False Hope and the Stupak Amendment
One reason private health insurance tends to cover abortions is that having an abortion is a lot cheaper than having a baby. Consequently, it kinda sorta seems like the Stupak Amendment might have a limited practical impact. Thus I’ve had thoughts along the lines of this from Mark Kleiman:
But what happens when some of the women you insure get pregnant and wants to terminate? Since perinatal care plus delivery would probably cost you $2500, while a first-trimester abortion costs about $200, you’d be happy to provide the abortion coverage gratis if you thought that otherwise even as many as one in twelve of those women would choose to carry to term. You can’t provide it gratis; that’s what Stupak provides. But you could provide it cheap, even to someone who’s already pregnant. Charge $50 for the abortion-coverage rider, effective immediately.
There seem to me to be logistical questions about this. But I don’t think the profit profit motives quite add up. After all, an abortion is not a hugely expensive medical procedure, and whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term is a major life choice. Consequently, I think we should anticipate the price-elasticity of abortions to be relatively low. In other words, in a Stupaked universe most women who find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy are just going to take the financial hit, not have the baby. Under the circumstances it doesn’t really make sense for insurance companies to provide the coverage at an actuarial loss.
The big losers here, however, will be the set of poor women who really may not be able to get together the few hundred dollars that would be needed. This is, of course, entirely typical of relatively “soft” abortion restrictions. Very few people are sufficiently hardcore to push for legislative measures that would really and truly make abortions generally unavailable. Instead the tendency is to create situations that leave loopholes for the affluent while making poor women bear the burdens of middle America’s somewhat incoherent moral stance on the issue.
122 Responses to “False Hope and the Stupak Amendment”
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November 12th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Very few people are sufficiently hardcore to push for legislative measures that would really and truly make abortions generally unavailable. Instead the tendency is to create situations that leave loopholes for the affluent while making poor women bear the burdens of middle America’s somewhat incoherent moral stance on the issue.
Some would say that this is not a bug but a feature.
*
Actually the cost of an abortion vs. delivery to term should tell us something. The political right is usually all about how costs determined by the free market are the only way to evaluate the worth of labor.
So what does the cost of delivering a pregnancy to term vs. the cost of abortion tell us? That abortion is a heckuva lot easier than pregnancy. Of course the “no pain no gain” school of morality would already conclude from this that abortion’s ease is evidence of its immorality, but I would submit something different — that the relative cost of delivering a live birth vs. an abortion is evidence of how tough pregnancy is.
Let us suppose a fetus counts as a human life under the law. As a human I have certain rights but they are not infinite. If my kidneys are failing, I have the right to obtain dialysis (if I can afford it) and even to get a donor kidney (if a donor can be found). I do not have a right to force someone to donate a kidney to me nor to have myself hooked up to someone with functioning kidneys so that all my waste products will be filtered by his kidneys.
But that is exactly the sort of thing pregnancy entails. Pregnancy entails a significant harm to a woman and it’s very difficult to get a baby out alive (it’s always much easier to pull an object out of an opening if you can just disassemble the object). So even in the case of a 3rd trimester abortion, it’ll be easier to have the abortion than to have a live birth. Thus the, “why don’t they just give birth” argument just doesn’t hold. Shouldn’t the cost of labor tell us something about what is required in labor?
November 12th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Re: Very few people are sufficiently hardcore to push for legislative measures that would really and truly make abortions generally unavailable
Wrongo. The percentages vary depending on how you ask the question, but at least a good third of Americans, including Bart Stupak and myself, believe that abortions should be made illegal except for extreme cases (personally i’d say serious health risks to the mother and nonviable fetuses).
November 12th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Why don’t all you rich liberals contribute to a charity to help poor women pay for abortions?
For that matter, why don’t you just create a charity to help poor people in general with everything?
November 12th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
abortions should be made illegal except for extreme cases
Really? Which of your decisions about what medical procedures and treatments to obtain ought to be made subject to the approval of the rest of us? I think that it should be illegal for you to visit a psychiatrist who offers to prescribe a drug of which I disapprove.
November 12th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
It’s just mind blowing that after months of discussion of health care bills they add this at the last minute and everyone thinks about what it means after the house passes the bill. Maybe it’s good that the procedure makes everything take so long and it’s now got to go through way more stages to stop them doing crazy last minute shit that nobodys thought about. Stupak may have made the bill hugely anti abortion, or may have done very little – nobody thought about it till Saturday!
November 12th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
For that matter, why don’t you just create a charity to help poor people in general with everything?
As soon as conservatives create a charity to fund their wars and pay bankster bonuses.
November 12th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Bottom line is that not enough Demo Congressmen agree with Matty that the taxpayers should pay for abortions on demand.
To Matty this is criminal in all but name.
However to a majority of Americans it is simply a reflection of their own beliefs.
Of course to Matty this only proves, again, how stupid the public is and how much better we all will be when the progs gain dictatorial power over us all.
Damn our democratic republic all to hell, right Matty?
November 12th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
The big losers here, however, will be the set of poor women who really may not be able to get together the few hundred dollars that would be needed.
Yes. Most women who can’t raise $200 to avert disaster, however, probably don’t have any insurance now. So even Stupakcare would be a huge advance for them.
November 12th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
The Hyde Amendment already does that. The Stupak Amendment goes further.
… which was the point.
You’re assuming that a majority of Americans are making the same mistake you are on the Stupak amendment.
November 12th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
For that matter, why don’t you just create a charity to help poor people in general with everything?
Because that is the purpose of government: to provide for those who need help.
November 12th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
The big losers here, however, will be the set of poor women who really may not be able to get together the few hundred dollars that would be needed.
Such a shame really, the tragedy of these women having slipped, fell, landed on a penis, and inadvertently gotten pregnant. How could we possibly prevent such a terrible and unavoidable hardship from befalling these women?
November 12th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
It even says so in the Constitution, just in case anyone is paying attention.
November 12th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
“However to a majority of Americans it is simply a reflection of their own beliefs.
Of course to Matty this only proves, again, how stupid the public is and how much better we all will be when the progs gain dictatorial power over us all.
Damn our democratic republic all to hell, right Matty?”
…I’m sorry, aren’t you the guy that goes on and on about how terrible Obama is? By your logic, you shouldn’t do that, right?
November 12th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
@Bob Roddis:
While this comment is mean spirited and troll-like, the Stupak amendment is a good reminder that those of us with means and an interest in reproductive rights should be giving to Planned Parenthood.
November 12th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
For that matter, why don’t you just create a charity to help poor people in general with everything?
We should do this, yes, but we should also tax rich people to help poor people even more on top of that.
Bottom line is that not enough Demo Congressmen agree with Matty that the taxpayers should pay for abortions on demand.
The actual bottom line is that we’ll have to pay MORE in taxes because of the Stupak amendment–we’ll have to pay for women to carry pregnancies they didn’t want.
November 12th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
You can’t.
