Well, can you argue with the explanation? Just calling it stupid does not make it so; impotence is a medical condition, desire to prevent pregnancy is not. Are you arguing that preventing pregnancy IS a medical condition?

 

Not to take away anything about your point about misogyny in our society, but Viagra does have uses besides the treatment of erectile dysfunction. It's one of the treatments for primary pulmonary hypertension and is even given to premature babies who have significant lung disease.

 

I don't see his point, doesn't the medical care associated with a pregnancy cost more than years worth of birth control? Also, some forms of birth control also help prevent transmission of STD's.

 

I thought his "argument" was so Jonah Goldberg-esque, i.e. so clearly fatuous and advanced purely for political reasons that it didn't require an factual refutation.

I don't object to viagra being covered by insurance, though it's an elective drug, so I'd be fine with just partial coverage. I do think the pill should 100% covered though, and I think it's criminal that any insurance company would cover viagra, but not the pill.

First off, viagra is an elective, cosmetic procedure, of the sort that insurance hardly ever covers. There's no medical necessity for a man to have 4 hour boners. If they come out with a pill that enables women to maintain hours of sexual arousal and all but guarantees an orgasm, then we'll have an equivalent example. In a related issue, the rushed approval and almost-instantaneous, wide-spread societal acceptance of ED drugs is about the clearest example I can think of to demonstrate the continued male dominance of American society. TV networks that still ban contraceptive ads during daytime hours are virtually sponsored by penis pills, during most sporting events and male-skewing TV shows. (It's gotten to where I'm kind of embarrassed to watch NFL telecasts, since judging by the ads I must be a McD's and pizza-gobbling, beer drunk 55 y/o white male who can't get it up. When, in fact, no more than half of those allegations are accurate.)

Secondly, there's no true equivalent since men don't have to worry about getting pregnant when they have sex, and since the F2M transmission of VD is so much less likely than the M2F, men have no conception (pun intended) of what it's like to be a woman dealing with sexual matters. For that reason most women and many men are appalled when chauvinist males bloviate in the fashion that O'Reilly does in this clip.

Also, the pill isn't used just for birth control, and for many women it's far more of a medical necessity than a drug men use on party weekends with foreign whores.

On a psychological level, a woman needs to feel in control of her fertility if she's going to have a healthy sex life. And for many women, knowing she can make love to her partner without risking an unwanted pregnancy is essential for that.

Finally, it's a measure of protection and security and insurance for women, knowing that if they're raped, date or otherwise, their horrible situation won't become immeasurably worse over the next 9 months.

And I'm not even getting into the financial issues of a single pregnancy costing more to an insurance company than dozens of lifetime prescriptions of the pill.

 

The simple fact remains that viagra treats a medical condition, whereas birth control pills do not. If you can't get an erection, you have a medical condition. You're right in saying there is no equivalent for women, though. If there were an affliction that rendered women physically unable to have sex, the cure would be covered by insurance.

You can bloviate about how expensive pregnancy is, how much more comfortable the pill makes women, etc, all you want, but the fact is that if the professionals in the field (which include MANY women) thought they were valid arguments, it would be done. Or are you suggesting that women are sexist against their own sex?

 

As 5 seconds on Google would inform you, the birth control pill's function is to regulate a woman's hormone levels during her cycle. This has many medical purposes: it helps prevent anemia from heavy bleeding, lessens cramping, helps with skin outbreaks and acne, can lessen excessive body hair growth, and helps prevent several types of ovarian cancer. On top of the fact that it prevents pregnancy, which is about the biggest medical condition any woman can enter into. (Would even O'Reily argue that a pill that potentially prevents pregnancy is not-medical, while one that potentially enables it is?)

All of those women's health conditions are far more medical and serious than male impotence, which is purely a quality of life issue. I don't say that viagra shouldn't be covered (I'd imagine a prescription for that would do as much or more for a depressed and impotent man than prozac alone, and insurance companies regularly cover mental health drugs now), but it's clearly unfair that viagra is covered by some insurance companies while the pill is not. Which is what this whole post was about -- McCain locked up on answering that question, as his common sense, "yes, it's unfair" warred against his current need to pander to the anti-sex religious right, "No, it's not unfair since sex should = babies."

 

My partner informs me that many insurance companies in the US will pay for tubaligation surgery but will not pay for vasectomies because the former is a major medical procedure while the latter is more like an elective out-patients precedure (although I don't see how vasectomies could be any less elective than tubaligations).

So the result is that many women in married partnerships in the US undergo a very serious, expensive and time-consuming operation because it's free, while their male partners get off with nothing, even though the male option would be much cheaper and less risky and generally involve no time off work/other commitments.

 

The pill still doesn't treat a medical condition; it prevents one in much the same way that can be achieved through over the counter means or *gasp* abstinence. Nor is an angry Aunt Flo a medical condition.

It is like acne; it is quite annoying and for some can be physically painful. That doesn't mean that all acne medications and face washes should be covered by insurance.

You can say anything you want, but you're dancing around the core issue: birth control does NOT treat anything that is classified as a medical condition, whereas Viagra does.

