The Pitfalls Of Identity Politics

[UPDATE]:

What was I just saying about wingnuts and the health food movement?

——————————————

Eden Foods, you are dead to me.

I’ve come to learn that an inordinate number of people involved in the organic foods/natural medicine/holistic health movement are wingnuts. It seems counterintuitive, one would expect these folks to be hippie-dippy peace freaks. But actually a lot of these folks were nurtured in the anti-government, anti-establishment “homesteader” movement of the ’70s, which was a breeding ground for Libertarians. And a lot of them also come out of the survivalist freak show on the far right, as well.

Such are the pitfalls of identity politics. Just because some company markets itself as embracing such progressive ideals as,

Organic agriculture is society’s brightest hope for positive change

doesn’t mean they don’t also believe such crackpottery as,

[birth control] almost always involve immoral and unnatural practices

and

Plan B and ‘ella’ can cause the death of the embryo, which is a person

… which we all know is utter bullshit. Such is the progressive dilemma: I appreciate CEO and founder Michael Potter’s activism against GMOs, but I find his crackpot views regarding birth control abhorrent. And there are plenty of other organic food companies which don’t hold these bizarre views about birth control, so thanks but no thanks. I’ll take my business elsewhere.

Asshole.

Suckers

I know Christians like to think they’re better than everyone else, at least the ones around here do. But is there some evidence that they’re healthier than anyone else? If there is I sure haven’t seen it. But Kentucky is poised to pass a “Christians-only” healthcare plan that singles out Jesus people:

House Oks Christian health care plan for Ky.

[...]

The proposal would exempt the Medi-Share ministry from state insurance regulations. A Franklin County circuit judge ordered the ministry to shut down last year at the Kentucky Insurance Department’s request. The bill in its current form would require members to sign a notice acknowledging they’re aware they may not have their claims paid.

The plan resembles secular insurance in some ways but only allows participation by people who pledge to live Christian lives with no smoking, drinking, using drugs or having sex outside of marriage.

Whew boy. First of all, this just reeks of a scam to me. Hey, let’s give insurance companies another reason to deny people claims! You missed Bible study on Wednesday! No bypass surgery for YOU! And let me say, the idea that people who don’t drink or smoke or have sex outside of marriage or use drugs are living a “Christian lifestyle” is just hilarious. Why not have a health care plan for vegans and exempt them from state insurance regulations? Seems like there’s actual evidence that a vegan diet is healthier than the gravy-slathered deep-fried fat balls most good Southern Christian folk I know shove done their gullets on Sundays.

But look, the whole dang point of being a Christian is not that you’re somehow better than everyone else and living a perfect, sinless life so you get the earthly reward of cheap health insurance. That’s not what the freaking Bible is about, people! It’s about a relationship with God. It’s about things like forgiveness and community building and welcoming your neighbor and caring for the vulnerable.

It’s not about being perfect and if you stumble you don’t get your insurance claim paid, and we get to do the personal responsibility happy dance.

Cripes I’m so over Jesus people these days. This just screams exploitation and grift to me. The marriage of faith and commerce is absolutely antithetical to real Christianity. Any sucker signing up for this is asking to get ripped off.

Guess Who Went To The Doctor Today

Last week I went to the dentist. Today I went to my ob/gyn for my annual.

These days, any trip to the doctor is an infuriating, exasperating traipse through our screwed up healthcare system. And I’m a really healthy person, with really good insurance. Still, red tape and insurance bullshit manages to piss me off every damn time.

I had already decided I was going to ask my doctor about the mandatory pre-abortion ultrasound bills currently making their way through the legislature, in particular, the deafening silence from the medical community and ob/gyn’s in general on this and other issues affecting women’s healthcare. But dang, before I could even get to that we got in a debate about socialized medicine.