November 12th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
“The big losers here, however, will be the set of poor women who really may not be able to get together the few hundred dollars that would be needed.”
Lucky for them condoms are so much cheaper.
November 12th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
AB: No one just happens to get in a car accident, either; it’s always avoidable. Why should my taxpayer dollars go to taking those people to the emergency room, cleaning the debris off the highway, etc.?
“I say, LET ‘em crash!” —Airplane
November 12th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
I see Yglesias has officially become a misogynist:
You notice how the sexist Yglesias avoids mentioning the other party involved in getting a poor woman pregnant? Yglesias would leave them off the hook from paying their fair share of an abortion.
Bob Roddis:
My sentiment exactly. Since rich liberals (Bill Clinton) are misogynists (and Yglesias is doing his best to ape them), don’t hold your breath expecting this to happen.
November 12th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Such a shame really, the tragedy of these women having slipped, fell, landed on a penis, and inadvertently gotten pregnant. How could we possibly prevent such a terrible and unavoidable hardship from befalling these women?
Pro-life = punishing young and poor women for having sex.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
J.W.- Is that some kind of joke? Planned Parenthood is toothless. NARAL is toothless. If anything, this is a reminder that those organizations can’t actually be trusted because every time something like this happens, they rake in millions of dollars. There is literally no incentive for them to actually fight for abortion rights, and that shows in their behavior.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
You mean my plan covers my partner’s pregnancy?
Smarter morons, please.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
But even if the companies charge only $50 (I assume he means annually?) for the rider does it actually make sense for anyone to buy it?
If first trimester abortion costs $200, doesn’t buying the rider only make sense if I expect my likelihood of having an unintended pregnancy in any given year is at least 1 in 4? Which would mean I’m using awfully ineffective birth control. I assume for most women, the smarter thing to do financially would just be to put the $50 a year in a savings account earmarked for “emergency reproductive/abortion needs.”
Of course, we know women in aggregate are more risk averse than men, and people in general, regardless of gender, are kind of dumb about risk and numbers, and this issue has been getting a lot of attention, so maybe a lot of women would still buy the policy anyway.
If it plays out that way, seems like abortion riders could be highly profitable for insurance companies.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Abstinence only sex-ed, obviously.
So women should make sure that if they slip and fall on a penis, that it’s a rich penis.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
“Planned Parenthood is toothless.”
What are you talking about.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
“You notice how the sexist Yglesias avoids mentioning the other party involved in getting a poor woman pregnant? Yglesias would leave them off the hook from paying their fair share of an abortion.”
What are you talking about.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
@soullite: Sigh. Yes we know soullite, you’re the only true progressive in the universe and everyone else is an apostate failure sold out to corporations. So if Planned Parenthood and NARAL are out, what exactly are our options?
November 12th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
AB: No one just happens to get in a car accident, either; it’s always avoidable. Why should my taxpayer dollars go to taking those people to the emergency room, cleaning the debris off the highway, etc.?
Your car and auto insurance requires you to pay for a portion of your care out of pocket when that happens, typically much more than the $200 cost of an abortion.
And since you seem to think these situations are analogous, when you cause a car accident your insurance company can jack up your premiums or even cancel your coverage. Should the health insurer be allowed to do the same when someone acts irresponsibly and has an unwanted pregnancy?
November 12th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
@dreww: Pro-life = punishing young and poor women for having sex.
Well, your first mistake was assuming I am pro-life
November 12th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
@DaveNYC: Abstinence only sex-ed, obviously.
Nope. Try again
November 12th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
However to a majority of Americans it is simply a reflection of their own beliefs.
The majority of Americans are “Judeo-Christian” right? Genesis 9:4 clearly forbids eating of blood sausage, e.g. And this isn’t one of those laws of Kashruth only applicable to Jews, but it’s part of a covenant made with all of mankind (according to the Bible).
Thus, funds covering agricultural and food inspections (and if you’re against those, please read “The Jungle” again) should not go to inspecting or otherwise condoning the consumption of blood sausage as this food product is against the (at least nominal) beliefs of the majority of Americans.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Non-analogous. Car insurance premiums will go up after an accident, regardless of fault. Determining “irresponsibility” in pregnancy is not possible, if you think about it.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
sara,
Your argument could be made for pretty much any product an insurance company sells. The reason why insurance is a profitable business is because on average people will spend more money on insurance than they expect to get back. Of course, purchasing of insurance is still a rational decision as a yearly cost of $X might be manageable while a one-time cost for a medical emergency of $Y >> $X might not be possible to pay out.
Of course, one could also argue then that the insurance paradigm itself doesn’t make sense for covering routine health care …
November 12th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
“Should the health insurer be allowed to do the same when someone acts irresponsibly and has an unwanted pregnancy?”
Wanted, unwanted, why should the insurance company care? In either case a baby brought to term is way more expensive for them than an abortion, so insurance companies should penalize any woman who gets pregnant. Or only pay for abortions, not at all for any kind of obstetrics. Or give lower premiums to women who get their tubes tied. Come to think of it, they should insure women for far higher rates than men—between pregnancy and breast cancer, lady parts are hardly worth the hassle.
I actually imagine most of these ideas sound find to you; after all, you also don’t believe that preventive care of any kind should be insured.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
sara, you missed the point. You buy the rider after you discover you’re pregnant. In effect, it’s not insurance at all, it’s just a subsidy from the insurer so you get a cheap abortion, which is cheaper for them than covering the birth itself.
But I think Matt’s right; the subsidy won’t change anybody’s behavior, so it’s not going to be offered.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Non-analogous. Car insurance premiums will go up after an accident, regardless of fault.
That’s not entirely true. Many auto insurers do not raise your premiums for a single accident in which you were not at fault. But even if we assume you are correct and they did, the reason they do so is because even if you are not to blame for a given accident, being in one is highly correlated with either poor driving habits or being in higher risk situations while driving, and they raise your premium accordingly. The same could be said of unwanted pregnancies. While there are people who take every precaution and still end up with an accidental pregnancy, it’s a very small percentage of overall unwanted pregnancies, and so the need for an abortion is also highly correlated with irresponsible or high-risk behavior. Should the health insurer be able to charge higher premiums? After all, I’m not the one claiming these two situations are analogous.
Determining “irresponsibility” in pregnancy is not possible, if you think about it.
In an individual case, no. But in general, it is quite obvious that people seeking out abortions for unwanted pregnancies are going to be concentrated among people with the most irresponsible sexual habits.
Note, I say “irresponsible” not because I want to control people’s behavior or “shame” them, but because I don’t care how adamantly pro-choice you are, no one should think abortions are a good thing and one should want to minimize how often they happen. People taking more responsibility for their actions could have a pretty big impact on unwanted pregnancies.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Oh you silly progs… if only like you the rest of us lacked all moral compass and instead consoled ourselves with questions of what costs less then yes your putrid economics of abortion argument would hold sway.
But a majority of Americans aren’t quite so fucked up.
