Health Care: Forced Sterilization Among the Costs of Doing Nothing

[dsolo802]

The forces of righteousness are out there trying to preserve "the best health care system" in the world. While that canard is repeated over and over and over, corporate apologists conscientiously stoke everyone's fears about what new Health Care may look like without gross distortions and outright lies.

I don't think people know enough about the horrors of our current health care system. This thread is dedicated to turning on the lights for those who believe we actually have something of real value to cling to. Got a story illustrating how our profit-driven health care system, exists to deny meaningful health care? Please feel free to add it to this thread.

As against completely bogus claims about death panels, rationing of health care, and government forced abortions, I'd like to offer this little gem of a story: How private insurance today is encouraging healthy fertile women to get sterilized to keep private insurance profits up.

Insurance Company Tells Woman to Get Sterilized

In testimony that Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski called “bone-chilling,” Colorado mom Peggy Robertson recently shared with a Senate committee the unbelievable story of how a major health insurance carrier refused to insure her and what they suggested she do to make herself eligible for coverage.

In 2007, Robertson was denied coverage by Golden Rule Insurance, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group. In a letter explaining the denial, the company claimed that Robertson’s previous C-section made her a financial risk for the company. If she had another C-section within the first three years of coverage, the company would not profit from her policy. It was a risk they weren’t willing to take and because the Colorado Insurance Division would not allow them to exclude C-section benefits for the first three years, they denied her coverage altogether.

Robertson’s story may sound all too familiar, but unfortunately it doesn’t end there. In that same letter, Golden Rule went on to suggest what Robertson might do to make herself eligible for coverage: Get sterlized.

That an insurance company would dare to even hint that a healthy woman should be medically sterilized so they can make a profit is, in the words of Senator Mikulski, “morally repugnant.” But let’s face it, women already get the short end of the stick when it comes to health care coverage. Possessing a womb makes us a liability in the eyes of insurers and more than half of them don’t even offer maternity coverage. Those who do will often raise the premiums of women who have had C-sections or, as in Robertson’s case, refuse to cover them at all.

Of course, women aren’t the only ones getting a raw deal from profit-driven health insurance companies. Americans are suffering all over under our current system of health care. But when the largest insurance company in the United States feels like they have a right to plan your family to benefit their bottom line, we have a serious problem.

[Zane]

What can be said about insurance companies that hasn't already been said? They're vultures. This really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

[dsolo802]

What can be said about insurance companies that hasn't already been said? They're vultures. This really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

Everybody gets that, especially in the abstract. As against these really creepy and false concrete scenarios that are being floated to defeat Health Care reform - pulling the plug on Granny, forced abortion - abstract responses won't do. I really hope that folks will provide concrete horror stories about what passes as the "greatest health care system" in the world today.

Got a concrete story?

[Rigged]

Maybe because I live in communist Massachusetts, I don't know. But I don't understand this fear regarding a public option. It seems to me that anyone with an iota of common sense would know how silly the "death panel" and forced sterilization talk is.

It really is rubbish.

[Kanadesaga]

Well, fuck 'em, if people can't pay, let them die. that's what capitalism is all about! Profit first, profit last, profit always!

that's written in concrete somewhere I'm sure

[Danimal]

http://wbztv.com/health/trigger.list...2.1266672.html

http://lgbtqnews.com/gaynews/court-i...z-man_BYM.aspx

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madr...ricks-theyre-d

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/200...verage-to.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marian..._b_201473.html

This last article has a man not only refusing raises in his salary but spending money on uneccessary child-care in order to qualify for state-assisted insurance for his sick child. The idea that a person who is trying to provide a good life for his family is forced to reduce his own salary in order to receive health care is disturbing, but it's not the first time I've heard of someone working a low paying job (even when higher paying jobs are available to them) in order to receive health care. This country should be so ashamed of itself for letting this go on and on.

[Heretic]

What can be said about insurance companies that hasn't already been said? They're vultures. This really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

Vultures are ecologically useful, ergo totally inappropriate as a point of comparison. Vultures at least clean up someone else's kill. Insurance companies guarantee further decay of all around them.

[Kanadesaga]

Vultures are ecologically useful, ergo totally inappropriate as a point of comparison. Vultures at least clean up someone else's kill. Insurance companies guarantee further decay of all around them.

What part of "Profit" don't you understand? People's health doesn't matter, lives ruined from death and bankruptcy doesn't change the way we do business. Do you understand that profit is ominpotent? It is the true god of "In God We Trust".

If people are poor, it is their own damn fault, god wants them poor because the world needs ditch diggers too.