It started when she told me she wouldn’t perform the ol’ “blood in the stool” test, aka the FOBT, which I’ve had done routinely for 30 something years. This was because, she said, “BlueCross Blue Shield of Tennessee no longer covers it.” Lovely. I repeat: not because I didn’t need it, but because insurance wouldn’t cover it. And that, she said, was because over the past few years insurance has routinely been paying for fewer and fewer things.

This test is an easy, cheap way to detect colorectal cancer. But hey, I’m over 50 now, it’s not like colon cancer is a concern for us olds, right?

Don’t answer that.

It doesn’t matter because she said I need to think about getting a colonoscopy at some point, since I’m an olds, and of course it’s a better diagnostic test. Now, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee only pays for one every 10 years if the first one comes back clean. So let’s hope I don’t develop anything in the decade in between tests because apparently I’d have no fucking way of knowing about it.

Okie dokie, let’s hope what I don’t know won’t kill me! Thank you, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee! May you all get colorectal cancer and die an excruciating, miserable death.

Yes, Republicans. Do tell me more about bureaucrats coming between me and my doctor. I’m dying to hear.

So then we both commiserated about how awful insurance was. I asked her which insurance company was the best in terms of coverage, since she dealt with so many. She said none of them, they’re all bad. Okay, I said, fine, then why don’t we ditch them all and go to socialized medicine?

“Oh, no! That’s worse,” she said. In England, she said, whether you have a hangnail or cancer, you’re put into the system at the same place. In other words, serious health issues aren’t given any more priority than minor ones. She heard this from a patient who lived in London for two years. Her patient, however, was considered a “guest of the country” and was put to the top of the list, she explained. (I’m a little unclear how the patient would know, plus if that were true, wouldn’t there be astronomical cancer fatality rates there? Which doesn’t seem to be happening.)

“That’s certainly not what my Canadian friends have told me,” I said. “I don’t know about England, but they told me in Canada if something’s seriously wrong, you’re priority. It’s true you might have to wait longer for routine stuff, but heck, I made this appointment a year ago!” It’s true, I had.

“Oh no,” my doctor responded, wagging her finger at me. “I know someone who lives in Vancouver and when she needed something done she went to Seattle.”

Clearly we weren’t getting anywhere, trading our stories about “people we knew.” What I did say was, what do we do? This can’t be the best there is. What we’re doing now isn’t working, too many people are uninsured, and the poor are suffering the most.

“Oh, the poor have TennCare,” she said.

And so it went. Clearly my doctor didn’t know the first thing about people who weren’t her patients. She worked at a nice office in the heart of Nashville’s central healthcare campus, not the Vine Hill or Downtown clinics. Her clients weren’t the uninsured or marginalized. Nor did she know anything about what was happening in the state legislature. I asked her if she was aware that there were bills in the legislature requiring women to get an ultrasound before receiving an abortion.

“Really?!” She seemed genuinely surprised. Jesus, lady! I wanted to scream. You’re a gynecologist! This is your field! Don’t you pay attention to what legislators are doing affecting your own business?

I asked if there was any medical reason why this procedure would be necessary. “They need to do it,” she said, “to determine the age of the fetus.”

“But what if a woman is positive that it’s within the first trimester?”

“They still need to do it, to make sure.”

“To make sure?”

“To make sure she’s telling the truth.”

Wow. So we have this law to mandate a diagnostic procedure because women are liars. Got that, ladies? The government thinks you’re all liars, just like with all of that “legitimate rape” stuff, and so they need to check up on you with a diagnostic tool whose sole function is to make sure you’re telling the truth.

Yes, Republicans. Do tell me more about your belief in “small government.” I’m dying to hear.

Keep in mind, I was just told I wouldn’t get a routine colon cancer diagnostic because my insurance won’t pay for it.

Like an idiot, I asked my doctor if she performed abortions. She told me no.

“Does anyone here perform them?”

“No.”

“So where does someone go if they need one? Someone with insurance, who can afford it, where do you refer them?”

“Planned Parenthood, I guess,” my doctor answered. “Or Atlanta.”