Too bad so sad for you.
All Stupak does is enforce Obama’s promise that NO Federal dollars would go to provide abortions.
Do you want to make your god out to be a liar? Again?
Anyone will remain just as free as they are today to purchase abortion insurance without a public subsidy and outside any government run exchange.
Most Americans don’t want to pay for you to murder your unborn child just because s/he is an inconvenience to you.
Perhaps fuckeys who will not wish to have a child will take precautions in advance.
Like a more careful choice of fucker.
However I’ll accept a reasonable compromise:
We’ll pay for your abortions on demand as long as it includes sterilization of both parents of the unwanted child.
Call it one strike and you’re out of the baby making biz.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
But, why can’t the rider be offerred at $1/year, thus providing both the financial benefit of abortion vs. cost of delivery, and making that option more desirable to any pro-choice female of child bearing age?
Certainly the chance that a person MIGHT want to be covered for an abortion would be worth $1/year ( I know that I would make sure that my daughters had it!), and it would make the policy more cost effective (in addition to selecting out staunch pro-life families, those who would always carry out a pregnancy, a costlier population even if limited only to strictly adherent catholics. ) If I were running an insurance it would be a no brainer, and clearly more profitable (by increasing volume) than trying to save that $50/abortion described previously!
November 12th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
@tomemos:Wanted, unwanted, why should the insurance company care? In either case a baby brought to term is way more expensive for them than an abortion, so insurance companies should penalize any woman who gets pregnant. Or only pay for abortions, not at all for any kind of obstetrics. Or give lower premiums to women who get their tubes tied.
Or we could stop pretending that maternity is an insurable event (pregnancy complications, preemies, those are insurable events) and acting as if health insurance is a good way to pay for it.
Come to think of it, they should insure women for far higher rates than men—between pregnancy and breast cancer, lady parts are hardly worth the hassle.
They do charge more for women, but not for much longer. No one seems to care about auto insurers charging men more. But you know what’s really unfair? Women have to pay for tampons once a month, just because they’re women! How unjust for them to have to spend more money then men because of a mere accident of biology in being born a woman. Men should be charged a tampon tax to even out the cost of living of the two genders.
I actually imagine most of these ideas sound find to you; after all, you also don’t believe that preventive care of any kind should be insured.
It should be covered if the insurance company wants to cover it, but not mandated. Some insurers might think that covering preventive care will lower their long-term costs, others may decide that preventive care is best paid for out of pocket. People can choose which type of plan they’d prefer. I’m pro-choice like that.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Matt’s analysis neglects the relative cost of abortions versus obstetrical care. Let’s say prenatal costs plus childbirth costsaverage $10K, and an abortion costs $500. Even if nine out of ten women who would want an abortion would pay for it, the insurance company would still be better off paying for ten abortions at $5000 than one birth at $10,000.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Cho Choo-
The law of this country is that abortion is legal. Should we also prevent insurers from paying for transfusions because some religious groups feel that accepting transfusions is an act against god?
Your morality is fine, but remember that the source of your morality was once responsible and comfortable with condoning slavery, and also with the genocide of the american indians. As uncomfortable for you as it may seem, societies sense of morality changes as time progresses. Maybe you are on the right side of history, maybe not, but in this country, we are supposed to be governed by the law and the court’s interpretation of it. You have every right to try to change the laws, to try to make your beliefs more universal, but no right to try to force your beliefs on those requiring government assistance because they don’t agree with yours. We don’t have a line item veto on our taxes, we all pay for things we don’t like, but as citizens we agree to go along WITH SOCIETY, and not expect everyone to conform to our beliefs. THAT is called freedom.
By the way, how would sterilization of the parents justify the murder (assuming you believe a fetus is a person) of an unborn child? Is it principal, or just anger?
November 12th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Speaking as someone who’s seen the costs of two live births and not had to pay them in full thanks to health insurance, you’re the dumbest thing I’ve met on the internet all day.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
It should be covered if the insurance company wants to cover it, but not mandated. Some insurers might think that covering preventive care will lower their long-term costs, others may decide that preventive care is best paid for out of pocket. People can choose which type of plan they’d prefer. I’m pro-choice like that.
AB, thats what we have had that has helped put us in the position we are in today. If people don’t have health care, they will still require care, but it will be more innefficient and eventually more expensive FOR ALL OF US.
It is clear that like it or not, we are all affected by the access to healthcare that our countrymen have and therefore, we must make sure that all people have basic minimum care. Those people who would not be covered for pregnancy as you describe, will still give birth, but far more often to premature and ill babies. These babies will be cared for at extreme costs. If all women are covered, it takes only a slight reduction in these births to cover the cost of the care of their deliveries for all of us. Skipping the moral issue (that maybe we should try to make sure that these babies have care, whether their parents choose good insurance or not), it is in our financial interests that they do. Only the insurers benefit by being able to exclude these services, because the public will be paying hard and long for those (that percentage of ill babies that would have been saved with prenantal care) that aren’t covered. And clearly under the current system, american healthcare is doing especially poorly at this specific issue.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Going back to the charity point raised earlier, what really is the objection to funding charities to provide abortion services? That wars aren’t funded by private charity or that the state has the authority to fund abortions have nothing whatever to do with it (or are you willing to harm poor women just for spite?). Let’s assume that there are 1 million poor women who would like to have an abortion and can’t afford it (given 1.3 abortions per year overall, that’s almost certainly way too high); you would only have to raise 200 million to fund them. That’s only something like $2 per pro choice adult. It’s just bizarre to me that you would flip out about the government not funding one of your preferences when it would be so easy for you to fund it yourself. This, as with so many other progressive freak-outs, seems to come down to the notion that other people should pay for what you want.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Nope. This one’s definitely dumber.
My apologies to AB.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Speaking as someone who’s seen the costs of two live births and not had to pay them in full thanks to health insurance, you’re the dumbest thing I’ve met on the internet all day.
Well thank you for the compliment and the well-informed and reasoned argument.
Maybe you should go back and read what I wrote one more time, learn the definition of an insurable event, and then get back to me.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
It’s bizarre to me that abortions are supposed to be a “preference” somehow separate from the rest of health care just because some people are too stupid to tell a baby from a blastocyst. That assumption alone infects one person’s life with another person’s superstitions, unless they’re rich enough to escape it.
I guess not having other people’s superstitions be my problem is supposed to be a kind of luxury?
November 12th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Since I’ve already established that you don’t know anything about contraception or insurance, why are you here?
November 12th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
I was thinking the same thing as Sara @23.
If you assume 66 million women who can become pregnant, subtract those who want to become pregnant (or don’t mind it), and those who oppose abortion (though abortion opponents get abortions, I doubt they’ll buy special insurance to pay for them) you have about 20 million women who would get less than 800,000 abortions. That’s less than 1/25. Assuming a $200 procedure, $8 covers it. Assume another dollar for admin costs, and you have at most $9 rider, plus some profit margin.
