Insurance Companies: Get Sterilized and Then We’ll Cover You

I’m a little confused… Where in this story was this woman FORCED to take any of the insurance she’s had in the past. She CHOSE to buy into the insurance with the $5000 deductible. Now that this doesn’t fit into her plans, she’s angry at “them”? Wow, what a spoiled child she is. Also, she made this decision some time ago and her solution is now, “Let the government take care of it?” Again, spoiled child looking for a handout. Good job, Barry, on teaching another American citizen that the answer to all their problems is a government handout.
Wow!

Now that this doesn’t fit into her plans, she’s angry at “them”?
Nancy Dickinson | Oct 15, 2009 10:54:46 AM
In every other first world nation in the world, health insurance would not be an overriding factor in whether or not to have a child (and it should be noted that in almost every first world nation, the birthrate is below the replacement rate – overpopulation is NOT a problem in the first world and kids to parents who want them are an unmitigated blessing).
It is not unreasonable to be a bit annoyed that your country is behind every other first world nation in existence in the area of health care.

The story is highlighting the rediculousness of insurance policies for health care. So many people compare it to car insurance, but you don’t have to have a car. You have to have a body, so there is no comparison.
A woman cannot get health insurance if she is pregnant. Period. In any state. If she makes too much money she will not qualify for medicaid. All she can do is attempt to get the hospital to write off the bill, after creditors have been handed the debt and hurt the credit score (a highly flawed number that affects how much you pay for anything on credit, whether you get a job or promotion, and even whether you can rent an apartment or get a monthly service like a cell phone).
As far as getting a job herself, perhaps she had no employable skills to get a job with benefits. They are few & far between anyway, and as her husband’s group policy shows, they are often too expensive to take – you need to pay for your house, food, and clothing, after all. Besides, you must work for a year full-time, at a company with more than 50 employees, just to qualify for FMLA, and that leave is unpaid so you still have to plan how to pay your bills in those 3 months, how to negotiate time off for well-child visits, a sick baby, etc. I was once fired for taking lactation pumping breaks because I also had hour restrictions at the one daycare I could afford, and my employer only held a policy at the discretion of the supervisor for employees that had been there less than 1 year (10 months when I had my daughter) for up to 12 weeks unpaid. They wouldn’t let me take those breaks unpaid and listed my firing as due to “performance issues” even though my productivity had actually increased upon my return.
Women are treated unfairly in the workplace and by insurance companies because of their ability to have children, because they are women. That’s what this is pointing out. We’re so far behind the rest of the world, which sees healthcare as a right and not a privalege. Insurance is for the hypothetical catestrophic and not the routine, and the routine has become out of the price reach of most people, so other nations cover health care rather than let insurance companies fix costs. I’d pay 30% tax on income for FREE healthcare, since it costs that much for insurance anyway, PLUS co-pays and deductibles.

You know, healthcare does need revamping, it needs to be not government but free enterprise, but the largest problem, parents or parents to be, if you can’t afford to have a child, then don’t, and if you do anyway, don’t expect someone else, or a company to pay it for you. Being a responsible parent and citizen means making informed decisions, and using common sense. My dad once said, if you can’t pay cash, you can’t afford it or don’t need it right now.

You ever see the movie “Idiocracy” ? Poor people can get medicaid, many hard working middle class people put off having children until they can afford it. If we allow insurance company’s to punish the working class then just the uneducated poor will have the most children and we can look forward to a dumbing down of society. Everyone should have health care, everyone should have a choice of children, not because they’re rich or poor or just middle class. That’s why Universal Health care is so important. No more class structure that encourages failure.

connect the dots wrote: “Why didn’t SHE get a job that had benefits? I did that when I wanted to have a child years ago.”
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Years ago, such jobs were much easier to find. Since her husband was teaching in a rural school, there’s a good chance there weren’t any such jobs to be easily had.
I taught in a very-large school system that pays much better and, even in retirement, a family’s max. premium for top-notch, NO deductibles insurance will be $368/month in 2010. When I was an active teacher, we took lower salaries to make sure retired teachers got good benefits because we knew we’d be those retirees some day. Fortunately the current teachers in my system still think the same way.

