Posted by Tina
California is well known for nutty legislation but this one has to be the topper! Gay infertility is the topic…mandated insurance coverage the fix!
Wesley J. Smith at The Corner, National Review explains:
Leave it to my state of California to head off in radical and expensive directions. Legislation has been filed that would require group insurance to cover gay and lesbian infertility treatments just as they do heterosexual. But, as I note elsewhere, AB 460 isn’t limited to a finding of actual infertility. Nor does it require that gays and lesbians have tried to conceive or sire a child using heterosexual means, natural or artificial. Rather-as with heterosexual couples-merely the inability to get pregnant for a year while having active sexual relations is sufficient to demonstrate need for treatment, meaning if the bill becomes law, it would require insurance companies to pay for services such as artificial insemination, surrogacy, etc. for people who are actually fecund. Indeed, since the bill prevents discrimination based on marital or domestic partnership status, theoretically every gay and lesbian in the state could be deemed infertile for purposes of insurance coverage merely by the fact that they don’t wish to engage in heterosexual relations.
In case you are as unsure of the definition of fecund as I was, I looked it up: capable of producing offspring or vegetation; fruitful.
Let’s see…this bill would force group insurance plans to provide coverage of fertility services to a same sex couple demanding it, if that couple visited the doc on Jan 1 of this year and had not conceived a child by engaging in sexual relations with each other exclusively by the following January first.
Talk about dumping both science and the language on their respective heads!
See also the excuse as expressed by the gay community here:
…they are denying infertility treatment benefits “based on [the policy holder’s] not having an opposite sex married partner in which to have one year of regular sexual relations without conception.” AB 460 would amend the law to add the following language:
Coverage for the treatment of infertility shall be offered and provided without discrimination on the basis of age, ancestry, color, disability, domestic partner status, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, national origin, race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation.
I keep telling you…left activism (lunacy) never stops!
oh well, another stupid law for the sheeple to obey………
…and pay for in higher premium costs!
Well … now … if an insurance carrier would have covered “in vitro therapy” for a male-female couple (and frankly, I don’t think it should, the planet being in the state it’s in) why shouldn’t it provide coverage for a female-female couple? Seriously … why not? What’s the diff?
I have to agree with Libby, although I don’t think in vitro is something that should be required coverage.
And now, for a real problem:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/11/missouri-man-arrested-at-hospital-for-refusing-to-leave-gay-partner/
Opponents of same-sex marriage argue that gay couples can simply get power of attorney if they want to visit their loved ones in the hospital. But when family disagreements come about, the hospital often sides with the closest blood relative over a partner–that is, unless the partner is also a spouse.
We have always understood marriage as uniting two people as each other’s closest kin. Husbands and wives have the final say over medical decisions for one another when one of them is incapacitated.
Marriage is the only contract that can make unrelated people into each other’s closest kin. The phrases “civil union,” “partner,” “power of attorney,” simply don’t have the same cultural capital. But the terms “spouse,” “husband,” and “wife” are unmistakable. They are powerful words that leave no doubt about a couple’s relationship status. I ask opponents of SSM to think about that. Think about the power those words have, and what gay couples are really fighting for. Think about the damage you do when you deny them what you take for granted.