However, insurance companies know most women would pay for their own abortions if they were not covered. Only about 1/5 of abortions are performed because the mother can’t afford having a child. The flipside of this – a mother having a child because she can’t pay for an abortion – would be much less. Most likely, 95% or more of women who want an abortion will get the money somehow. So, the insurer saves the $200 on 19/20 abortions. The 20th woman has an unwanted birth, which costs 16 times as much as the abortion. The insurer comes out ahead $600. Selling riders, they would have to make about 12% profit, which is 3-4 times what they usually get.
Insurers would be better off just giving money to planned parenthood to dispense free birth control and to offer subsidized abortions to women who want them but can’t afford them.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Sancho-
or that some things are in society’s best interests, that people are entitled to them WITHOUT relying on charity. (or as I stated above, that I don’t want my taxes to go toward paying for unwanted pregnacies, and unwanted children. Let a charity pay for that as well.) How about we make police that way, or other services. Why should the services that an individual values be government funded, but the ones you won’t use be paid for by charity? Isn’t it better that as a society we agree that certain services (such as healthcare, or patent infringement enforcement[which doesn't do me any good] etc, need to be provided for those who can’t provide for themselves, and then allow those people the same rights all the rest of us have?
November 12th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
AB, thats what we have had that has helped put us in the position we are in today. If people don’t have health care, they will still require care, but it will be more innefficient and eventually more expensive FOR ALL OF US.
It is clear that like it or not, we are all affected by the access to healthcare that our countrymen have and therefore, we must make sure that all people have basic minimum care.
I was talking specifically about preventive care, and whether coverage for it should be mandated. Other than the very very poor, everyone can afford to pay for their own routine and preventive care. There is no reason to dictate that a third party pay for it.
Those people who would not be covered for pregnancy as you describe, will still give birth, but far more often to premature and ill babies. These babies will be cared for at extreme costs. If all women are covered, it takes only a slight reduction in these births to cover the cost of the care of their deliveries for all of us. Skipping the moral issue (that maybe we should try to make sure that these babies have care, whether their parents choose good insurance or not), it is in our financial interests that they do.
Pregnancy/prenatal care is a very special case that I see as very separate from the overall issue of health reform. Most people will have babies, and indeed the survival of the species depends on it! Childbirth with our current techniques and technology is very expensive, but it makes little sense to pay for it with insurance. Of course I don’t think it should be paid for completely out of pocket, because we don’t want to limit reproduction to the wealthy. But buying insurance to cover maternity care really only makes sense in the case of accidental pregnancies, and even those are largely preventable which makes insuring it pretty dicey. I would much prefer to find a way to sustainably provide a standard level (and that word is doing a lot of work here, because the biggest challenge is determining what is “standard” vs what additional care one could purchase) of maternity care for all people without the nonsensical maternity riders we have now.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
That was about 10 years ago. The number is down to about 800k now.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Staggering. Then again, this is the idiot who kept insisting three days ago that under no circumstances could an elective abortion be considered an insurable event, because he has no idea how contraception works.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Sancho:
My long term impression of “progressives” is that they are basically just little Stalinists at heart. They don’t really want to solve of the problems of poor people, many of which could be solved simply by such a voluntary charitable venture as I proposed.
The whole point of their endeavor is to have the government (which in their mind is simply them) boss everyone else around about everything. The fact that their programs actually do more harm than good (and/or that doing nothing is generally the best policy) must be rejected because it does not allow for their vision of perpetual bossing. Question their vision of perpetual bossing and be prepared to duck from the inevitable spitting of venom and purple faced rage.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
They are not primarily a lobbying organization. They spend much more money on subsidizing abortions than they do on lobbying. The point of giving them money is to allow them to do more of it, to defray the negative consequences of our bad policy.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
“Venom and purple faced rage,” Bob? Would calling people “little Stalinists” fall under that category?
November 12th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Alan,
Sure, I agree with that in general (though I have no idea what you’re talking about when you say that people who can’t afford something will be given the same “rights” as others when those things are paid for), but it’s pretty clear that we, as a society, haven’t put abortions in that category. In such a situation, the people who think that they should be put in that category should fund it themselves. That’s all I’m saying.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
“They are not primarily a lobbying organization. They spend much more money on subsidizing abortions than they do on lobbying.”
True, but it’s not like they don’t do any political work. They spearheaded the opposition to Proposition 4 in California—I phonebanked for them for two months—and it was defeated. Further proof, if proof be needed, that Soullite never knows what he’s talking about.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Try to imagine, for a moment, what an obscure and bizarre fetish it would be to want government to do everything. Just try. Try to imagine the case studies, its description in the DSM, everything.
This is the fantasy world conservatives have to hide in in order to justify their disastrous and failed policies. It really is that weird of a place.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
I think we’re all missing the point here – these are medically necessary abortions – I don’t think any insurance company covers, for the lack of a better term, elective abortions.
MEDICALLY NECESSARY – as in those women who’s fetus dies at 8 weeks and needs to have the dead fetus removed – that is still medically termed “abortion”. This amendment removes that from paid coverage. Where’s the moral argument for this not being paid for? Leaving a dead fetus inside a woman until her body decides to get rid of it is medically dangerous for that woman – this amendment does not provide for that medically dangerous situation to be paid for. Because of what? Some man’s stupid moral belief.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Since I’ve already established that you don’t know anything about contraception or insurance, why are you here?
Where did you establish that? All you’ve established is that you’ve gotten a pretty good discount on two live births by getting your insurance to pay for uninsurable events.
As for your contraception link, all that established is that far too many people are choosing very poor methods of contraception, and were they to make better choices we’d have so few unwanted pregnancies that we wouldn’t even be having this conversation right now.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
He’s not as dumb as you think, JM. We really shouldn’t insure against routine expenses such as preventive care or maternity. We should simply pay for them collectively, through taxes, just as we do for public education, for example. Pregnancy and maternity aren’t risks– they’re essential biological aspects of human social existence, and their costs should be shared.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
JM:
It seems to me that conservatives have their own vision of perpetual bossing with their war-mongering, drug warrior and anti-sexual privacy fetishes.
Not being a conservative, I can’t be responsible for what they think or do.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Jesus wept. Much of the expense involved in healthy births comes from the need to prepare for things that, should they happen, would be insurable events. Lacking these preparations, my insurance company would more frequently wind up on the hook for catastrophic costs.
This would be another one of those times when you’ve demonstrated that you don’t know anything about insurance.
… that you’ve never really thought this through and don’t know anything about it. You may have thought your sarcasm was cute, but it really just showed how ignorant you are.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
@JM: Staggering. Then again, this is the idiot who kept insisting three days ago that under no circumstances could an elective abortion be considered an insurable event, because he has no idea how contraception works.
You have this interesting technique of not actually refuting anything I say, but insisting that it is wrong anyways. Do you actually dispute that all but the most impoverished people in the US can afford to pay for routine and preventive health care?
