Misogyny and Health Care: When it doesn't take two to tango?

When It Doesn't Take Two to Tango?

The Board of Commissioners in New Hanover County, North Carolina, have refused state family planning funds that would cover contraceptives and other family-planning medical services. Three commissioners offered their explanations:

He said he was concerned with answers to questions he asked about the funds.

"The answers that I got were that there were patients that were not being responsible with existing family planning that was being offered and that this would provide a more reliable solution for those people," Catlin said at Monday afternoon's commissioners meeting.

He added that he had an issue with "using taxpayer dollars to fund someone's irresponsibility."

The county's health department was awarded $8,899 in family planning funds that would "provide medical services related to family planning including physician's consultation, examination, prescription, continuing supervision, laboratory examination and contraceptive supplies," according to a budget amendment item included in documents for Monday's commissioners meeting. The county was not required to match the state grant.

Chairman Ted Davis said he thought it was a sad day when "taxpayers are asked to pay money to buy for contraceptives" for women having sex without planning responsibly.

"If these young women were responsible people and didn't have the sex to begin with, we wouldn't be in this situation," Davis said.

Commissioner Jonathan Barfield said he was "one of those abstinence guys" and agreed with Davis' comment.

No one made a motion to accept the funds. Instead, Catlin made a motion not to accept the funds.

(Bowen)​

Dan Savage offers the obvious interpretation:

See, the problem is women. Women having sex. If ladies didn't have sex there wouldn't be any need for contraception. This whole issue, this entire controversy, would go away if women would just stop having sex.

Men, of course, are blameless. Because a guy will just be sitting on a park bench or in a bowling alley, minding his own business and not even thinking about sex every two minutes, when a woman will come along, grab his penis, and run off with it. By the time he's summoned a police officer she's long gone and the damage has been done.​

This is why it is hard to take people like the commissioners seriously.

The whole problem of contraception can easily be taken care of if women just stop having sex ... with men.

Okay. Take note, Sisters! Lysistrata calls!

Oh, and since, you know, there is all that controversy stirred up by Republicans like Darryl Issa and Rush Limbaugh, perhaps it is time to remind folks of a vicious, juvenile joke that most American men have heard tossed around from time to time:

What's the difference between a slut and a bitch?​

And remember: Women are to blame—they need to stop having sex with men.

So try that again:

What's the difference between a slut and a bitch?​

____________________

Notes:

Bowen, Shannan. "New Hanover Commissioners choose not to accept family planning funds". Cape Fear Watchdog$. March 12, 2012. Watchdogs.Blogs.StarNewsOnline.com. March 13, 2012. http://watchdogs.blogs.starnewsonli...s-choose-not-to-accept-family-planning-funds/

Savage, Dan. "'If these young women are being responsible and didn't have the sex to begin with, we wouldn't have this problem to begin with.'" Slog. March 13, 2012. Slog.TheStranger.com. March 13, 2012. http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/ar...th-we-wouldnt-have-this-problem-to-begin-with

 

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Saying "I'm one of those abstinence guys" is like saying "I'm one of those astrology guys," or "I'm one of those unicorn guys."

But seriously, this is turning into a very embarrassing chapter in our nation's history. Misogyny on an official level.

 

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So its bad to expect men and women to be responsible for the sexual choices they make?

 

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The obvious question

Say huh?

No, really, what is that piece of wizened rhetoric supposed to mean on this occasion?

 

Umm Tiassa wasn't that exactly your own comment in another thread? If you (as a man) don't want children dont have sex.

 

desi

What's bad is that in a free country you think it's any of your business. Birth control and even abortions are health care women need, if Viagra for limp fat asses is paid for, so should birth control. And I think it's time to remove the elephants trunk from it's intrusion up the skirts of women, by amputation if necessary.

Grumpy

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There's always another solution

You still don't get it, do you?

I mean, as I recall, that came up 'twixt us because you were upset that a man should be held financially accountable for the wellbeing of a child if the woman refuses to abort it according to his wishes.

Now, let's add in a little bit of American context, since that's where New Hanover County, North Carolina actually is.

Imagine yourself as an American male. For whatever reasons—maybe it's work-related stress?—you're having trouble getting it up. So you go to your doctor, and he prescribes you a little blue pill to make sure you can get erect.

Have insurance? It's covered.

Your girlfriend, meanwhile, is trying to not get pregnant while enjoying sexual congress with you. She is using a birth control pill.

Does she have insurance? There is a good chance she will still be paying out of pocket for that birth control.

Now, the solution is simple: Insurance should cover birth control. By reducing the number of unplanned pregnancies, society more effectively manages insurance premium hikes. Overall, it costs less to cover the birth control than all of the unplanned pregnancies. And this is also part of the reason why birth control is included in many public health programs.

These are people who are actually trying to take responsibility for their sex lives.

Now, if your girlfriend can't afford it, hey, there's always another solution: You're not getting laid.

And if that's how you want it, fine. But I think you're well aware that at some point total abstinence becomes psychologically unhealthy. (And here we should at least note your own valid assertion that the American mental health system is a wreck.)

Now, if you want to throw your lot in with the people who think unplanned pregnancy is exclusively and entirely a woman's fault, go ahead.

But when you knock her up, and she won't abort, and you're all pissed off about the expenses of fatherhood? Well, remember that this is what you wanted.

 

These are your American conservatives

To the one, it seems like they're begging for Lysistrata. To the other, maybe they're hoping to see some hot, girl-on-girl action.