Keep in mind, Nashville is a healthcare city. Healthcare is one of the largest industries here. We have several major hospitals here. The Nashville Chamber of Commerce proudly touts how healthcare contributes $30 billion to the local economy and creates over 210,000 jobs. But that’s all bullshit. None of that matters if you’re a woman who needs an abortion. For that, you go to Atlanta.

I asked why, although I already knew the answer. But I wanted to hear her say it. And she did. It’s just too controversial, she said. “It’s the religious people, they don’t want it,” she said. Insurance won’t pay for it. Hospitals don’t want to have anything to do with it. And finally she said, “doctors have been killed.”

I’m sure “the religious people” will be thrilled to learn they have successfully intimidated doctors in Nashville into not performing abortions. What’s sad is that Nashville is touted as being a progressive city, a patch of blue surrounded by a sea of red. But we’re still a city where women are second-class citizens because our healthcare needs aren’t treated equally.

It’s not just abortion. My doctor told me that as of January 2009, she can’t perform tubal ligations at Baptist Hospital. Baptist is one of the major hospitals here in Nashville and in 2002 Baptist merged with St. Thomas, another major player, so both are now under the Ascension Health umbrella, which is a Catholic non-profit. I had read that because religious hospitals all receive federal funds, they had to offer some kind of “secular floor,” where stuff the Catholics find religiously offensive can be done.

“It was a room, not a floor,” my doctor told me. “A separate room.” And the nurse technician that would assist her had to clock out, clock in again for the hour of surgery, and clock back out again, so she could be paid out of separate, non-religious funds. But as of January 2009, that room is no longer there. Someone who is not a Catholic will nonetheless have their medical choices made by the Catholic church.

Yes, Republicans. Do tell me more about your belief in “religious freedom.” I’m dying to hear.

This is all just so crazy to me. I didn’t intend to write a novel, but we just covered so much ground. What I wanted to know is why the medical profession hasn’t spoken up as the state house and senate legislate their profession. I mean, good lord, every time something happens in Washington we have a flurry of industry associations and phony astroturf groups telling us why it’s a bad idea. Where’s the TN Medical Assn.? Besides offering “doctor of the day” volunteers and lobbying for tort reform, I mean. It seems they haven’t spoken up because the just don’t know or don’t care.

I asked my doctor why people in her profession didn’t speak out. And she said it’s because nothing was ever going to change. That was just it, it’s too big, too hard, too controversial. It’s not going to change. I was so outraged. I just refuse to believe nothing will ever change. I said, what if people said that back in the days of Jim Crow? We’d still have black hospitals and white hospitals. Yes, she said. You’re right. And that was that.

It was the most disheartening conversation I’ve ever had. Apparently the doctors just can’t be bothered. I mean, I don’t know what else to say and I’m way beyond needing to wrap this up. But I guess I had somehow thought that doctors cared about their patients’ healthcare. Silly me.

Because It’s Not About Birth Control

Okay, who didn’t see this one coming a mile off?

Bishops Reject Birth Control Compromise
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: February 7, 2013

WASHINGTON — The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops on Thursday rejected the latest White House proposal on health insurance coverage of contraceptives, saying it did not offer enough safeguards for religious hospitals, colleges and charities that objected to providing such coverage for their employees.

The administration said the proposal, issued last Friday, would guarantee free employee coverage of birth control “while respecting religious concerns” of organizations that objected to paying or providing for it.

[...]

Under the latest proposal, churches and nonprofit religious groups that object to providing birth control coverage on religious grounds would not have to pay for it. Women who work for such organizations could get free contraceptive coverage through separate individual health insurance policies. The institution objecting to the coverage would not pay for the contraceptives. Costs would be paid by an insurance company, with the possibility that it could recoup the costs through lower health care expenses resulting in part from fewer births.