According to your source, there are methods of contraception that are >99% effective. How many elective abortions do you think we’d have if everyone were using the most effective contraception methods?
You’re also lying about my comments from a few days ago, but whatever, par for the course at this point.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
And yet pregnancy and maternity carry risks that an insurance company has a vested interest in preventing, which is why they’re willing to pay for it.
Why create a whole new bureaucracy?
November 12th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
That’s because what you say reveals a shocking ignorance that involves issues beyond your glibertarian platitudes.
Yes, especially when they get old.
Once again, you’ve never thought this through, have you?
November 12th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Perhaps this was some other AB? And this? And this?
You kept stating it as a fact without actually arguing the point, which means that whoever it was, they were certainly stupid enough to be confused with you.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Julene, that’s exactly not what we’re talking about. Many insurance policies currently do cover elective abortions and the Stupak amendment would not affect the coverage of medically necessary abortions (nor would it prevent coverage of rape and incest related abortions).
November 12th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
So your position is that paying for maternity care is saving an insurance company money? Well in my years of experience managing and pricing a block of health insurance business (and sometimes we even make a profit! evil!), including maternity benefits, I can tell you that you are wrong, and it is laughable that you’d suggest it is me who is lacking knowledge of insurance.
And there’s that technique again! There was no sarcasm. There are very effective methods of contraception that many people choose not to take advantage of and end up pregnant. Are you really disputing this? And disputing it by wrongly asserting that somehow I think every single pregnancy ever was completely preventable?
November 12th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Yes, and I explained why.
Ah, that’s funny. Readers will note that AB doesn’t provide the lessons of his experience, he just invokes it as an authority. In reality, there’s virtually no chance that AB ever did anything of the kind.
Here’s what you said:
Yep. No sarcasm there.
Really, you’ve been nailed for being an idiot so now you have to lie about your own words and fabricate a background that will provide you with an authority to make up for what you lack in knowledge and argument.
Not that I’ve never seen a glibertarian pull this kind of FAIL before.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
But I don’t think the profit motives quite add up… in a Stupaked universe most women who find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy are just going to take the financial hit, not have the baby. Under the circumstances it doesn’t really make sense for insurance companies to provide the coverage at an actuarial loss… The big losers here, however, will be the set of poor women who really may not be able to get together the few hundred dollars that would be needed.
Well, in a Stupaked universe the poor women in question will have health insurance that will be on the hook not only for their prenatal and maternal medical expenses, but for their expenses as a result of botched amateur abortion attempts. So, yeah, they will find a way to make safe abortions cheap for their clients who want them.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Perhaps this was some other AB? And this? And this?
You kept stating it as a fact without actually arguing the point, which means that whoever it was, they were certainly stupid enough to be confused with you.
Nope that’s me. Now show me where I said anything remotely close to “under no circumstances could an elective abortion be considered an insurable event” (I love how you’ve added unconditional language to a general statement). Obviously there are completely unexpected accidental pregnancies that happen even after something like sterilization, but these are the extreme exception and not the rule. Hell, one of my best friends was told she was unable to conceive and got pregnant 6 months later. If you’d like me to caveat everything I say to account for uncommon outliers I will, but I don’t think anyone benefits from your ridiculous little semantics game.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
@44 Sancho:
Hey why dont 10,000,000 neocons just pay $100,000 a piece for the Iraq/Afghanistan wars. Seems like the neocons just want to spend my money on blowing stuff up. Bizarre.
November 12th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
OK.
… and, my personal favorite:
Did you like the sarcasm thingy? That’s another one of those things you never said but did.
November 12th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
I think that you underestimate the ability of insurance companies to pick cherries. Your argument is that the cost of an abortion is only important to poor women, so it would not be profitable to offer cheap abortion insurance to all women with pre-existing pregnancies.
The insurance company can handle that offering abortion insurance on a sliding scale which depends on income. So poor women pay $50 as in Kleiman’s example and middle income and rich women pay $400 (same as just paying for the abortion). Insurance companies can offer additional insurance on terms of their choosing. If they have an interest in providing discounts to poor pregnant women, they can.
I think a more important problem is that the innovator which comes up with my modified version of Kleiman’s profitable strategy will be targetting by the anti-abortion activists.
November 12th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Glibertarian, that’s all I get? I was hoping I could at least get a Rethuglican. Do you have any other inaccurate but oh so clever labels you can apply to me in the absence of actually refuting my arguments?
Yes, especially when they get old.
Getting old has nothing to do with it. Routine and preventive care is limited in cost due to it’s very nature. All but the most impoverished can afford routine and preventive care, because expenses going beyond that cease to be routine and preventive! If they can afford it through taxes they can afford it out of pocket, so unless you think the richest x% of people ought to just pay for all of the care of everyone else then there is little reason to not have them pay out of pocket.
Actually I think it through on a daily basis when I am analyzing health cost data, the data that shows me definitively that the costs of this care are well within the reach of most Americans. Has years of similar empirical analysis also led you to your conclusions, or do you just rely on single anecdotes like your personal maternity example?
November 12th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
It’s amazing that even a dim glibertarian like AB could wander into a debate on healthcare without have picked up, somewhere along the way, the cost-savings advantages of prenatal care.
But then, to invent some kind of employment history that entitles him to be that ignorant, well I haven’t seen that kind of FAIL since talking to a “foreign currency trader” who managed to botch the whole history of Soros … while linking to articles that proved himself wrong.
AB doesn’t rise to that kind of epic self-immolation, but at least he’s amusing.
November 12th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Do go on. Tautologies are so convincing, especially when you’ve spent days showing you don’t know anything about the topic.
Sheesh. The cost of treating my season allergies alone would have ruined my family, but that’s more a matter of inflated costs, compared to other countries, something that’s already been covered on this blog.
November 12th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Why doesn’t someone fund a “term” health insurance company that allows someone to purchase “pregnancy insurance”. Perhaps $50 covers the user for a period of 6 months and can be used for a select set of procedures. The Medicare plus model subsidized by pro-choice billionaires. Let’s see, $300m/$300per procedure would be enough for 1 million procedures. Stupak or no Stupak.
November 12th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Much of the expense involved in healthy births comes from the need to prepare for things that, should they happen, would be insurable events. Lacking these preparations, my insurance company would more frequently wind up on the hook for catastrophic costs. – JM
And that is a key difference between health insurance and, say, car insurance. Pace my earlier comment riffing on Sara’s point, there is actually a reason why we use the “insurance” paradigm to pay for routine health care costs (even if it is a flawed paradigm for reasons that have already been brought up in this thread) — because care for routine health issues prevents things that are, under any definition, insurable events. Thus it makes sense to bundle routine health care coverage with medical insurance per se.
November 12th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
For his next trick, AB will claim to be an astronomer and insist that there’s no such thing as a non-Newtonian orbit.
November 12th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
… and then claim he’d never said anything of the kind.
November 12th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
The fight is getting boring, to be honest. Let’s get some more voices in there or call it a day.