To yet another, and perhaps a tad more seriously, it does sort of make sense. I mean, if the result is that straight men aren't getting laid anymore because women aren't taking part, well, they will have restored some sort of sexual purity to society.

Marital rape numbers will skyrocket, of course, but that's okay to them. In the end, that's all women are good for in the conservative outlook. And then, of course, when the rapists knock up their wives, it'll be the women's fault for not using contraception.

And yes, if it seems like a neurotic mess of dangerous proportions, you're right.

 

Haven't you jumped the tracks here?

The issue in Hanover Cty had nothing to do with insurance.

Only about 2% of insurance plans don't cover any method of reversible birth control (Data from 2002, it's likely better today, though there wasn't much room for further improvement).

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/U.S. ...ntraceptives and the impact of...-a0116668437

No way do 98% of insurance plans cover Viagra for ED, but there is a lot of BS out about that coverage because Viagra has a medical use besides ED (for treatment of Hypertension) and for that medical use virtually all plans would cover it.

 

Tiassa, you know your coming off looking like the sexist one. You do realize that the sale of most erectile dysfunction "cures" are targeted at WOMEN not men. Furthermore your crack about rape is really offensive. God, are you still living in Victorian England? acting like the only reason women have sex is to "please there men" Its the most sexist attitude of all, to dismiss female sexuality as irrelevant and men as some sort of "horn dogs" who MUST have sex exactly x times a week or they will go rape the closest thing in a skirt.

 

Not at all. It _is_ bad when the government works to prevent them from planning well.

 

I think Democrats need to point out in the upcoming elections that Republicans are cock blockers. Nobody likes cock blockers.

Restricting access to contraception has to be the most obvious case of penny wise and pound foolish I've ever heard of.

 

Women are not denied birth control in the US, if you have the money, you can get them and a prescription is easy to get, and most places I've lived have Free Clinics or similar where you can get the pills for free or very cheap if you don't have the money.

Are these available everywhere, probably not, but that's not the same as claiming women are being denied BC.

Do insurance programs cover BC as Tiassa suggested is a different issue, but in general, yes they do. (see previous link)

 

Oh, big surprise, women who get BC pills every month while sexually active and have their name on the hospital record for the costs of giving birth are shown to pay a larger percent of out of pocket expenses for reproductive health care?

Yeah, that's what I'd expect the figures to show.

But when my wife had our babies, the bills were all in her name.
She didn't work.
I paid for not only the insurance but all the out of pocket costs, as well as for birth control, but in that accounting, she would have been listed as paying.

It would seem that those figures have little to do with what actually happens in the real world among couples who are in relationships or married.

Which is essentially meaningless without the data behind that figure:

A) those are also people's least expensive medical years, so using a % as the metric doesn't tell us anything about whether this % represents a significant amount of money.

B) the figure is NOT claimed to be just for Contraception. Indeed, we are not told at all what the percent that is paid out of pocket by woman for this part of the 68%

C) when figures are presented in this weasle way you can pretty much assume that they are trying to distort the perception of the issue.

So Bells, what percent of this OOP expense is actually for Birth Control?

I looked all through our Constitution and found no basis that "cheap and affordable BC" was a right. Please point out where you think this RIGHT to cheap and affordable BC originated?

The fact is, not paying for something for someone is not the same as denying it to them, and that link to the states you claim were denying contraception, that's not true either, they were against paying to terminate a pregnancy, not prevent a pregnancy. Not quite the same thing as contraception.

 

Didn't say only women in relationships mattered, but while I believe that most reproductive costs are incurred by women in relationships (not all are married of course, but more than half are), the example was to show how statistics of how much my wife, as a woman, paid for her health care might be misleading as I was the source for ALL of her expenses and I doubt my example is at all unusual.

Actually you didn't quote a specific study. Your MJ reference takes you to here: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/ib_0799.html but it doesn't give the actual source of that figure either, so I'm not sure where those figures came from or what they mean, but what you quoted from the study didn't actually provide much support for your claim because they don't answer the key question: about how much women of childbearing years pay OOP for Birth Control.

All it said was women, in those years when your health care costs are the lowest, pay 68% more out of pocket than men, who go to the doctor far less then women do, for all their HEALTH CARE costs, but there are lots of other costs for health care besides Contraception.

I've never considered affordable health care (for both sexes) a RIGHT but an important social goal. Our ability to provide everyone affordable health care is something that will change based on our economy, demographics, cost of medicines, availability of hospitals/doctors, other competing needs for our taxes, value of the dollar, etc, etc. For instance if Billy T is correct and our economy is going to tank in 2014, that would in effect preclude us from assuring that RIGHT. It would not however prevent us from ensuring people's RIGHT to say, Free Speech, or Habeus Corpus etc etc.

But isn't the real issue is what is affordable and how high should BC be a priority in our funding for health care?

No, if someone gave him food, that would be charity. If someone then took the food from him, that would be denying him the food.

No Bells, you have this misunderstanding what the word DENY means.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/deny

Nope, that link takes you to here:

They aren't, as you claimed, trying to deny anyone the ability to buy contraceptives, the issue was narrow and only refers to the Fed not being able to MANDATE that insurance coverage MUST include contraceptives.

They don't even say that insurance companies can't provide BC coverage and as we have seen, even back in 2002, 98% already do.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=17&articleid=20120224_16_A8_OKLAHO252427