I think it’s fairly safe to say that anybody who believes that health care doesn’t need MAJOR reforms (way beyond simply allowing you to buy from the next state over) and a NEW form of competition needs to closely examine their beliefs about underrepresented populations — and especially women.

I’ve mentioned here before (and I’m not the only person mentioning it either) that insurance companies routinely discriminate against women simply for being…well, women.  The natural workings of the female body — menstruation, menopause, and particularly childbirth — are viewed, by a large number of insurance companies, as illnesses.  That is, if your body doesn’t work like a man’s body, then your body is abnormal and can be denied basic treatment.  It’s no longer a matter of covering Viagra and not birth control.  It’s a matter of covering Viagra and not childbirth or pediatric care.  And if none of this was horrible enough, watch this video:

Did you catch that?

She was being required to get herself sterilized, out of her own pocket (because of course, having no insurance means no co-pay), in order to even qualify.  And it gets better: since she would need to deliver her 3rd child via C-section, she and her husband can’t have a third child (which they were planning to do).  The insurance companies are taking away her family’s reproductive autonomy for no reason whatsoever!

Insurance companies don’t deserve any sort of consideration from the government.  They are unregulated, unreasonable, and outright hostile to the vast majority of the American public.  They treat health like a Good Ol’ Boys club.  And we should not continue to tolerate it, for any reason at all — especially not based on misinformation, lies, and the unwillingness to do one’s own research on the issue.