Let's talk about women's rights

[Betty Karlson]

Apparently, health care for pregnant women is so bad in the US, Amnesty decided to write a warning report about it.

It is often forgotten that deficient health care for pregnant women endagers two people. The mortality rate of new mothers and newborn babies in the US (particularly rural areas, ethnic minorities) is stunningly high. Greece has half the American rate. Germany has four times less dead mothers. When issues of personal safety and life and death are involved, it is right to speak of a human right.

It is our right to provide not just birth control, but birth-related health care to women, and to their as-yet-unborn children. The GOP, by obstructing health care reform, are trespassing on women's human rights. Not women's rights, women's HUMAN rights.

I am usually quite critical of Mr Obama, but I am very happy to see him stand up for women's rights to safe child deliviry. And I would hope Mrs Sebelius could focus on a woman's right to have a say over how her child is born, annd make that her next goal.

Here's someone who can tell the whole story much better than I can:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/3/13/845867/-Amnesty-International:-U.S.-Maternal-Health-Is-in-Crisis

[Odin2005]

1. All I know is that Stupak is an ass.

[Kitty Herder]

4. Indeed. nt

[kenny blankenship]

2. But we have the best system of healthcare in the world- privatized, profit driven, fee for service!

[Betty Karlson]

3. Must be the best HC system in a man's world... N/T

[kenny blankenship]

9. Best HC system in THE Man's world.

It kills men too, but the Man don't care about that. There are multiple perspective problems with our system. Gender is one. It SHOULD be a scandal that infant mortality, and maternal mortality, in the U.S. is so high, but in the first place we refuse to measure ourselves against other countries. Chauvinism is the term we would apply to this attitude - if we didn't hate anything that sounds French. We know we have the best system a priori because it is private, for-profit, and run with minimal govt. intervention. We also have the best because it is ours and we wouldn't change it even if we could. Therefore it is always the best it can possibly be: we're number one at being us. USA! USA! USA! Infant mortality has always been surprisingly bad in the US -if anyone bothered to look. But we ignored that for decades. If you brought the subject up, it would be smothered under responses like "but the poor don't know how to take care of themselves!" or "but of course you can't expect us to provide the same level of prenatal/obstetric care to people who are on welfare and wouldn't even have a way to get to the hospital if it weren't for the bus!" The American blind spot towards our high rate of infant mortality has always been maintained through pious hatred of the poor. It has also always been maintained through racism: "You really can't expect us to tax ourselves to death just so there can be more of THEM brought into the world!" Even when privatized for-profit health care is killing babies and mothers of the well to do classes, and killing white babies and mothers, America doesn't notice because we've trained ourselves so well to think of our high infant mortality as an intractable, forgivable side-effect of our cherished class system and race system. When you bring it to our attention that the shoddiness of American medicine also kills white, professional class women and their babies at a shocking rate compared to European countries - THEN you see the media start to care.

[Betty Karlson]

12. And you are right, of course.

Racism, elitism, and chauvinism play an equal role in this tragic story. Sexism is only the "forth horseman of the childbirth apocalyps".

[MicaelS]

15. The problem is with too many men is the only give a damn

About babies before they're born.

[Warpy]

5. That's one major abuse the health insurance industry is guilty of

and that is treating pregnancy and childbirth as aberrations, outside the definition of illness or disability or any condition requiring care.

Basic health insurance should provide maternal care up through delivery, without that "pay triple before you ever get pregnant" bullshit of requiring a family policy in place before conception. The changeover from single to family could occur at any point during the second trimester on. Basic health insurance should provide all reproductive care, not just Viagra and penile implants for men.

The cruelest part of our system is the exclusion of women from care when they most need it unless they've been prescient enough and wealthy enough to pay that triple rate for family coverage. As the OP pointed out, this sexist bullshit affects two people and our statistics should be a source of national shame.

[Romulox]

8. It's not an abuse. It's how insurance works. People who make more claims pay higher premiums.

If you have a problem with that (and I do, too!) then the solution isn't to force everybody to buy insurance. Insurance companies make their money by applying actuarial principles to charge those who cost the company more money higher premiums. That's the entire premise of insurance. :hi:

[Warpy]

16. When something "works" by discriminating against half the population

it doesn't work very well, does it?

Perhaps it makes sense to men.

It makes no sense at all to women or to the overall health of this country.

[Romulox]

18. then let's not mandate it under color of Federal authority!

"Perhaps it makes sense to men."

Um, no. It makes no sense to this man whatsoever. Why would any rational person maintain that basic actuarial principles are immoral on one hand, and that everyone must be forced to become a customer of companies that use these principles as the foundation of their business, on the other.

In other words, if the free market is such a defective solution, why are we all being forced to buy private insurance?

[Warpy]

19. The same basic actuarial principles would suggest dropping coverage for all men

over the age of 45 since that's when they start to have costly heart problems.

Are you getting it yet?

[patrice]

6. K! & R!

[Romulox]

7. If profit motive and actuarial soundness is so bad, why involve the insurance co's in "reform"?

The practices you complain about are called "basic actuarial projections"--simply put, it cost more money to insure women then men--women use more healthcare services in their lifetime, on average.

In the world of private insurance, it is considered perfectly sound (not to mention legal!) to charge people who present increased risk to for-profit insurers more. Why shouldn't that be the case under so-called "Health Care Reform"? In other words, if the insurance companies don't bring their actuarial expertise to the table, what right do they have to even be included in the process?

This is, to remind everyone, the "free market" process that everyone agrees doesn't work that we're talking about making mandatory, and insurance companies which profit by denying people care.

[kenny blankenship]

10. But but they're OUR SYSTEM - we have to bail them out!

The lives and health of millions of Americans hang in the balance - you just want to kill 45,000 people a year. MURDERER!!!

[Romulox]

11. I'd just like supporters to try to say their arguments out loud--insurance practices are EVIL, and

you MUST buy insurance--it's the only way!

Cognitive dissonance at its worst.

[ProSense]

13. This is why Planned Parenthood supports reform

Statement by Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, on Final Stages of Health Care Reform

“As a trusted provider of health care to millions of women and families, Planned Parenthood is committed to fixing our broken health care system and guaranteeing quality, affordable health care for all Americans.

“Nobody knows better than the doctors, nurses, and other health professionals in local Planned Parenthood health centers how urgently families need affordable, quality health care. If enacted, President Obama’s proposal would extend health care coverage to tens of millions of women and families, guarantee access to affordable preventive screenings for cancer and other life-saving tests, protect women against gender discrimination by private insurers, end the practice of dropping coverage because of pre-existing conditions, and significantly increase access to reproductive health care. The proposal also includes a commonsense provision to expand family planning under Medicaid, which would significantly increase access to essential preventive health care for millions of women.

<...>

[Betty Karlson]

14. (Thanks for adding that) N/T

[Echo In Light]

17. k/r