As for McCain, he didn't know enough about the issue, and that's what he said. I'd have been disappointed if he went on a tirade about how oppressed women were, since as he said, he doesn't know enough about the issue to HAVE an opinion. He'd have just been pandering.

 

An "I don't know" answer on an obscure and irrelevant issue is fine by me. Let's talk about the war.

 

Here's where I wish I had a voting script I could throw up in comments. I'm 95% sure you're just trolling at this point, since you can't seriously believe the right wing talking points you're arguing. It's like watching a Sadly, No entry take form in real time. And a voting mechanism would let me see if others felt the same way.

Just in case, though I'm sure this (getting me continue to reply to your "arguments") is your goal... also not treating a "medical condition," by the tortured definition you've evolved to belabor this debate: vaccinations.

Polio? 20,000 Americans used to contract this crippling illness every year, as recently as the 1950s. Smallpox? It killed nearly half a million Europeans every year during the 1800s. Interesting to find out now that the medical breakthroughs that ended those diseases, and countless others we no longer fear, weren't actually treating "medical conditions." But since vaccinations, and all the other forms of preventative medicine millions of doctors around the world devote their lives to, aren't treating current "medical conditions," none of them should be covered by insurance. Pity, that.

 

"An "I don't know" answer on an obscure and irrelevant issue is fine by me. Let's talk about the war."

It's a pretty major issue for most women of reproductive age (and their partners) in the US, and McCain's made his "100 more years" position on Iraq pretty clear too, so I'm unlikely to blog on that issue (when did I last? 2005?). What I found fascinating about this issue was the way McCain locked up, for a solid 8-10 seconds, when faced with a rather simple question. Watching a man literally frozen, as his conscience warred with his political necessity, was a unique experience.

I suppose it's encouraging that he still has some personal convictions and beliefs and common sense, and that he has to consciously force himself to spout the cultural conservatism that the ever-dwindling, and aging, core Republican voters require. But the fact that a President McCain would hesitate for a moment, before nominating more judges dedicated to adjudicating away our personal and reproductive freedoms, isn't really something I look for in a presidential candidate.

 

We don't have a rediculous insurance system like you do in the states, here we have a sensible public health system.

Under that system, all types of contraceptive can be put on prescription by your doctor and picked up at the low low fee of $3 (the government pays the rest).

So while the "professionals" in your country might not consider the pill to be worthy of subsidising, that is not the case elsewhere in the world, and frankly that weakens your argument a lot because it seems your "professionals" are probably more interested in the bottom line than actually helping people (it would certainly be cheaper for the government not to subsidise contraception).

 

Hold on a second, you said this:

"the medical breakthroughs that ended those diseases, and countless others we no longer fear, weren't actually treating medical conditions."

I may be misinterpreting, but I take it you're talking about penicillin? Or are you saying that Polio itself wasn't considered a medical condition?

I won't comment yet since the former wouldn't even arguably support your position (and that's how it reads to me).

I'm not a doctor; I'm only supporting the supposed positions of the medical professionals, some of whom I know personally; I've worked in an Ob-Gyn for a time, and not once did I hear anybody complaining or even commenting about having to pay for their birth control. Yes, I am a guy, and yes, I DID work in an Ob-Gyn. My aunt is the manager there. Worry not! I didn't do any nursing.

All that aside, can we be sure it's even an issue? The only mention I've found on birth control costs is a source stating: "birth control pills and doctor visits are covered by many health insurance plans."

So it sounds to me that the Planned Parenthood zealots are saying that ALL insurance companies should be REQUIRED to pay for birth control. Free market indeed.

 

Is the real issue here not, WHY on earth would they not want to cover birth control? If they could afford it they surely would, because no woman is going to choose insurance that covers less rather than more!

Therefore even if they don't care about unwanted pregnancy, STDs, etc they would surely get a larger market share if they were to cover contraception as well?

As for his point of why should everyone else have to pay for it, well just because that's the way insurance works! You pay, and your money helps out everyone else and if at some point you need help, it then helps you.

He doesnt actually seem to defend the practice in any way, it's one of those painful moments when it's clear he doesnt like the people who made the advert and wants to attack them and in doing so comes off looking not only callous but also just plain stupid.

 

While reading the comments regarding "E.D." as a "medical condition", I couldn't help but wonder how many men who use them actually have "E.D." I'm sure that some men do have a genuine problem, but I would be willing to bet that that they are going to be a tiny percentage of the men who actually use these drugs.

That made me think about P.M.S. As recently as the late 1970s P.M.S. was still considered a genuine "medical condition" that was suffered by somewhere around 10% of women. As drugs to treat it became available though, more and more women began to claim the condition, and to take the drugs to treat it. Until ultimately they had to rename the condition P.M.D.D.
to separate women with a genuine medical condition from those who were just bloated and irritable.

If these drugs were being used strictly by men who actually had a "medical condition" I would be all for insurance covering them. As it stands though, all you have to do is tell your doctor you can't get wood and he will write you a prescription. I certainly don't want my tax dollars to be paying for some thirty-something's party weekend in Cabo.

 

Ecstasy and viagara work quite well together, so I've heard.