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Wednesday 3 February 2016

Equal Rights, Equal Healthcare, and a Modest Proposal

I admit, I'd never read this before, (h/t to Lifesite CORRECTION, h/t to Catholic World Report,) - the Affordable Healthcare Act? Life is not that long!!!!
Nondiscrimination in Health Programs and Activities Proposed Rule
Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act
[seriously, 1557 sections?]
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has issued a proposed rule to advance health equity and reduce disparities in health care. The proposed rule, Nondiscrimination in Health Programs and Activities, will assist some of the populations that have been most vulnerable to discrimination and will help provide those populations equal access to health care and health coverage....individuals cannot be subject to discrimination based on their race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability....
Image result for baldrick
I have a cunning plan!
The proposed rule requires that women have equal access to the health care they receive and the insurance they obtain. Moreover, the rule makes clear that sex discrimination includes discrimination based on gender identity. For example -
  • Individuals cannot be denied health care or health coverage based on their sex, including their gender identity.
  • Individuals must be treated consistent with their gender identity, including in access to facilities.
  • Sex-specific health care cannot be denied or limited just because the person seeking such services identifies as belonging to another gender. For example, a provider may not deny an individual treatment for ovarian cancer, based on the individual’s identification as a transgender man, where the treatment is medically indicated.
Don't you think every pro-life guy you know should trot on over to the nearest Planned Parenthood and ask for a pregnancy test? Demand one! And maybe insist on being given an abortion? after all, it's zir* body. Ze* should say that ze's been doing the backstroke in the gender fluidity pool and today woke up feeling all womanish.
Com'on, it'll be fun.
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I should make plain, unlike many who are pro-life, I was in favor of healthcare reform. But I thought it should have gone much further than it did, I think socialized medicine is the only civilized set-up. The trouble is, we didn't get healthcare reform, we got health INSURANCE reform, it still costs a bloody fortune and it's still making the medical establishment, the insurance establishment and the pharmaceutical establishment filthy rich with the scams they have set up amongst themselves.
And the way the whole thing fell out, it made clear, it made it undeniable, the fetishization of abortion and contraception that sends tingles up the spine in certain quarters of what used to be called with some justification, the liberal movement.
Let's be honest, there are plenty of common and necessary heathcare services and drugs that are not required to be covered under ALL plans, (adult eye exams? foot care? weightloss surgery?) but contraceptives, some of which are abortefacient, was a hill the Obama administration was willing to die on - despite the knowledge that compromising on that would have allowed them to form a coalition with the USCCB which would have guaranteed success. But nope, they were going to punish those whose very refusal to embrace skankdom themselves feels, even without a word being spoken**, like such a reproach to those who revel in it  - they were going to insist that those puritanical types pay for it. Because make no mistake, this was never about healthcare, it was about silencing, driving from the public square those who don't espouse the notion that the only wrong or unhealthy sexual activity or attitude is continence.
Your body's working as it was intended? Great, you can get drugs that will stop that!
Oh, your body's NOT working as intended, you're infertile? Nope, probably not gonna give you any help with that...
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* Not making this up. Anyone else worried that irony and satire are becoming redundnat?
** I, of course, am not such a one - I'm always ready to speak, or type a word. And "skankdom" is a pejorative that applies at least as much to men (whatever their "gender," she added sarcastically,) as to women. What can I say, I think sluts should be ashamed...

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