Banishing Gender … or … Nationalizing Health Care?
As the banishment of gender continues in our culture, one wonders at what else that might hide from our eyes. For example, “same-sex marriage” serves the purposes of numerous allied agendas.
Churches and religion are further marginalized, as one of their basic doctrines and services to their own and the larger population, is eroded. They are less esteemed for the extra sense of “special” and “important” they give married couples as marriage is diminished. “Civil unions” and the new and “less old-fashioned” (traditional, religious) “marriage” become more a matter of legal contracts and governmental affairs.
Now, few constitutional lawyers really doubt that once same-sex marriages are established, the same reasoning and legal principals will justify plural marriage, marriage between humans and animals (PETA wins that one), marriage between adults and younger children (already “age discrimination”, and “privacy rights” are already eroding “old fashioned” ideas of parental authority), marriage between closer relatives – even brother and sisters (with same sex marriage fuzzing up definitions of “family”, and brother-sister marriage has a lot of history already – Greeks, Romans, European royalty, etc). I’ve even heard (jokingly now, but…) of human robot marriage. As “robots” become more human-like and equipped with very human-like bodies (see what the Japanese have already done!) what business is it of ours or yours (that infamous “right to privacy” doctrine)?
Much the same rubric now accompanies a new legislative move to banish gender from public view, legislation creating “same-sex insurance”. Senator John Kerry says it is “to prohibit insurers from considering sex as a factor in setting premiums for policies in the individual insurance market.” His argument, that women pay higher rates for insurance than men is disingenuous at best, and patently false in most cases.
Insurance, of course, has always been actuarially priced. Smokers pay more. Bad (or more frequently ticketed or accident prone) pay more. Old people close to the end of normal lifetimes pay more. Flood plain homeowners pay more. People with serious illnesses pay more to start either life or health policies. Why? Because the insurance is not a philanthropic enterprise or gift from someone somewhere. While companies are profit driven (someone has to pay wages and stockholders), they are still ultimately the facilitators of communities of policy holders willing to pool their money to help ameliorate (pay for) risks, like sickness, accidents, or death. If the pool is used up by one very sick member, everyone else loses everything, gains nothing. Would you buy into that? Of course not. So IF you know that the next person wanting to get into the pool is very sick, or very accident prone, or extremely risky for whatever reason, you will at least demand higher investment (rates paid) or refuse their membership. That’s a “Duh!”
Well, women of childbearing years are much more likely to use the pool ($). If for no other reason than childbearing! So their rates are likely to be higher. But older men have usually pay much higher life insurance rates. Young men generally pay more because of their propensity to risky behavior. And so on. Its so obvious. So obvious that the public (so-called taxpayers) is more and more calling for higher rates or stricter limits to public health benefits (say, Medicare) for smokers or the “morbidly obese”.
Surely Kerry and his fellow Democrats know all this. They aren’t that stupid, I hope. So what other agenda(s) might be hidden behind this? I believe, as usual when you see alliances of legislators and various groups like union, political activists, etc., there are several beneficiaries being served at least. Feminist groups, maybe. Gays and lesbians, maybe. Nationalizing (Government owning and operating) health care, definitely. Nationalizing the health care is a real priority of this new government.
So how can this help that agenda. Well, it immediately stokes knee jerk resentments and senses of “justice” from the unfair greedy insurance companies. And seems to promise lower rates to a large constituency. With government the champion, of course.
And it should be obvious that only the government and bureaucrats can ignore actuarial facts and treat everyone “fairly”. They don’t need to make a profit, though once their budgets start getting cut (they always do, sooner or later) the benefits will get cut, and start being “politicized”, i.e., punish those darn smokers and fat people, or let them pay more for their own bad choices.
Politics is a treacherous business. Lots of smoke and mirrors. Strange bedfellows. All that. But rarely do YOU come out ahead. Higher taxes, if nothing else.
