Health insurers discriminate against women

This one sent my outrage-o-meter off the charts: The New York Times is reporting that women pay significantly more for individual health insurance than men do, and the difference persists even when you consider only insurance that doesn’t cover childbirth. One insurance company, Anthem in Columbus, Ohio, charges 30-year-old women almost 50 percent more than men the same age.

The health insurance companies claim that women go to the doctor more often and have more lingering health problems. Just when you thought you couldn’t get more offended, read what the spokesperson for one of the insurers, Humana, said by way of justification, which just justified my belief that insurers are the lowest blood-suckers of the earth: “Bearing children increases other health risks later in life, such as urinary incontinence, which may require treatment with medication or surgery.” Screw you, too, buddy. As if having to suffer humiliating long-term medical issues as a result of helping continue the human race weren’t unfair enough, he has to throw it in our faces as an excuse for ripping us off? (See my earlier post.)

The article quotes Marcia Greenberger, a lawyer for the National Women’s Law Center criticizing the discriminatory practices. Greenberger claims that this practice can’t be justified by actuarial principles. That may be true—men probably incur more costs associated with heart attacks, say—but it misses what seems to me the deeper lesson. If anything is by rights a social cost, the burden of childbirth is. That our current system lays this cost at the feet of individual women throws into dramatic relief the utter bankruptcy of our system of treating health care as a private issue. The only insurance pool that makes sense is all of society, as (historical paradox though it is) United Autoworkers founder Walter Reuther saw. Or, as Malcolm Gladwell has put it, we should ditch the actuarial model of insurance for a social model of insurance.

These gender disparities show what a discriminatory dead-end efforts, like John McCain’s, to further privatize the system are. Greenberger notes that tax credits for health insurance—like those McCain would offer—would be worth less to women than men because of the higher premiums they face.

If McCain wins, and implements his health care plan, further privatizing the costs of reproduction, I suggest women go on reproductive strike. (Not a new idea, I’ll admit, although we’ve got one up on the Athenians, since we could go on reproductive strike without going on sex strike, at least until McCain and Palin outlaw abortion and contraception.)

Over 3 million cribs recalled

While waiting for research actually comparing the dangers of babies’ sleeping in cribs versus sleeping with parents, I read of the latest crib recall. This time it’s 1.59 million Delta cribs (yes, you read that right, million with an m), the biggest single recall in a string of crib and bassinet recalls over the last few months. In September the Consumer Products Safety Commission recalled 600,000 Simplicity drop-side cribs and another million of a different type of Simplicity cribs. In August it recalled 900,000 cribs. The recalled cribs had been linked to a number of infant deaths.

So I’m still skeptical about New York state’s campaign against co-sleeping. Where’s the science that says it’s better than the alternative?

Lenders prey on kids

In case you weren’t already outraged at the bailout for Wall Street, check out this op-ed in the New York Times on how parents are being disproportionately hurt by the mortgage crisis (AKA the predatory lending crisis). According to Eric Nguyen, “Nearly two-thirds of those trying to save their homes in bankruptcy have young children.” Among the many nasty elements of the disastrous bankruptcy bill passed in 2005 was one making it much harder to renegotiate the terms of a mortgage on a primary residence than on investment property.

Nguyen imagines a mother who becomes ill, racks up medical debt, and can’t pay the mortgage on her children’s home, then compares her with a wealthy childless couple who invest in a condo, run up credit card bills, and declare bankruptcy. Who winds up on the street? The kids.

Oh, and by the way, who voted for the bankruptcy bill? John McCain. Barack Obama voted against it. (Shamefully, though, his running mate Joe Biden voted for it.)

The right to register at Home Depot?

While I was out in the woods last week, I missed the remarkable Connecticut decision on gay marriage. And it is something. Not only did the state supreme court rule that gays have a right to marriage; it went further and said that civil unions are no substitute. The court ruled that both a law restricting marriage to heterosexuals and civil unions intended to provide all the benefits of marriage to same sex couples are unconstitutional because these laws violate the equal protection clause of the state constitution.

I think the Connecticut Supremes took the only coherent position possible, and the decision, couched as it was in comparisons to the civil rights and women’s movements, was inspiring, and nearly choked me up.

Interpreting our state constitutional provisions in accordance with firmly established equal protection principles leads inevitably to the conclusion that gay persons are entitled to marry the otherwise qualified same-sex partner of their choice,” Justice Palmer declared. “To decide otherwise would require us to apply one set of constitutional principles to gay persons and another to all others.

And then, reading down the New York Times article on the ruling, I was deflated by this, from one of the plaintiffs who’d sought the right to marry: “For 28 years we have been engaged. We can now register at Home Depot and prepare for marriage.”

Home Depot? This is what the great struggle is about?

I return to what I said in an earlier post: if the state grants marriage to any, it must grant it to all. But let’s get the state out of this bogus business altogether.

Cloth versus disposable: the fight goes on

In the perennial--and to new parents, fascinating--debate over disposable diapers versus cloth, add a good article in the Boston Globe. I'm still a cloth advocate, but a hypocritical one, because we're now using disposables on our second child. The decision wasn't entirely ours--our daycare won't use cloth--but then again we aren't even using cloth at home now.

One line from the Boston Globe article made me snicker, mostly at myself. Turns out that Seventh Generation, the leading "ecofriendly" disposable, whose diapers come in an inconically natural brown color and which my baby wears, dyes them that color for branding purposes. Doh.

One of the reasons I'm skeptical of studies that purportedly find cloth vs. disposable a toss-up is that it seems factors that favor cloth get left out. Such as the possibility that multiple children can use the cloth diapers--they last a good while. Also, the author left out of her article the issue of disposable diapers encouraging later toilet training (because they hold so much liquid away from the child's skin that the child doesn't learn to find soiled pants unpleasant).

Anyway, check it out and decide for yourself.

Washington paid leave sinking, women lawyers rising

The bad news and then the good news. First, Washington's groundbreaking paid family leave program may be going down the toilet, done in by a bad economy and a governor who can make herself seem fiscally conservative by cutting a controversial new program, even though it's small change compared to the many-billion-dollar deficit the state faces and it's a social support families need now more than ever in these tough times. Officially, Governor Gregoire is just "suspending" work to set up the program, not killing it, but it will be hard work to get it going again once setup is halted. And you can forget about it and a lot of other good programs if her opponent, Republican Dino Rossi, unseats her in the upcoming election.

Now the good news, or maybe it's the good news-bad news: Although women have made up at least half of law school graduates and new hires at big firms for the last 20 years, there are few women partners at the top firms. That's largely because of the hostility of the profession to mothers: according to the Los Angeles Times, about 42 percent of women leave the profession because of a lack of family-friendly policies. But (here's the good news part), the LA Times also reports, firms are finally beginning to see the error of their ways, implementing mother-friendly policies, like longer maternity leave and part-time positions.

I've got to harsh my own buzz now: Until these policies are made mandatory for all companies across the country, they will remain the privileges of the lucky few.