How does this “not offer enough safeguards” to address religious groups’ objections? Simple: women can still get their hands on some birth control, that’s how! They want a law that gives employers control over women’s health choices. Hell, they’ve already done it.

Look, can we stop trying to appease people who will never, ever be appeased? This is not about birth control! Half the institutions fighting this were already offering their employees contraception coverage and only stopped when it became news.

This is about the failure of the church. This is about the church’s great shame at being completely impotent in the face of cultural change. This is, specifically, about the Catholic church preaching against contraception for years and years and years and nobody paying attention — hell, even Catholic priests and nuns have ignored that piece of church doctrine. The church hierarchy wants the U.S. government to do what they’ve been unable to do, which is to get people to stop using birth control by making it too expensive and too hard to obtain.

That ain’t happening.

Stop paying attention to these idiots. Catholics don’t even pay attention to them. And if the Catholic church wants to spend its money fighting a legal battle it lost long, long ago instead of using that money to care for the poor and marginalized, then that tells you everything you need to know about the Catholic church. They’re a bunch of phonies.

A Few Words On The Whole Foods-John Mackey Thing

God, liberals, what can I say. Sometimes we annoy the hell out of me.

This is the second time the interwebs is in high dudgeon over something said/written by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. Mackey, who is hawking a book (Conscious Capitalism, and no, I haven’t read it) used the word “fascism” to describe the Affordable Care Act. This got liberals all upset, especially since they well remember his 2009 Wall Street Journal op-ed proposing eight “free market” reforms that he thought would fix our healthcare problems better than Obamacare.

Let me interject here and say, Mackey is an unabashed Libertarian. I do not agree with Libertarianism. At all. I think his “eight reforms” — stuff like tort reform, selling health insurance across state lines, and removing government coverage mandates — are horrible ideas, many already proven failures. He also wrote that if only everyone would just eat a vegetarian, low fat diet, all of our healthcare woes would magically go away. This was an astonishingly simplistic, insensitive and childish thing to say about a really complicated national issue. But hey, one of my biggest problems with Libertarians is their juvenile belief in magical thinking.

Anyway, that was around three years ago. This time, people seem to be hung up on Mackey’s use of the word “fascist.” The thing is, I said the same thing myself back in 2009. Put aside all of the totalitarian/nationalistic baggage the word carries, and consider its economic definition. Aren’t we always told that fascism is the merger of state and corporate power? So how is a government requirement that private citizens buy a product from a private, for-profit corporation without also offering a “public option” not fascism?

Mackey now admits his choice of words was poor. I watched him on CBS This Morning say we needed a new term, one that doesn’t allude to authoritarian regimes.

This made me laugh. Mr. Mackey, I believe the word you’re searching for is “corporatism.” Funny that wouldn’t occur to the CEO of a big corporation. Ah well. Libertarians, what can I say? They always wear blinders. I have to wonder: if Obamacare mandated that everyone buy organic food, would Mackey have a problem with that?

Mackey is entitled to his opinions, as are we all. I don’t agree with him on everything. But it seems a shame that he stuck his foot in his mouth on the Obamacare “fascism” stuff, because really liberals should be behind a big chunk of what he’s saying now.

Again, I haven’t read his book, but I’ve read several interviews he’s given about it. And basically what he seems to be telling his fellow corporate CEOs is, stop being such selfish, greedy dicks.

For example:

“I really don’t think shareholders should come first, I think it’s fundamentally a bad strategy,” Mackey said yesterday at a Captains of Industry series interview with Norman Pearlstine, chief content officer of Bloomberg News. “Happy team members result in happy customers, happy customers result in happy investors. If you put shareholders first, you won’t get there.”

The event at the 92nd Street Y in New York was sponsored by Bloomberg Businessweek.

Mackey, 59, a self-styled “conscious” capitalist and longtime nonconformist, has written a new book in which he criticizes companies that focus solely on maximizing profit. The book, “Conscious Capitalism,” was released this week.