November 12th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
the Stupak amendment would not affect the coverage of medically necessary abortions (nor would it prevent coverage of rape and incest related abortions). – Sancho
I must have misunderstood the amendment (I haven’t read the text yet): I thought the only exception was life of the mother. Of course this would all hinge on the definition of “medically necessary”, wouldn’t it? And who gets to make this decision anyway?
I was once in an ER with respiratory distress and the insurance company decided to not reimburse me for the chest x-ray (I fought this and won) because they didn’t deem it “medically necessary”.
November 12th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Ab at #70
Although you may be correct from the insurers POV, please remember that those who are NOT insured often fail to get prenatal care and often do have the most complications of preterm births, etc.. While your insurance block may not cover this cost directly, surely we all do as a whole, both in direct medical costs and in future medical costs and lost productivity.
As a society it is in out interests to make sure that whatever prenatal care that maximizes neonatal health efficiency is provided, even if we are footing the bill.
AB
As for other preventative healthcare being outside insurance, we should remember that EFFICIENT preventative healthcare does not only benefit the patient, but also the rest of us as a whole. ie., your child’s DTP vaccine makes my childs vaccine more effective, etc… It is not everyone should get what he can buy, because what we need most is to be efficient. How that is to be provided may be cause for debate, but not whether or not it should be provided, because clearly in the current “some have and some not so much” system, too many people “choose” to not get such care (because they want to eat, or maybe for more selfish reasons), at risk to all of us and this effects our economy and society as a whole. If society offers these services for all, there is no longer the choice between food and responsible care, or between cell phones and responsible care. Efficient preventative care (including pre natal care) is a moral and economic requirement for a western nation in the 21rst century.
November 12th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Sheesh. The cost of treating my season allergies alone would have ruined my family, but that’s more a matter of inflated costs, compared to other countries, something that’s already been covered on this blog.
So let’s recap here. JM uses singular personal anecdotes of his/her own experience with childbirth and allergies as evidence of average costs, and then questions my own knowledge of health care financing? You can cling to your silly belief that I do not work in this industry and am citing examples from my own empirical analysis, I couldn’t care less if you believe I am a health actuary or not. But are you really going to keep using your sample size of one to prove the general case? Sheesh indeed.
November 12th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Swallowed by the comment box before…
You’ll also notice that JM just boldly asserts, with zero evidence, that paying for maternity care saves an insurer money. Since I did engage in a bit of arguing from authority, I ought to elaborate. It’s funny that you asked about this (and why I so immediately jumped on it), since my team just finished in the last few weeks analyzing maternity data to get insight into costs of routine maternity care vs pregnancy complications, and our finding was that paying for maternity care is still a money losing venture, even with the premiums for the rider, and pregnancy complications on people without the rider are rare enough (the high dollar episodes, all episodes of complications are not necessarily rare, but also not extremely high dollar) that we are better off when they do no have maternity coverage, direct refutation of your assertion of the opposite, an assertion that you pulled out of thin air with no empirical basis.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
@DAS: there is actually a reason why we use the “insurance” paradigm to pay for routine health care costs (even if it is a flawed paradigm for reasons that have already been brought up in this thread) — because care for routine health issues prevents things that are, under any definition, insurable events.
That presumes that we would save money with more preventive care, an assertion already disproven by the CBO
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/104xx/doc10492/08-07-Prevention.pdf
November 12th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Insurance companies “lose money” when they pay for health care. Arguing that pregnancy isn’t a medical condition is ridiculous. It’s not a mystical state.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
The actual bottom line is that we’ll have to pay MORE in taxes because of the Stupak amendment–we’ll have to pay for women to carry pregnancies they didn’t want.
For the record, I’d be happy to pay more for insurance (or taxes) to help poor women carry their babies to term instead of aborting them.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Insurance companies “lose money” when they pay for health care.
Well for starters, in this case “losing money” actually means losing, i.e. money paid for care >>> than money taken in in premiums. Maybe you think that’s great, but it’s also unsustainable. But in general it’s quite amusing how people perceive something so nefarious about calling it a “loss ratio”. Your auto insurer considers it a “loss” when they pay for your accident. A life insurer considers is a “loss” to pay your wife when you die. You home insurer considers it a “loss” when they pay for your house getting blown down by a tornado. The personal and emotional aspect of health care doesn’t make the common industry terms that predate this entire debate somehow worse.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
And then you top even yourself. You’re right, I’m totally lying about being a health actuary, I’m actually a “glibertarian” gas station attendant with an 8th grade education who read Atlas Shrugged and thought Ayn Rand was the 2nd coming of Christ.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
So insurance companies who provide maternity care are not making profits?
November 12th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Alan @86: I’m not at all disagreeing with you on the need to provide maternity care. As I said previously, I think it’s important just on a survival of the species basis, as well as preventing starting a family from being limited to the wealthy. But it’s not something to cover with insurance.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
So insurance companies who provide maternity care are not making profits?
Not overall, but on the maternity benefits themselves, it’s very likely they don’t. I was talking about optional maternity riders, and whether the premiums charged cover the cost of care.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
I hope JM comes back, I was waiting to hear how life insurers makes 100% profit margins because he’s been paying for it for years and hasn’t died yet.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Re: For the record, I’d be happy to pay more for insurance (or taxes) to help poor women carry their babies to term instead of aborting them.
Amen, amen.
November 12th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Such a shame really, the tragedy of these women having slipped, fell, landed on a penis, and inadvertently gotten pregnant.
To any female readers who made it this far: AB’s still available.
November 12th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Why don’t all you rich liberals contribute to a charity to help poor women pay for abortions?
We did! It’s called Planned Parenthood! Here, uh, let me get you a brochure or something…
November 12th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Re: In other words, in a Stupaked universe most women who find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy are just going to take the financial hit, not have the baby.
That’s true already: Most abortions (70%+) are paid out of pocket, not by insurance.
By the way, that 200$ Matt cites as the average cost of an early term abortion is less than the deductible on most insurance policies (mine, considered “premium coverage” is exactly 200$). Which may explain why most abortions are paid out of pocket, coverage or no, since the women involved may not have met their policy deductibles.
Re: The big losers here, however, will be the set of poor women who really may not be able to get together the few hundred dollars that would be needed.
That’s already true. The poor have been living with the Hyde Amendment limits on Medicaid (and the fact they can’t afford private health insurance) for over 30 years.
Re: Car insurance premiums will go up after an accident, regardless of fault.
This may vary by state, but the places where I have lived (Michigan, Ohio, Florida and now Maryland) only the at fault driver can be charged higher premiums after an accident. (However, except in very unusual circumstances, the driver in a one-car accident will be assumed at fault even if not cited). I’ve had this tested: I’ve had three collisions in my lifetime, all caused by another driver (and one serious enough to total out my car). In no case did my premium go up in the aftermath.
November 12th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
psuedonymous: Ew ew ew.
