Though speaking of choice, Obama talked about it in his Notre Dame speech:
... Let's honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded not only in sound science, but also in clear ethics, as well as respect for the equality of women. ...
Obama does plan to repeal the Bush rule about the conscience clause, but this statement indicates that it won't necessarily be gone. And what is a conscience clause, anyway, but granting people who feel squeamish about women's sexuality the right to deny them medical care.
Here's a conscience clause for you ... If you, as a medical professional, don't want to provide women with such reproductive healthcare as they may require, go into podiatry. Study pediatrics. Be a dermatologist.
Do something with your life besides training for a job you then refuse to perform. It's almost as masochistic as training for a profession no one will hire you for, at which point you might as well have been an English or journalism major.
Everyone would be outraged if people started showing up for hip replacements or liver transplants, only to be told by Christian Scientist surgeons that they needed to pray harder instead. If someone ended up losing too much blood because a Jehovah's Witness heading up the ER insisted that no one could give transfusions, there would be lawsuits.
Yet if women are denied medical care because of the shrinking minority of people who want to enshrine their religious beliefs into law, well, that's someone's conscience acting up and we have to respect that.
And when the poor, or those with pre-existing conditions are denied care, that's just a business decision. We have to preserve the insurance guilds companies' right to exercise their belief in mercantilism government protection of their monopoly hold on an expensive commodity.
Elizabeth Edwards was on The Daily Show last night, and she said that "a few years ago, I think, the president of United Health Care made so much money, one in every $700 spent in this country on healthcare went to pay him." The people whose consciences and worldviews are troubled by that state of affairs don't get a say in any of this.
Instead, the same conservatives who spend so much time trying to make women's medical decisions on their behalf are the ones who speak up in favor of individual choice when it really means fat profits for corporations:
... "A government takeover of health care will put bureaucrats in charge of health care decisions that should be made by families and doctors," Rep. Charles Boustany of Louisiana said in the Republican radio and Internet message.
"It will limit treatment options and lead to rationed care. And to pay for government health care your taxes will be raised," said Boustany, a cardiovascular surgeon and member of the House Republican Health Care Solutions Group. ...
Right now if you're poor, or if you have an actual illness, or if you're a woman that society suspects of being a slut, your access to healthcare is already rationed. You're so rationed out of the system, you might not make it to a doctor for that conversation about your options.
Women get the worst of both these medical choice gaps, being more likely to be poor and ending up with the majority of responsibility for reproductive health decisions.
Healthcare reform and the final conscience clause policy haven't been finalized yet. I hope when they are, that Congress and the Executive will consider the burdens of those who can't afford to pay more for anything and didn't have the luxury of going to medical or pharmacy school.
We'd like some freedom of choice, too. |
