Viagra? Yes. Birth control? No

How shortsighted is it to not require birth control coverage in insurance plans while at the same time claiming to want to cut the number of abortions performed each year?  Are women really expected to give up sex or have a baby every year or so?

Why must women always have to fight to get the rights men take for granted?  Insurance companies regularly discriminate against women:

  • A 22-year-old woman can be charged one and a half times the premium of a 22-year-old man.
  • Many insurers also consider pregnancy and Cesarean sections a pre-existing condition.
  • 52% of women reported trouble accessing needed health care because of cost, versus only 39% of men.
  • 27% of employed women work part time and are thus excluded from their employers’ health insurance plan, versus only 13% of men.¹

It seems that the younger women who the issues of birth control and abortion rights effect are missing in action when it comes to fighting for those issues.  It may be that we will have to go back to the days of backstreet abortions and lack of birth control for them to wake up and smell the coffee.

None of the bills emerging from the House and Senate require insurers to cover all the elements of a standard gynecological “well visit,” leaving essential care such as pelvic exams, domestic violence screening, counseling about sexually transmitted diseases, and, perhaps most startlingly, the provision of birth control off the list of basic benefits all insurers must cover. Nor are these services protected from “cost sharing,” which means that, depending on what’s in the bill that emerges from the Senate, and, later, the contents of a final bill, women could wind up having to pay for some of these services out of their own pockets. So far, mammograms and Pap tests are covered in every version of the legislation.

Granted, Congress can’t–and shouldn’t–get into the business of spelling out every possible cause for a trip to the doctor. No one wants the process to collapse under a mountain of requests from special interest groups à la the Clinton mess in 1993. But women, half of all adult patients, are not a special interest group. And since both the House and Senate bills include lists of specific services that must be covered by health insurance companies and be provided without asking patients for additional money, it’s hard to understand why all the services provided in a basic well-woman visit to the gynecologist isn’t on them along with maternity care, newborn care, pediatric dental and vision services, and substance use disorder services.

The fault for the initial omission can be laid at the feet of Democrats, who shied away from the issue, not wanting to invite controversy, according to women’s health advocates who tried unsuccessfully to get women’s preventive health care included in the basic benefits package. Some of the concern had to do with cost. Adding any required service to the basic benefits package would mean the Congressional Budget Office would give the bill a higher score, or price tag, leaving it more vulnerable to attack by budget hawks. But another part of the problem clearly stems from the fact that women’s bodies have become political lightening rods, even when abortion is not the issue.
SOURCE.