hang of it now?
....until this agregious practise is stopped.
Except of course, those with feminist sensibilities like myself.
I've been advocating it for years. Never could understand why it's never caught on.
brainwashed women who'd never sign on...
There have been some attempts.
...... is to spread the risk. Not eliminate the risky.
It's not the same as automotive insurance or accidental death insurance - we will ALL get sick and/or die. We should be spreading the actual COST and get "insurance" out of the equation altogether.
We should have started at Single-payer, but I actually believe we will get there eventually. PO will be the foot in the door.
Winston Churchill said this about Americans: "They always do the right thing in the end.... once they have exhausted all other possibilities.
We've been fighting this fight for damn near a century now. How much longer is it going to take?
at least not for universal healthcare. It will be a foot in the door to mandate health insurance purchase and big windfall profits for the health insurers.
The whole point of insurance is to rake in as much money as possible without actually giving anything back for it. If a person has any health risk whatsoever, it's almost a guarantee that at some point the insurer will be expected to make good on his end of the bargain. Better to cut out that possibility in the first place. That way they can make as much profit as possible conning the people who are least likely to want anything.
Women have maternity costs, but not all women become mothers, and in the majority of the time, they're married and have husband's insurance as well.
Women tend to live longer than men, but at advanced age both men and women start being cut off by insurance companies.
And men have more frequent heart attacks and liver disorders leading to expensive operations.
And women tend to be under-diagnosed, and often upon a doctors visit will be all but directly accused of being hypchondriacs.
They actually listen to you and seem to care more.
Also skinnier fingers for the dreaded prostate exam.
A woman doctor gave me my first prostate exam when I was in the VA hospital.
She was cute too.
But she could've at least taken me to dinner first.
Depends on the doctor. I've had women doctors that barely seemed to notice I was in the room. I've had male doctors that took extra time to hear all my concerns and explained everything.
the worst, meanest gyn I had was female.
Now where's my "ignore" button?
Ah, there it is. *click*
we can always JUST STOP BUYING THE PRODUCT.
Some re-branding at minimum wouldn't hurt.
don't buy it. If enough Americans said "we're not buying this crap anymore, your shoddy loan shark health insurance products" what they going to do. Arrest everybody?
Otherwise, a medical emergency can bankrupt you.
with insurance as it stands, a medical emergency is highly likely to bankrupt you anyway.
but goddammit, no insurance co got money off me, only to tell me that 'cancer is not covered'
I've never paid for health insurance and never will. It never sounded like anything but a scam to me. Still can't believe people buy into it.
...I'm an aging American male. And an American. As such, it is my patriotic duty to oppose anything and everything that doesn't benefit me directly and to favor anything and everything that does help me, no matter how slight that help may me. Further, it just isn't my job to worry about others (unless they owe me money).
It's a dog eat dog world and caring about one's neighbor (or wife, or children, or siblings, or friends) is just a sign of weakness. Let them fend for themselves. Since they're all Americans, too, I know they'll stab me in the back the second I turn around, so why should I give any of them a break.
Is this a great country or what?
....hearing about this now? Not in the corporate interests of the media.
I live in Co., where we have insurance companies that refuse to cover children that are in the upper or lower percentiles of average weight. I've seen the children and they look perfectly normal to me.
What is this, "The Three Bears Insurance Co." "No, no, no, this child is too heavy to cover and this one is too light. Here is one that is just right. But she is female so we will have to charge her more."
Uncontrolled and unregulated capitalism is wrong on every level, but on health care it is particularly egregious.
Otherwise the balloon will not lift off.
Balloons fly just fine with no under aged passengers at all. Legal issues may ensue however.
Way to go Al! Nailing the lies of another anti-reform shill....this time in commitee:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/10/21/al-franke...
No doubt about it.
I love Al!!! He speaks truth to idiots, er ah, republican(t) talking heads... that woman looked like she'd been bitch-slapped by the end of the clip. She was called on her bull$hit, and quite nicely done too Senator Franken!
I like the fact that we're getting some really great Democrats speaking out so clearly -- Franken, Weiner, Whitehouse, Grayson, and others. It gives me hope for our future.
And this is the guy the GOP said "wasn't qualified" to be a Senator. He wasn't "serious" enough. Oh he's just a comedian, what does he know?
Well, he's a damn sight better than any of their disgusting, obstructionist asses.
Flipping through C-Span today caught Grayson announcing his name the dead website. It's another attempt to put this debate back into the moral realm where it started during the 2008 elections.
http://which-ways-up.com/2009/10/alan-grayson...
Didn't that annoy his uncle?
of the totally uncaring, greedy efftards in the insurance scam, er ah, bizness:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/21/insu...
I can't believe people put up with this crap!!
Every single person who enabled these decisions at health insurance companies should be deported to a lunar colony or something. Either that or locked up in supermax. Sociopaths, all of them.
Like those commie Chinese. And that's why we're free. Yup, yup and blah-de-blah.
Login or Register to post comments.