Another distorted “news” piece by the complicit main stream press demonizing the insurance industry on behalf of the Obama administration, ala Pravda, Izvestia, or Tass.
If the socialists finally get their “single payer” government run insurance in place, there will be no choice or alternative to what the government dictates.

Interesting reading that “Garden Lobster” says they would PAY the 30% tax just to have “free” health care. I suppose the taxes that they already pay it’s quite enough! For years, health insurance carriers would NOT cover simple birth control pills; which made me very angry! Today, with the population explosion, and the extreme cost if something goes wrong with the pregnancy, NOW the carriers are worried about the cost of women having children. There is NOTHING inexpensive to having children. You can’t buy car insurance after you have wrecked your car; same holds true to health insurance. One of the biggest problems in getting folks to purchase health insurance is they want “someone” to pay for it. We are a changing world, people! Learn how to navigate through the system.

The author has a clear-cut agenda: Accept state-run health care or risk being ripped off at your peril, or worse. This was a sad testimonial of how journalism has been denegrated to sounding like a papparazzi for TMZ.
The author makes an disconcerting and inappropriate sympathy play for a woman making choices willingly, understanding the details of the plan beforehand, signing on for purposes that were purely financially driven, and whining about it when it no longer suits her lifestyle.
Specifically, when Ms. Buchanan made her choice, she knew the consequences of her decision (basically, bearing a child mostly at her own expense). Despite that, after signing onto the plan, the family made a conscious decision to add to their family.
Such a sad state of affairs the false sense of entitlement in this country. No one owes anyone anything, nothing is really free, hard work is the road to success, and those that whine about not having enough should get off their duffs and earn the funds needed to finance their lifestyles themselves!

A nation as wealthy and wonderful as ours should not even have a discussion whether IF the general welfare of the people is contained within the idea of “healthcare.” Of course it is. As a people, we should not let others profit from or able to control basic healthcare in this nation. Until we remove from the health equation “profit”, then healthcare will always be an expense over and above service for the consumer. What a shame.

Health insurance companies are unlike car insurance comapnies in a number of ways, but one which seems to be ignored is that your car insurance company doesn’t have a whole lot of control over the design of the car, the dealer who sells the car, the government which makes the roads, and the service station which sells you gas. They basically set rates based upon what sort of car you have and what your driving record is, and a bit for where you live and how far they estimate you drive. The healthcare insurance companies do have the doctors, the hospitals, the pharmacists, the pharmaceutical companies, the employers who buy the group policies and the consumers who hope they will be covered for something if they actually get sick all terrified of the power of the insurance companies. Yes, car insurers try to influence all those aspects of how we drive around, but the health insurance companies dicatate to the whole healthcare industry what the providers are allowed to do, how much they will pay for it, and all sorts of hoops the providers have to jump through to get paid. Health insurers tell the whole clinical care system how it should run itself, and constantly override the medical judgement of the doctors through the threat of witholding payment. Do you think a car insurance company would get very far saying, “Driving while pregnant is hazardous, so we will not cover any woman driving the car who has not been sterilized”?

Hey, the government needs to get “out of the pockets of the insurance companies.” NOooo. The insurance companies need to get the h____ out of our pockets to the extent of paying their Ceos as much as +23 million a year, not counting stock options. The first step should be to bring them totally under the anti-monopoly laws from which they have been exempted. All other mammoth corporations are subject to them. Why not the health insurance giants such as Blue Cross and Screw You? Could it possibly have anything to do with the rampant bribery in D.C. called “lobbying”? Just getting rid of one lobbying giant such as Lockheed-Martin would pay for the major expenses of health care reform. Those of you defending companies that control the market entirely in many states are either working for them or as uninformed as you possibly can be. Just go to the web fact checkers such as Snopes and look up the salaries of insurance company Ceos. While you’re at it, look at the comparative data between superior health care systems for the average “Joe” such as in France over ours. Yes, health care is excellent for those of us who can afford very expensive insurance, but it’s still completely out of line because of unmitigated, immoral, non-Christian GREED. We pay twice as much and are not covered for critical things such as nursing home care. We pay 3 times what the other countries pay for drugs. Get the facts or save your Limbaugh nonsense for those who don’t know better. You swallow lies like they’re your favorite flavor of ice cream.

