Just In Case

by digby

Yesterday dday wrote about the now infamous Kyl Stabenow exchange on the finance committee in which Stabenow reminded Kyl that his mother probably could have used maternity coverage in her health policy.

But it’s useful to look at exactly what Kyl said and examine what it says about the Republican definition of insurance:

I don’t need maternity care and so requiring that to be in my insurance policy is something I don’t need and make the insurance more expensive.

At first glance, it would seem that Kyl is saying that anything that applies to women and not men, such things as uterine cancer,breast cancer, child birth etc, should not be in the universal package of benefits because John Kyl doesn’t need it and therefore, shouldn’t have to pay for it. But it’s actually something different.

It’s true that health insurance that covers women’s reproductive health is a little bit more expensive for men, who will not personally use it. One can argue that men are quite involved with women’s reproductive systems, but it would seem that a fair number of them only want to control those systems, not chip in to pay for the healthy functioning of them.

But this is really about something different. John Kyl (and people like Ashton Kutcher, who famously said he shouldn’t have to pay for fat people because he isn’t fat) apparently believe that they can predict the future and should only have to pay for the things from which they personally might suffer. It would be really neat if we could do that, but it’s not how the world — or insurance — works.

The whole point is that while some people are born lucky –Kyl for instance, who doesn’t have a nasty uterus to worry about, or Kutcher, who is blessed with good genes and a personal trainer— everybody, everybody, is vulnerable to catastrophic illness. And the costs of such illness are so great that anyone but the super rich is also vulnerable to financial catastrophe in that circumstance if they aren’t well insured.

It can happen to anyone. Patrick Swayze just died of pancreatic cancer. He was a health nut and an athlete who was never sick a day in his life until it happened to him. You cannot know if it will happen to you and you cannot be smug and self centered and insist that people shouldn’t have to pay for health costs they cannot possibly incur because there are a hell of a lot of diseases and accidents waiting to strike any of us down at any moment.

This notion that everyone who isn’t sick today is somehow morally superior, smarter or just plain better, and shouldn’t have to kick into the collective pool that protects everyone is the worst kind of immature thinking. The whole point of insurance is that there are millions of potential health problems out there, most of which we will not get. But among those millions of possibilities is probably at least one that we will get and more likely quite a few over the course of our lives. We just don’t know which ones. (If we did, this whole thing would be a lot easier to deal with, wouldn’t it?) Therefore, you have to have everybody put their money into a big pool to cover every eventuality.

Certainly, people should be encouraged to live healthy lives and be given as much support in doing that as possible. But there is no guarantee. And as Stabenow pointed out to Kyl, he may not personally need maternity care but everybody has a mother and she certainly does. And even the gorgeous Ashton could get heart disease diabetes, no matter how buff he is today. There are no guarantees in life. That’s why we have insurance (or pay taxes…) Just in case. Or as the Christians say, “there but for the grace of God go I.”

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