In the book, Mackey and his co-author, Raj Sisodia, a Bentley University marketing professor, discuss ways to create value and lift people from poverty. Mackey’s bottom line: making money need not be a zero-sum game.

I agree with that 100%. And I’m not a Libertarian. I also agree with this:

Mackey tells Inskeep that companies must have a higher purpose than just making money.

For example, when Whole Foods decided it wanted to stop selling overfished species of cod and octopus at its seafood counters, it didn’t just abruptly cut off its suppliers. Instead, the company gave its suppliers three years to come up with a better way of fishing; during that time, the seafood stayed for sale — but with a label of “unsustainable.”

In the end, Whole Foods, working with the Marine Stewardship Council (we’ll have much more on them later), was able to find one supplier of sustainable cod.

I agree with that approach. I also find it a little strange that Mackey doesn’t recognize the flaw in his magical Libertarian ideology: why aren’t all corporations like Whole Foods? Why isn’t everyone focusing on the big picture, why aren’t they all doing the right thing, instead of just focusing on profit? Does Mackey not get that a health insurance company doesn’t make money off of certain groups of people? Like, really, really sick people? That Libertarianism requires a whole set of presuppositions that don’t exist in the real world?

I guess not. But c’mon, liberals. Let’s join in the conversation here, instead of calling for boycotts over the misuse of a word like “fascism” — especially when a lot of us were saying the same thing two years ago.

So no, I’m not boycotting Whole Foods. Nor am I nominating John Mackey for sainthood. Remember this? Remember when Mackey created an online sockpuppet to bash rival Wild Oats in online stock forums? At a time when he was trying to buy that company? Hilarious. Also, not nice. John Mackey, you’re kind of a dick, too. Something else I can say about most Libertarians.

By the way, this reminds me of the one bumper sticker I want to see. It goes something like this:

Who Is John Galt? And Why Is He Such An Asshole?

Ha ha. Love that one. So, boycott Whole Foods if you want to, but I won’t. But I will ask my fellow liberals to stop reacting in such a knee-jerk way to the use of loaded words like “fascism” and whatnot. Please. This makes us no better than the Teanuts who call for the fainting couches every time a liberal says a mean joke about Sarah Palin.

I Thought They Hated The Feds?

The above photo is from a Tea Party rally going on right now at Tennessee’s Legislative Plaza. It was posted to Twitter by Tennessean state house reporter Chas Sisk. (Yeah it’s a crappy photo but it’s all we’ve got, folks.)

Tennessee is one of the few states which still has not made a decision about setting up a state health insurance exchange as part of Obamacare. The Tea Party is rallying against the state exchange, of course.

Which begs the question: they do know that if the state doesn’t set up its own exchange, the Feds will do it for them, right? Right?!? Aren’t these the “states rights” people? They really want the Feds to do this instead of letting Tennessee do it? Are they serious?

Not the first time the Tea Party hasn’t made a lick of sense.

Oh, and also from Chas Sisk’s reporting on the rally comes this gem:

Steve Gill is our local conservative radio blowhard. Hilarious. Apparently Republican votes count twice as much as Democratic ones! Must have something to do with that “real America” stuff I mentioned in my last post.

I’m Speaking, BlueCross BlueShield. You Listening?

I’m not sure how I got signed up to be on the BlueCross BlueShield of TN “Blue Voice” panel. Blue Voice is a periodic online survey they send to certain folks, designed to assure us BCBS customers that they really really care. Or, as the slogan goes, “you speak, we listen!”

I have my doubts, of course. Especially with questions like this one:

I'd Like Another Option, Please

Really? These are our only choices? Either the Republican talking point or different variations of you’re wonderful? How about:

I don’t really see the value in having private, for-profit health insurance and would prefer a single-payer system like Medicare for all.