This is the problem with insurance companies. They cherry pick. All those that are against reform are those that don’t use their insurance and has a company that pays for it or they are on medicare which is a government plan.
She was denied because if she was to get pregnant again she would require a C/S. This is the unethical practice of insurance and denial of coverage.
Make it competitive, remove anti-trust exemptions and get a big player like the government that does the best job of controlling costs.
Medicare has the best history from all the insurance companies in reigning in rampant medical inflation.

Igor, I’ll try again.
First, I agree that the CEO’s and the board members are greedy. I never said anything to the contrary.
I said that our politicians are indeed in the pocket of health care industry and banking/financing institutions.
How? By taking huge contributions from them. The politicians state that they can regulate these industries AND collect the contributions all at the same time.
I happen to disagree. Apparently, they cannot.
Do you know why the CEO’s get away from being greedy? Our politicians turn a blind eye to the CEO’s practices because the politicians are being paid
off in the name of “contributions”.
We need Campaign Contribution Reform.
I don’t hear too many politicians calling for this. Do you?

Here’s an idea… Don’t have children.

Join the military – tricare baby!!! Free O’costs!! Two kids here and 0$ in hospital costs. Not only that, you get to travel, learn about yourself and great education benefits – It’s a win for you, a win for your soon to be child, and a win for your country. Seriously though, it’s better than bankruptcy and living in a trailer.

If you are on the side of not wanting every American to have good and affordable health care how can you possible sleep at night. Every country in the modern world has free or reasonalbe health care. Now in China they can tell you you can’t have children so maybe you out there with that mind set should take a good look at China, as a possible new home. If the rest of us are just free laoders and need to get ourselves jobs maybe we stay here and get our elected officals to vote for health care reform. Seems like a good plan to me.

We just might have to pardon Doktor Mengele. “Justice” might be to tell the CEO of the insurance company that he or she can continue to sell insurance ONLY if first sterilized!
Well, by antics like this, the insurance industry is quite certainly shooting itself in the “foot”. This is the sort of asinine behavior that will actually get the Public Option not only passed but actually turned into the Public Monopoly – generic socialized medicine for EVERYONE.

jhw539 said “In every other first world nation in the world, health insurance would not be an overriding factor in whether or not to have a child ” Hey – if you can’t afford to have a child, then don’t have one. The delivery is the cheap part of raising a child. If they can’t afford that, then they can’t afford the child.

Angie in PA said “Insurance companies telling you what to do with your body” They were only telling her what to do if she wanted that insurance. If she didn’t like it, then go find other insurance or don’t have a baby. It’s her choice. Since she had a previous c-section, she would be at risk to have another high cost delivery.

SFRussel1963 said “Since when should any corporation have the right to tell anyone what to do with their own body?” If you purchase a particular policy, then you have given them that right. It’s just like car insurance – you may have to use a particular repair shop or they will only cover certain brands of parts. It’s what insurance is.

I heard this news report on t.v. and this article does not seem to cover all the topics. First of all: regardless of what we think about the number of children being born, no insurance company should be offering health care contingent upon being sterilized. (What a weird word for this procedure – it is hardly about sterilizing someone).
But the issue that came up in the broadcast which should be of concern is the fact that women are charged at higher rates for our health care (which did include birth control at one time)…in addition to our clothes, our hair care, our dry cleaning. Gender should not be the overriding criteria for cost but determined more by what the actual cost of the procedure is.
How health care is delivered/provided in this country needs to be reworked. Period!

I was a Life/Health insurance agent and I can tell you Women-in my 14 yr. experience, have always had much higher health rates than men. Where have you all been? I couldn’t believe you just now found this out. It was and is an outrage.

More propaganda from the state run media. Golden Rule is a low cost division of United Health Care. My daughter bought GR for a few months between graduating college and starting her new job.
Let’s find all the horror stories and have Sen Mikulsky pound her fist in anger.
Here’s an idea: fix ONLY the problems – not turn the system on its head. If we go all the way with this, WE WILL ALL HATE IT IN TEN YEARS – I guarantee it.

