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.)

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.)

McCain is scary: installment #5,543

This doesn’t really need any commentary: Feministing headlines it “McCain: "Isn't rape hilarious?!" McCain allegedly told this joke in 1986:

Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, "Where is that marvelous ape?"

Here’s his campaign’s response to the story resurfacing, which pretty well confirms the story's true:

He's long said that he's said and done things in the past that he regrets," Rogers said. "You've just got to move on and be yourself -- that's what people want. They want somebody who's authentic, and this kind of stuff is a good example of McCain being McCain.

Yup, that’s just what I’d say. Let’s sure not let him be McCain in the White House.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town…CNN ran this headline about a recent Obama press event: “Obama talks about glass ceilings, child care, equal pay.” Moms Rising has sent out an alert asking folks to send Obama a thank you for talking about these issues. Contrary to what some may think, Obama ain’t the second coming. He’s a cautious, savvy politician and he’s going to disappoint us. But, jeez, he doesn’t make rape jokes. Or say he doesn't want to talk about his position on birth control, or think the cause of the gender pay gap is women's underqualification.

Little lady, you don't need equal pay; you need more school

How insulting is this? Senate Republicans this week killed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, saying it would result in too many lawsuits. Um, like, yeah, only if corporations discriminate against women. Sheesh.
It gets worse. John McCain didn’t bother to show up for the vote. Instead, he pontificated from New Orleans that the solution to disproportionate female poverty isn’t the right to sue to enforce equal pay laws, but—check it—better education and training for women. Can you get more condescending?

Mom’s Rising suggests women send him our resumes to give him a little reality check on our skill levels.

What will the Republicans do for (to) us?

As promised, here’s what the top three Republican candidates have to say about the practical problems facing mothers. Bottom line: Not much. All told, what they prescribe is even more application of YOYO—You’re On Your Own—the nasty regime families are presently struggling under.

None of them mentions the word “mothers,” or even the word “woman” except in the context of protecting traditional marriage “between one man and one woman” and prohibiting abortion, as if women exist only as wives and vessels. The proposals the candidates do make would in general add to the challenges facing mothers—abortions would become illegal and therefore (even more) unavailable and unsafe, the tax code would become more regressive, which would place more of the tax burden on mothers (since mother on average earn less than men and corporations, which would get tax breaks from these candidates), and, if Huckabee had his way, divorce would become difficult or impossible. None of them offers a plan to provide universal health coverage or even universal coverage of children.

For better or worse, John McCain says nothing about families or family values. He does mention the word “mother,” as in “the fight for life will be one of courage and compassion - the courage of a pregnant mother to bring her child into the world and the compassion of civil society to meet her needs and those of her newborn baby.” That sounds great. However, nowhere do I see any proposals for how to meet those needs.

He would cut the corporate tax rate and eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax Rate. I can’t see how this would help working parents, and more likely the cut in the corporate tax rate would shift the tax burden more heavily on to average working stiffs, including mothers.

Like the rest, Romney would appoint judges to overturn Roe v. Wade and define marriage as between one man and one woman. He would also enforce obscenity laws, promote software filters to block content from children, and support “school choice,” i.e. promote charter schools and private school vouchers, i.e. further undermine the public school system. He would also offer tax credits for parents who home school. This amounts to a credit for single-earner families, deepening the tax penalties on two-earner families. He would also further deregulate the health care industry and shift health coverage away from employers and on to individuals. A terrific idea, since so far the market has done a great job of providing health care, and individuals really need less security and more risk in these soft, easy times.

I got a sense of Mike Huckabee's seductive powers from his website. There are charming surprises like “Music and the arts are not extraneous, extra-curricular, or expendable - I believe they are essential. I want to provide every child these ‘Weapons of Mass Instruction.’ ” Aww, what a sweetie. Now, on to covenant marriage. Really—under Huckabee Arkansas became the third state to adopt covenant marriage, allowing couples to opt for a marriage contract from which it is hard to get out (but people aren’t stupid—hardly anybody has gone in for it). He believes “We do need to get serious about preventive health care,” but doesn’t specify what that means. “It is time to recognize that jobs don't need health care, people do”—right on. But that sentence finishes “and move from employer-based to consumer-based health care"—i.e. move health care even further into the market and shift more risk onto individuals. (See above on Romney’s similar ideas.)

Huckabee's Big Idea is a flat tax, which indeed is a revolutionary idea. It would be a steeply regressive step that would dramatically shift the tax burden away from corporations and the wealthy and onto us poor working stiffs.

There it is. Good night and good luck. We’ll need it, if one of these guys gets elected.