Ha, who am I fooling? BCBS doesn’t really care what we think. They just want us to reaffirm what they think. They’re already convinced that the only reason people opt not to have health insurance is because they “choose to take their chances” instead of “be responsible” and spend the money on this vital expenditure. Sure! It can’t possibly be because they can’t afford a policy, and neither can their employer.

You know what? Years ago I had a policy that I bought directly from BCBS. It was ridiculously expensive, and offered crappy benefits. I had to choose between an annual mammogram or a blood panel. One year I had my cholesterol checked at a Women’s Expo event at the convention center. Another year I did without the mammogram and got a scolding from my doctor.

That wasn’t “choice,” it was “shit fuck damn but this takes a huge bite out of my monthly nut.” I used to joke that I married Mr. Beale for his health insurance but honestly, as wonderful as my husband is, there’s a kernel of truth to that.

But I guess obscene CEO salaries and corporate profits are more important to the insurance industry than making sure their policies are accessible and affordable to everyone. And speaking of salaries, I wonder what Vicky Gregg, CEO of BlueCross BlueShield of TN, earns? According to this story from last year, she’s not choosing between a mammogram and a blood test:

CEO Vicky Gregg refused to provide full disclosure. She said her BC-BS salary was $1.7 million in 2009, but she and her staff refused to say how much she and other executives and board members were compensated through BC-BS’ other 10 for-profit and two nonprofit companies.

[...]

Thanks to a requirement under the new Affordable Care Act that directs health-care insurers to disclose their administrative costs beginning this year, those figures are becoming available. Reporter Dave Flessner’s story last Sunday said Gregg’s compensation was now more than $4.4 million. He also found that in 2009, her contract activated partial vesting of certain deferred compensation when she turned 55 that brought her total compensation package that year to nearly $6.2 million — more than three times the amount of compensation that she revealed to us last year.

I’m sure she’s worth every penny of it, too. /sarcasm

No one would ever believe that we have the most expensive healthcare system in the world and have the least to show for it. Nope, let’s just keep pushing that Republican line about people “choosing” to be uninsured, as opposed to being forced to go without while the Vicky Greggs of the industry rake in the millions. Nope, nothing wrong with that scenario!

If you haven’t read Down The Insurance Rabbit Hole yet, please do so now. This story broke my heart, but it’s just one tale among thousands and thousands in this country:

May the justices please meet my sister-in-law. On Feb. 8, she was a healthy 32-year-old, who was seven and a half months pregnant with her first baby. On Feb. 9, she was a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the chest down by a car accident that damaged her spine. Miraculously, the baby, born by emergency C-section, is healthy.

Were the Obama health care reforms already in place, my brother and sister-in-law’s situation — insurance-wise and financially — would be far less dire. My brother’s small employer — he is the manager of a metal-fabrication shop — does not offer health insurance, which was too expensive for them to buy on their own. Fortunately, my sister-in-law had enrolled in the Access for Infants and Mothers program, California’s insurance plan for middle-income pregnant women. AIM coverage extends 60 days postpartum and paid for her stay in intensive care and early rehabilitation.

But when the 60 days is up next week, the family will fall through the welfare medicine rabbit hole. As a scholar of social policy at M.I.T., I teach students how the system works. Now I am learning, in real time.

Imagine if she hadn’t been pregnant. She wouldn’t have had any options — not because she wanted to “take her chances” and spend her money on designer clothes and tennis lessons, but because they could not afford it. This is real stuff, folks. Having no other choice is not “freedom” — it’s the polar opposite.

This part really resonated:

Instead, their financial future is shattered. Family and friends are raising money to buy a wheelchair van and to renovate their home for accessibility. The generosity of the local community is stunning. One incident in particular struck me to the core. A woman from a small community nearby had something for us. A cancer survivor, she had decided to “give back” by placing donation cans in stores around town. She had finished her drive and consolidated the money. The small coffee can she handed over to me and my sister-in-law had a slit in the lid and was decorated with pink felt and ribbons, now a little smudged from handling. Inside were several hundred dollars in small bills. We burst into tears. This is social policy in the richest nation in the history of the world.