Insurance Companies will continue dictating life limitations and plans as long as they have unchecked power regarding our health. No company should have such a power. They have abused and exploited US for far too many years. Another article in today’s news featured insurance companies’ decision to drop insurance of anyone who is getting sick as a result of their drywall. Where’s the personal choice in that? It’s a rip-off pure and simple. Now those people are not only poisoned but are not even allowed the right to sell the house! How’s that for corporate dictatorship. I find it funny that some people here blame our current President for Insurance Co decisions!Get the dad-gum Ins Co out of our Life decisions! Join the rest of the free World and protect US citizens from exploitation and abuse of Ins Cos!

This article illustrates what is at the heart of the so-called Health Crisis. The insurance companies get rich while fleecing all of America. The real reform needs to be done to the insurance companies. Follow the money and it leads to the heart of the issue.

Important things to remember:
1) equality under the law (women do not have this except in eleven states) for insurance
2) there are two aspects involved: the health care providers AND the insurance companies. Too many people equate one with the other.
Our health care costs are too high — having a larger pool of people may allow us to lower costs BUT if this is only driven by the “free market” it will not. History is proof: the insurance industry said that by allowing them to add to medicare (read this medicare advantage) very few “additional benefits” have been added, costs are 14% higher for services than found in traditional medicare (read this $830 per person), AND co-pays are, in general, higher than in traditional medicare.
these are facts that anyone can find if they want to do so. Too many people are not searching for “truth” they are only spouting retoric of others — example those who say such things as: “Get your government out of my medicare” — these people somehow failed to understand that Medicare IS a government program and that without government THEY WOULD HAVE NOTHING!
So, I get down from my soapbox and allow others to raise to the occasion.

I really have to disagree with most of these comments. I feel the urge to use my freedom of speech on this one although I rarely speak out on websites like this one…
I think the whole issue here is being driven in a political direction rather than addressing the REAL issue. Has nobody noticed the outrageous population problem on this planet?!?! It’s not that insurance companies (in my opinion) are being “anti-woman” or whatever you all want to call it but they are trying to get women to face the fact that having babies costs this country billions of dollars. How many women out there are having babies so their welfare checks are bigger and they get more food stamps and lets not forget the earned income credits and child tax credits every year on those tax returns. Our schools are over populated and teachers are loosing control of their ability to teach because there are just too many women having children! We face illness “pandemics” because there are so many people that we just cannot find space of our own and are in close contact every moment of every day with more people!!!
I could go on and on about how somebody needs to get the ball rolling on this population problem that our world faces. Where are we planning to put all these children someday when they are old enough to have their own chilren? How are we going to support the numbers here financially and environmentally?
Anywho, I’m not very good at this type of thing but I hope that I’ve helped the other side of this debate just a little. Thanks for reading my ranting.

If you can’t afford children, don’t have them. There are way to many OOP’s to feel any empathy for people. If you can’t afford children and don’t have insurance, don’t get pregnant. Just because you’re a woman doesn’t mean that it’s your God given right to reproduce. I waited until I had insurance, a home and a good job before even thinking about having kids. I’m tired of everyone blaming everyone else for the life they chose and the destiny they control. I don’t think an insurance company should tell anyone to get sterilized, but a lot of welfare moms should. I think if you have one child on welfare, it should be a mandatory tubal ligation. Just my opinion..

The private insurance companies do not exist for your health reasons – it’s there only if can make money off your health.
Most ridiculous thing I’ve read – suggest that she find a job with the right health benefits. Why should your health be tied to a specific job?

Garden lobster: unpaid medical bills does not effect your credit score….
Women in general should pay more for Medical insurance they cost more. They are either having babies, having plumbing removed, or Medicated.

If you can not afford to pay for the health insurance you should not have any more kids. When discussing with your husband whether or not to have another child you should have also discussed how you were going to pay for it! You want to have another child but you don’t want to pay for it?

Personally, I feel uncomfortable DEPENDING on a program from my employer for something as necessary as healthcare. What ever happened to options? I am equally as irritated by the reality that women are always the one’s with the burden of sterilization when it is far easier and cheaper to snip the males of our species. :)