McCain: Yes to Viagra, No to Birth Control Pills
By Rashi Kesarwani - Jul 14th, 2008 at 10:21 amLast week, McCain stumbled and stuttered aboard the Straight Talk Express when a reporter asked about his position on health insurance companies that cover Viagra but not birth control pills.
After a pregnant pause (no pun intended), McCain finally stammered, “I don’t know enough about it to give you an informed answer.”
Really, Senator McCain? You don’t recall your vote against a bill in 2003 that would have required health insurance companies to cover prescription birth control?
Two days before McCain’s comments, McCain adviser Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, called the practice of denying coverage for prescription birth control unfair.
“There are many health insurance plans that will cover Viagra but won’t cover birth control medication. Those women would like a choice,” Fiorina said to reporters.
Unfortunately, Fiorina’s level-headed remarks don’t correspond with McCain’s position. Aside from the sexism of McCain’s stance, the nickel-and-diming of women’s health is just bad policy. Contraception is the cheapest and safest method to prevent an unwanted pregnancy. This isn’t an issue that should pit pro-lifers against pro-choicers.
It does, however, require that politicians and health insurance companies treat women’s sexuality on par with that of men’s. For some, the idea of a woman empowered to make independent decisions about her sexuality poses a tacit threat to the old boys’ club.
Just a handful of states have passed laws requiring health insurance companies that cover prescription drugs to provide the same coverage for contraception. To see where your state stands, click here.
Fiorina’s statement doesn’t have anything within it that inherently says what you think it does. Nowhere in her comment does anything suggest that the government should mandate insurance companies cover birth control as well as Viagra - in fact it says the exact opposite.
Her statement is that “women would like a choice.” That flies squarely in the face of a government mandate. It was simply an indication of a desire for choices to be offered. After all, if a woman has no interest in purchasing birth control (say, oh, women who can’t have children), why would she want to be forced to pay for it in her insurance plan?
Obviously McCain’s answer was horrible. But if we want to have a truly equitable approach we need to get the government out of the insurance business, not more involved in it. The tax structure currently distorts the market away from individual purchase, leading to insurance plans focused on meeting business purchasing needs, not individual purchasing needs. Combine this with numerous states goldplating their insurance policies by mandating that various procedures be covered (usually done at the bequest of the insurance companies) are leading to situations like today, where the only insurance available costs too much and offers many things people don’t want and not always the things they do.
July 14th, 2008 at 10:55 amMWgozU kjs610fgTrcv3pXa8f2h
November 11th, 2008 at 12:27 am