Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Power to the Robe: Justices who Become Pundits over Healthcare Mandates


Listening to the arguments from Supreme Court Justices this week, regarding the States’ contention over a Healthcare Mandate, I find myself biting my tongue and fighting the urge to shout at the television screen or the article on the monitor of my computer. Why are Americans so limited in their memory of facts when it comes to politics?  Ugh!

I will state it again, I’m a moderate, but I find myself so angry about the loss of facts versus rhetoric when it comes to the conservative agenda. Shouldn’t we expect a shred of decorum as we listen to Senator Ron Johnson’s, pleas for a shred of freedom? All this pomp and circumstance over a mandate for Americans to purchase healthcare. Am I fooled by this attempt at righteous indignation? Not in the least.

Remember in my previous post, in some states members of the conservative party want to force women to have transvaginal ultrasounds before they are able to have an abortion, regardless of whether she wants one or her doctor feels it is medically necessary?  Is that not the government trying to take away not only every shred of freedom from a woman but also every shred of decency?  The laws springing up across our country in attempt to shame women into not requesting contraception from her employer’s healthcare provider are merely a sequel to the vaginal probing promised by republican governors in various red states. Arizona not only wants women to submit personal medical information to their employers about their non-contraceptive use of birth control but they also want women to pay a ‘processing fee’ in order to do so.  Where is the indignation there, Senator Johnson?

As Rachel Maddow so astutely reported on her April 26th show, video evidence remains of members of the republican party touting the virtues of an individual mandate requiring ‘individuals’ instead of ‘corporations’ to provide their own health insurance. These conversations occurred in the early to mid 90s and Senator Chuck Grassley sponsored a health-care bill in 1993 and continued to extol the virtues of a mandate as late as 2009. Even Rick Santorum supported the mandate in 1994. And, not only was Mitt Romney the first American politician to frame a Universal Healthcare plan, he stated on more than one occasion that it was one that would work for the whole country. So is a universal healthcare plan good or bad for the country?

I’m one of those who doesn’t like anything being forced on me. Vaginal probing or healthcare. At one time I worked for a company that required a large monthly payment, high deductibles and copays while covering very little of the services an everyday person would use such as well-baby checkups, immunizations, women’s healthcare, etc… I found it cheaper to go it alone. In the cost/benefit analysis I realized that paying directly to my doctor would cost me less immediately and in the long run, barring any tragic medical events. Under the current healthcare law there would be many who are offered healthcare that is substandard, such as the one I had been offered. Any employer should be embarrassed to even suggest it their employees.

Yet, although the healthcare mandate of the ‘Obamacare’ Bill has the provision requiring people to purchase healthcare it doesn’t have any teeth should an individual decide not to buy in. In other words: if you choose not to purchase healthcare there is no penalty. The Obama Administration has gone to great lengths to ensure that anyone choosing not to purchase their own healthcare would not be penalized in any way. This is not the case with Mitt Romney’s healthcare plan or his idea of the plan that would work for America.

This is what I feel the Justices on the Supreme Court are missing, or at least appear to be missing in there very dismissive discussions with the Solicitor General this week. I find it difficult to think that a Supreme Court Justice wouldn’t consider recusing themselves when they or their significant others are in bed with the very organizations that are lobbying against the matter they are hearing at that moment. And their comments are more than indicative of their reluctance to see this case with a blind eye to partisanship.

As they smugly banter about the idea of allowing people without health insurance to die rather than receive healthcare at an ER at the expense of the members of society who do have insurance, I wonder if they are intending to promote that idea and whether the callousness in their demeanor is sincere. I know how painful it is to watch children dying because the parents don’t have healthcare. When my daughter had her first heart transplant my husband was in the military. There were many others waiting for kidneys or livers who didn’t have the same luxury government provided healthcare. To see them wasting away while their parents attended fund raisers hundreds of miles from their child’s hospital bed was more than my heart could bear.  If Justice Scalia had any form of a heart beating inside the cavity beneath his head and neck, he wouldn’t be able to even suggest such a thing. And yet he did.