I think of that every time I see one of those pickle jars by a cash register or hear of a benefit concert or bake sale to pay for someone’s medical bills. As I observed in this post last year, this is a sure sign your healthcare system is broken. People in France and Norway don’t have to go begging to strangers to pay their medical bills.

But the executives at our major health insurance companies live in a bubble. As the survey I received from BCBS indicates, they really want to stay there, too.

Religious Freedom Means We All Have To Live As Catholics

A birth control coverage Xavier University provided for its employees for years is suddenly yanked, for inexplicable reasons:

The controversy prompted Xavier President Michael Graham, a Jesuit priest, to review the health insurance plan offered to the university’s 935 employees. Graham announced this week in a letter to the faculty that the plan will cease to cover contraception on July 1.

Some faculty members who relied on the coverage said they were surprised and upset at the sudden end to benefits, which could raise their out-of-pocket costs for contraception by hundreds of dollars a year.

“It hadn’t occurred to me that this would ever be an issue,” said Tina Davlin-Pater, an associate professor in the department of sports studies.

Davlin-Pater, an athletic trainer who is not Catholic, said she viewed the denial of birth control coverage as an indication that “it’s still OK to discriminate against women in today’s world.

Well, not inexplicable reasons. As Atrios observes,

Obviously this is an incredibly principled move based on deeply held religious beliefs that they discovered about 5 weeks ago.

Heh indeedy. Or, to be more precise:

Some on campus said they suspected Graham had come under intense pressure from the diocese, and perhaps from conservative donors as well, to publicly demonstrate Xavier’s fidelity to Catholic doctrine by cancelling the birth-control coverage.

As has been pointed out a thousands times already, what we really have here is the Catholic church using the United States government to enforce a doctrine it has been unable to get its followers to abide by on its own. And we just don’t do that here in America.

Keep it up, Catholics.

Under Their Thumb

To try to get an understanding of how truly extreme the Manchin-Rubio bill is — which would allow employers to deny health insurance coverage for any procedure or benefit, for any reason — consider this scenario:

You’re a stay at home mom with three kids. Maybe your last pregnancy was difficult. Maybe not; maybe three kids is enough for you. Maybe you just want to give your body a break from the stresses of pregnancy and childbirth.

Your health insurance is through your husband. And your husband’s boss, unfortunately for you, is a conservative Christian who doesn’t believe birth control is God’s plan. So that coverage is not on your policy. And birth control pills are not cheap.

I guess your husband could find another job. But in this economy? And what if he likes his job? Making career decisions based on what kind of prescriptions are covered by the workplace insurance policy is ridiculous. I guess you could get divorced. Sounds extreme, but really: if you get pregnant, I’m sure it’s your own fault for having the misfortune to marry someone who would end up working for a conservative asshole.

The bottom line is, the decision is not yours. It’s not your family’s. In fact, it’s removed from your family completely. It’s already been decided and you had nothing to do with it.

Somehow this is Republican “freedom”: putting women under the thumb of their spouse’s employer. Freedom isn’t free; someone always has to pay. Of course that someone would be women.

This is awful to everyone, don’t get me wrong. But it’s especially insulting to women. Because it wasn’t too long ago that women weren’t allowed to do things like open bank accounts (or close them), apply for jobs, or, yes, get birth control without their husband’s permission. This wasn’t all that long ago; there are a lot of women walking around today who remember those days.

And now Republicans and that idiot Democrat Joe Manchin want to not only return to those days, they want to add a second layer of authority in there. Now we need to get our bosses or spouse’s bosses involved, too. In stuff that is none of their business.

But I’m being unfair. Because it’s so much worse! What if your husband is the one needing a healthcare service, say an expensive one like a mental health service or psychiatric drugs? Those are even more expensive than birth control. What if, God forbid, he’s bipolar? What if you are? What if it’s your teenage son? How much would it suck that your health insurance coverage is decided by a boss who is a devout Scientologist, someone who believes psychiatry is evil and thinks you can be cured by Niacin doses and a round in the sauna?

