Women denied health insurance because they’ve been raped, because of domestic violence, because they’ve had a C-section… Insurers telling women who’ve given birth by cesarean, “Alright, we’ll cover you–but only if you get sterilized.” Parents denied coverage for their children because they’re too big, too small, because they hold their breath …(?!?) It sounds too outrageous/absurd/illegal to believe, but listen to the testimony of Peggy Robertson (courtesy of the Service Employees International Union’s campaign for healthcare reform):







Here Robertson illustrates the awful bind so many women are in: No hospital will take her for VBAC, she doesn’t want another cesarean, she feels she has no choice but to have one, yet she can’t afford it. Her health insurer’s answer to this? Don’t have any more children. So much for reproductive choice.

RH Reality Check’s Jodi Jacobson has a novel idea: “I say the insurance industry as currently constructed is too sick to function and should be declared a national ‘pre-existing’ condition of which we should rid ourselves permanently.”