My faith in our justice system fades every day as I witness the politics that have poisoned our supposedly non-partisan court systems. Blindness to truth and legal merit makes our justices no more than prostitutes to the highest bidder. How can we ever take them seriously in circumstances that matter when we can’t even rely on them to make a legitimate decision in cases such as this? I can only sigh and hope this election year passes more expediently than it appears it will and that the masses in this country will begin to recognize a shill when they see one. And that is only my opinion.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Am I glad I’m a woman?


I just read a blog by John Scalzi called WHATEVER still running against the wind. For yesterday’s post he responded to a reader asking him why he enjoys being a man and what he envies about women. I was very impressed by his answer. Now, I have to say, he uses “language” that some may find offensive so if you go to his blog from this link, be prepared if you’re not used to cursing. What I enjoyed most was his answer.

When he responded he made it very clear that he is more than glad to be a man. His greatest reasoning behind comfort with his “manness” was that no one cares about his body or what he does to it. He makes the argument that being white, heterosexual male is one of the easiest jobs there are. He doesn’t have to work harder to be paid better, nobody cares how he dresses or how much clothing he has on his body and nobody cares about his sex life, how much he is having or how he responds to the consequences of his having had sex. Interesting concept. I hadn’t really thought in those terms.

As I’ve listened to the members of Congress carry on about women’s reproductive systems and whether or not women should be “having so much sex” that they need contraceptives, it didn’t occur to me to question their integrity with regard to their own sexual behavior. No matter what the situation, the onus always tends to fall on the shoulders of the female in the relationship to ensure an unwanted pregnancy doesn’t occur. 

Rick Santorum’s billionaire, Foster Friess, recently said that in his day women used aspirin as a contraceptive. They held it between their knees. At the time I wasn’t overly offended about his statement because, as a woman, I’ve grown accustomed to hearing men speak in this manner. If I hear that statement today, however, I would wonder why it wasn’t the man who was required to hold the aspirin between his knees. Why always the woman?
And with the continued argument over whether or not an insurance company should be compelled to provide contraceptives for women without a co-pay I haven’t hesitated to think about the question as to why they shouldn’t, since they provide Viagra and Cialis free of charge. If it is proper for men to have a pill provided for them so that they can have hours of sex, why is it wrong to provide women the antidote to becoming pregnant?

In Arizona they have proposed a new law that Governor Jan Brewer intends to sign allowing employers to require a note from the woman’s doctor or an explanation from the woman as to why she needs to have contraceptives provided to her by their insurance company. Have you ever heard of a man having to explain anything of this nature to his employer?  This whole ridiculous matter has gone too far.

Several months ago I tried an experiment. I had been posting on comment boards under the name Bobbi with a female avatar. Whenever I posted in this manner my comments were met with vile, and at times vulgar, replies from men and women. The comments were unimaginably disrespectful and demeaning to me as a woman from both sexes who replied. After several weeks I began posting comments as Bob and changed the avatar to a neutral one. Suddenly I was brilliant. I still had angry posts from other men and some women but they were much more respectful than what I had received in the past. It wasn’t that I changed the way I posted or the words I would use. All remained the same and yet I was more respected by others, especially those who agreed with me. I have to say I haven’t returned to the female avatar.

From time to time I’ll have a person who vehemently disagrees with me, go to my profile and see that I am a woman after all. Strangely enough, they are taken aback that they’ve been arguing with a woman as if she was a man. I’m surprised at their sudden respect they hadn’t shown when I was overtly female or covertly neuter, assumed to be male. It proved to me that there are instant assumptions made when a person sees who is posting, their particular gender, rather than what is being said. Once the man is sure he’s met his match in another Alpha-male he gives the respect that is deserved while finding a way to sink their teeth into the jugular. And, even after they have learned I’m not the Alpha-male, the respect of a warrior in battle remains once they learn they were bested by a ‘girl’. I can only laugh.

Regardless of the lack of respect I receive as being a member of the ‘weaker sex,’ I am a woman and I enjoy being a woman. I’m tired of men being concerned about what I do with my body and I’m tired of my opinion being minimized because I don’t have as much testosterone as they. Yet, I enjoy being capable of thinking like a man while still enjoying the perks I’ve had in my life, of the ability to carry a baby inside of me. I also enjoy the good fight to try and bring a greater awareness to those who are still hung up on women asking for permission to use their bodies as it was meant to be used, and for the ability drop the aspirin from between our knees and tell the man it’s his turn.