As a woman who has had both an abortion and has given birth twice – all three instances paid by insurance – I have the following observations:
1) there is, obviously, nothing about abortion or pregnancy/childbirth that renders these states somehow magically not coverable by insurance. They are covered by insurance every day. AB’s insistance that somehow they “cannot be” insurable when they in fact ARE CURRENTLY INSURED bemuses me.
2) Matt’s numbers are off – it’s more like $400 for an abortion vs. $20,000 for pregnancy and childbirth costs.
3) It is not “irresponsible” to get pregnant accidentally any more than it is “irresponsible” to get in a car accident. It’s also just as inevitable as a matter of statistics.
4) If every woman used a birth control method with a 99% success rate, every woman with an active sex life would have approximately two unwanted pregnancies. By AB’s figuring, therefore, every single woman would be “irresponsible.”
5) If women with unwanted pregnancies are so terribly irresponsible, why is it you want to stick them with CHILDREN? Do you really hate kids that much?
6) more than half the women in America will have an unwanted pregnancy at some point. One out of three will have an abortion.
7) In what way is forcing women to have kids they don’t want good for ANYONE – including America?
9) JW is hilarious and awesome.
10) AB didn’t comment back on this – I WONDER WHY.
11) AB has not offered a single link or source to support any of his allegations anywhere on this thread. Other than his imaginary co-workers and their imaginary findings.
12) I suspect that no woman is (or has been) careless enough to accidentally fall on AB’s penis.
Health care provision to all Americans is not simply a moral issue, it’s an issue of Healthier Americans = a stronger and more competitive America. and obviously, an America in which a woman is not forced to have children she does not feel ready or willing to have is better off all around.
Furthermore, for those conservatives ranting about how we should fund health care (or abortions) through charity – here’s no particular reason why it is moral and right to have socially-supported police or fire protection but immoral and wrong to have socialized health care.
November 12th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
Actually, considering that pre-Roe (and today in countries where abortion is illegal), women risked their lives to have abortions, talking calmly about the financial impact of women who would prefer to abort carrying their pregnancy to term is odd. Throughout history, until the present day, women have chosen to POTENTIALLY DIE rather than continue a pregnancy.
Why should an operation that one-third of American women have had not be considered a normal medical procedure, to be included in normal healthcare coverage?
This is the fantasy that people will not give up, what people will not face.
And Stupak says only abortions which threaten the LIFE of the mother, not her HEALth can be covered. Miscarriages, diabetes, cancer, eclampsia, sorry, ladies, they don’t exist in our beautiful minds.
November 12th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Re: Why should an operation that one-third of American women have had not be considered a normal medical procedure, to be included in normal healthcare coverage?
Because it’s an elective procedure when not medically indicated? That’s the equivalent of Botox and lipsuction, which are very seldom covered benefits too. Why is this so hard to grasp? I don’t notice any great kerfluffle over not including other elective procedures in coverage. Why ought this be different? For both sides this has nothing to do with healthcare at all, but is simply more culture wars distraction.
November 12th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Unwanted wrinkles. Unwanted children. What’s the diff?
November 12th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
Oh dear eyelid, where to begin
Might want to put the dunce cap on. You might also want to look up the definition of insurable risks. Being covered by insurance does make something “insurable”. An insurable event is one that is 1)random, 2)definable, 3)quantifiable in probability and cost, and 4)has a sufficient but reasonable premium. the majority of abortions do not satisfy #1. Definitions, such tricky things those.
If you haven’t taken proper precautions and used adequate contraception, then yes it is irresponsible. I do not have a problem with abortion, I am not pro-life. But that doesn’t mean I think abortion is a good thing or something desirable. I’d like to minimize them. We could minimize them if people acted more responsibly.
I don’t. I’ve never said they shouldn’t be able to get abortions if they want too. I’ve only said that abortion is not something to cover with health insurance. There is nothing I’ve written that even remotely suggests that I don’t think people should be allowed to have an abortion. You’re doing what so many others in this thread and the last have done, assuming that because my views on who ought to pay for abortions differs from your own that I’m some sort of pro-life abstinence-only evangelical trying to shame any woman that has sex.
So? What’s your point? Most of those pregnancies are avoidable. Far too few people use adequate contraception. Being pro-choice does not mean one should be pro-abortion.
Actually I did, multiple times. Probably about 7 or 8 times. The comment box swallowed multiple comments on me this afternoon, which is why 87, 88, and 89 were done singly instead of as one. I’ll try it again here, because it was one of the most ridiculous things JM had to say today. I stand by everything I said in the previous thread, an elective abortion is not an insurable event. There are some cases that are, like people who are sterilized and still become pregnant, post-vasectomy pregnancies, etc. But those are the extreme exceptions, not the rule, and I laugh off JM’s attempts to cite those outliers as somehow proving wrong the very true general statement that elective abortions are not insurable events.
Do you need a link to the definition of an insurable risk? Here you go, but I didn’t know it was necessary to give links to dictionary definitions to defend my factual statements.
I have not spoken in any error here. Give me a claim that your dispute and I’ll give you a link.
Ahh, well played. Clearly any man who disagrees with you on the proper funding mechanism for abortions, even though he is not pro-life and fine with people having abortions, must be a sexless prude. Because of course women are universal in their feelings about abortion, it is only through a total disconnection from the opposite sex that one could possibly hold views like mine. I wasn’t aware we were taking the argument to the 8th grade level, but it does speak volumes about the quality of your argument that you would feel a need to take it there. Just reached 8 years of accidental falling, thank you very much. If she gets pregnant and we don’t want it we won’t ask anyone else to pay for our abortion.
November 12th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Re: Unwanted wrinkles. Unwanted children. What’s the diff?
That unwanted children, unlike unwanted wrinkles, are persons with the right to life?
I mean, really.
November 13th, 2009 at 12:21 am
The lack sincerity of the concern MY and other anti-Stupak activists have for poor women who will not be able to afford abortions is revealed by their failure to even consider the possibility that those who are so concerned about this problem would pull their money together and pay for these abortions.
If this is such an apparent need, it seems there would be no problem convincing like-minded people to contribute to such a worthy cause.
But they don’t really think it’s a worthy cause. They want the government to establish that abortion is just like any other medical procedure.
Unfortunately for them, this is still a government by the people. And the people don’t agree.
November 13th, 2009 at 12:47 am
They want the government to establish that abortion is just like any other medical procedure.
Which it is. Now go and set up the Boner Pill Trust, and see if they’ll subsidize the lamest bit of trolling seen here in a while. The people think you suck ass.
November 13th, 2009 at 12:56 am
Well, if pseudonymous in nc asserts that abortion is just like any other procedure, I guess it must be so…
—
As for impotence pills, if an amendment passed banning public funding of them, you won’t catch me indulging in lamentations about poor impotent men who are going to be hurt by this. If it’s determined they won’t be covered, that’s fine with me.
But it’s worth noting that:
1.) Those pills treat an actual medical disease, unlike elective abortion.
