going backwards

This past month, I began the arduous task of trying to find a new health insurance plan. I had found out the hard way that the $200-per-month plan that I used in this, my first year of self-employment, was really not very good at all. Or at least, it was not good compared to what I had when I was someone else's employee. So high are my medical expenses from this past year (which, I might add, are not much out of the ordinary), that I think I might actually get a tax break this time around.

Dealing with individual health insurance must be the absolute worst thing about working independently, and I really hate searching for a new policy. But even more than that, my search has revealed to me a trend of our times that has me deeply disturbed.

The representative of the first company I was shopping informed me right away that as a single person I was not eligible for maternity benefits. "Will that be a problem?" she asked. Quite off guard, I didn't know how to respond. I had never really thought before of maternity benefits as something I needed, even though they had always been part of my coverage in the past. But upon further thought, this disturbed me a great deal. What kind of message is that supposed to send out? That only married women can get pregnant? No. It just makes the statement that single women who find themselves in "the family way" are to be punished for their sins by being refused health care (or at least AFFORDABLE health care). I decided that I cannot do business with a company that operates under such a principle, and threw the pamphlets they had given me into the recycling bin.

But since then, I have found that this company is hardly the exception. Roughly half of the companies I have since shopped use the same rule. Maternity benefits are available only as an additional rider, and only after marriage. Those that do offer such benefits to singles more than double the monthly premium in order to do so.

Meanwhile, as I struggle with the decision of which plan to pay too-much-per-month for next year, another bit of news surfaces in my world. I have learned that in New York, Texas, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire (and maybe others), pharmacists have been denying women access to their birth control pills! The first two times I heard whispers of this, I dismissed the stories as hearsay. Impossible, I thought. How can they do that? But today, I found a story on USA Today's web site (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-11-08-druggists-pill_x.htm) that seems to give it credence. According to this article, "[the] American Pharmacists Association, with 50,000 members, has a policy that says druggists can refuse to fill prescriptions if they object on moral grounds, but they must make arrangements so a patient can still get the pills. Yet some pharmacists have refused to hand the prescription to another druggist to fill."

What is going on here? From one end, someone is telling me that as a single person, I don't have the right to get pregnant. And then from the other, someone else is trying to take away my right to PREVENT getting pregnant. And I'm sure that both of these voices, if they have their way, will also take away my right to terminate any unplanned (and now, unaffordable) pregnancy. And so, my only choice is abstinence, abstinence, abstinence. If I choose to stray from that path, I might just find myself hopelessly trapped. In the name of God.

This is not morality, this is insanity. And something tells me it is only the beginning. What kind of country are we becoming? I am truly afraid.