I Wonder What's In HER Health Insurance Package

But it’s even worse than this. Maybe someone in your family needs arthroscopic surgery, but that’s not part of your insurance plan because the boss says it grosses him out. Hey, he or she has that right, according to this bill! They don’t even need to show a moral or religious objection. They could just decide something is icky. Tough noogies for you.

Republican freedom means your healthcare decisions are out of your hands. You either pay the exorbitant cost of a procedure not covered by your health plan, find a new job and suffer until your insurance benefits come in, or just do without. Can you feel the freedom just trickling down? This isn’t freedom; it’s serfdom.

Why is it okay with Republicans that someone other than you is allowed to make decisions about what treatments you can access? Weren’t they just lecturing us on how we don’t want bureaucrats coming between us and our doctors? We don’t want bureaucrats but we do want our employers? I don’t think so.

This is beyond horrible. That we’re being asked to turn healthcare decisions over to businesses who already have so much control over our daily lives is frightening. And frankly, I’ve had enough.

It’s time we stop the bullshit. No more private employer health insurance plans. It’s not a “benefit” if it doesn’t have the coverage we need, anyway. End it now. Everyone buys their health insurance plans directly. I’m sure employers would love not having to deal with this, and I don’t want some busybody boss telling me what coverage he or she deems it okay for me to have. It’s none of their fucking business.

This is insane, but it’s a special insanity rooted in the very ridiculous nature of our sucky healthcare delivery system. Private, for-profit health insurance plans offered through your employer. Now you know why we needed that public option, right? To get away from crazy crap like this? You know, as far as I’m concerned, a little socialism is a hell of a lot better than a big dose of fascism. Just sayin’.

Your For Profit Healthcare System At Work

I don’t know why this letter I got from HCA/Tri-Star Health Systems pissed me off so much but it did. It’s a sales pitch for various surgical procedures for obesity, and it came addressed to me (though the salutation is to “Friend”).

You know what? I don’t want to get sales pitches from the local for-profit hospital chain selling me some sketchy obesity surgery. And speaking of fat, I suspect Tri-Star is getting fat off the bloated insurance premiums we pay every month, which is why they can pay to send out mass mailings like this and offer a

FREE bariatric surgery seminar where you will meet with a bariatric surgeon, hear about other patients’ experiences with bariatric surgery and receive an information packet ….

What is this, a hospital or a timeshare?

I don’t suppose we’ll be hearing from too many of these folks, will we?

Maybe what bothers me is this:

Because insurers are increasingly willing to cover weight-loss surgery, hospitals here see it as a growing profit center.

They are mounting marketing campaigns and competing to sign up top weight-loss surgeons.

“There’s a high reimbursement rate for these procedures,” says Bob Benowitz, a Manhattan lawyer whose clients include many local hospitals and physicians.

Nationally, insurers paid hospitals an average of more than $10,000 for the two most popular of the procedures: gastric bypass and gastric banding. Christine Ren, a bariatric surgeon at New York University Medical Center, says some companies pay as much as $14,000.

That story is from 2007. I’m betting those numbers are much higher now. And I’m betting HCA/Tri-Star is cashing in on this profit center, just as the New York hospitals mentioned in the article did. After all, we have no shortage of obese people here in Tennessee.

I find this immoral. The entire idea that there’s a profit motive attached to healthcare is repugnant. No one should get rich off of someone’s healthcare needs. I place most of the diet industry on a par with snake oil salesmen, peddling quick-fixes like diet cookies and powders and shakes. And now HCA/Tri-Star puts itself in the same camp as the hucksters hawking a lemonade-maple-syrup-cayenne-pepper diet.

Read the letter here:

If We're Such Good Friends How Come You Don't Know I'm Not Fat?