2.) There is not a large segment of the populace that believes that impotent men becoming no longer so is killing or morally problematic.
November 13th, 2009 at 1:07 am
To All You Anti-Abortion Men,
Here’s a toast to the women in your lives waking up tomorrow morning and saying to themselves, “This piece of shit I’m living with thinks I’m his rented baby factory. Fuck him; I’m outta’ here!”
November 13th, 2009 at 1:25 am
Anandakos,
Can you please explain how supporting an amendment banning federal funding of abortion coverage as part of health care is tantamount to regarding the women in one’s life as rented baby factories?
I can assure you that almost all the women in pro-life men’s lives are aware of their views on abortion, and in many cases, share them.
——
In the same vein, I might hope that the women in the anti-Stupak men’s lives might resent being used as a pawn in a political game, as evidenced by their assumption that the only way they will pay for an abortion they think they desperately need is to go ask the government.
November 13th, 2009 at 4:16 am
JohnMcG,
It isn’t the details of the Stupak amendment that all women pro-life or pro-choice should resent. It’s the fact that two men wrote it. It’s womens’ business.
The fact is that nearly all conservative men do exactly regard women as baby factories. It’s their “role” for the preservation of the species. Or some such pseduo-scientific bloviation.
Personally I’m looking forward to the day when someone figures out how to pipette the nuclear material from one egg into another and dissolve the zona pellucida so the ladies can finally say “ta-ta jerks”. It shouldn’t be too much longer.
As a guy I’m basically ashamed at how we men have treated women throughout human history. The fact that they don’t all go Lorena Bobbitt on us is a credit to their kindness.
Any anti-Stupak guys reading this blog who’ve said to your girlfriends or wives, “Hey honey, it’s your problem”?
Ummm. I didn’t think so.
November 13th, 2009 at 8:41 am
Re: I can assure you that almost all the women in pro-life men’s lives are aware of their views on abortion, and in many cases, share them.
Duh. It’s as if airheaded hipsters like Mr. Anandakos and Mr. Yglesias are unaware that there is a very large number of women- especially younger women- who are pro-life. A higher proportion than among men, actually. And I suspect that most pro-life men also enter relationships with pro-life women, and vice versa. Of course, the bourgeois-liberal sexual nihilists of Georgetown are unaware of a great deal, so this should surprise no one.
Of course the reason men are more likely then women to favor abortion is not far to seek. Unprincipled young men tend to like f*cking around, and they like to dispose of the consequences if necessary, even if they have to commit homicide to do so.
November 13th, 2009 at 8:59 am
I’m coming in late here, but Stupak is modeled after laws in KY, ID, OK, and 2 other states that I can’t remember, wherein abortion coverage is only available through a rider. However, there are also “conscience clauses” from the insurers, allowing them to withhold the fact that your insurance doesn’t cover abortions (not sure if that’s in Stupak–it was the flip side of Hatch’s version) and so nobody is aware they need to get the rider. Attempt to advertise the rider, and the Christians shut you down.
So, under the policy after which Stupak is modeled, nobody actually buys the rider.
Bear in mind that Stupak is not modeled after Hyde. It’s modeled after (failed!) state-level policies.
November 13th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Modeled after what?
November 13th, 2009 at 10:11 am
I apoligize, but my previoust commend should have read, “failed at what?”
November 13th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
shouldn’t the purpose of the health care plan be to provide the best chance for efficient health care? Do we really believe that the Stupak amendment will cause a significant decrease in abortions, or just cause more hardship to poor women who exercise their RIGHT to have one?
It seems to me that when people discuss whether insurance should cover something or not, unless they are discussing whether there are medical effectiveness issues involved, it is a values discussion. If insurance plans that are NOT subsidized offer the service, what justification is there for a subsidized plan not offerring the service. Does someone here suggest that there are plans out there that are more economical BECAUSE they do not cover abortions, and are above board about that fact?
If not, then this is all just political posturing at the expense of poorer people (women especially).
AB @95- but if insurance does not cover these services, you and I both know that the people most in need of them will not receive them.(unless you are suggesting a nationwide system of available, convenient and free prenatal care in its place.) It is not a philisophical point, it is real people with real pregnancies.
I find the whole issue of abortion coverage with publically supported funds to be poisoned by the conflict between philosophical versus practical issues. It would be great if your money didn’t have to pay for something you find abhorent, but please look at what the results of your plans would mean for real people before becoming so strident. Poor(er) people will get pregnant. They will need prenatal care and some will choose abortions, as is their right. Ask yourself if your plan is a responsible approach to those facts.(last paragraph not directed at AB)
November 13th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Hector,
The vast majority of young people — of both sexes and all genders — believe in freedom of choice and opportunity. Yes, there are many young women who would themselves not consider having an abortion. As there are many older women who would not have done so and would still not.
But the hallmark of the people younger than 35 is “Don’t fence me or my friends in.” They’re not as vocal about it as folks were in the 1960’s, but just look at the election results. When they vote progressives and pro-choicers get elected. When they stay home because they’re disgusted by the people the Democratic party puts up (that fool Deeds in Virginia and Corzine who would not go after corruption) then retrogrades are elected.
You can be sure that when McDonnell starts to bare his religious fangs, the backlash in NoVa will be fierce.
You didn’t read eyelid’s post did you?
This includes the roughly 50% of women who are married and presumably should therefore be “allowed” to enjoy sexual pleasure according to your prissy “morality”.
So far as I know even the pill isn’t 99% effective. So how does forbidding women from terminating those two unwanted pregnancies not essentially make them baby factories?
And don’t emit some disgusting lie that this is “about Federal Funding only”. What a crock: like all things right wing this is about denying people the opportunity to create their own happiness. The only “happiness” that you schmuck’s support is “happiness” through things bought from your exalted corporations.
November 13th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Actually, it provides people like you with a great opportunity to create your own happiness by stepping into the breach and paying for the abortions that we are so parsimoniously refusing to do.
But it seems people aren’t so excited to that.
November 13th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Re: e only “happiness” that you schmuck’s support is “happiness” through things bought from your exalted corporations.
Huh?
Evidently you are not too well acquainted with my postings here. But I don’t like capitalism, I don’t like the American political/social/economic/cultural value system, and I don’t like corporations, to say the very least.
And of course it isn’t about ‘federal funding’: it’s about my desire, and those of other pro-lifers, that abortions except for reasons of medical neccessity should be illegal. Unfortunately the votes for that don’t exist at present.
November 13th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Evidently you are not too well acquainted with my postings here.
I too am stunned that an Yglesias reader is not familiar with the Hector canon. For god’s sake the man crafted “the bourgeois-liberal sexual nihilists of Georgetown” as well as “liberal hipsters” “hipster nihilists” “Yglesian hipsters” and “cool dudes at the Georgetown cocktail parties”
I think it’s rather disappointing, but all too typical, that the commenters here mock some of the images Hector uses to illustrate his points.