Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company
The Boston
Globe
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July 27, 2000, Thursday ,THIRD EDITION
SECTION: OP-ED; Pg. A17
LENGTH: 740 words
HEADLINE:
ELLEN GOODMAN;
ONE WOMAN'S FIGHT FOR HEALTH COVERAGE THAT'S FAIR TO WOMEN
BYLINE: By Ellen Goodman, Globe Staff
BODY:
By any standard, Jennifer
Erickson is a Planned Parenthood poster plaintiff: She's 26. She's married.
She's preparental. She's even a pharmacist, for heaven's sake.
Erickson
was the one behind the counter at Bartell Drug telling customers that their
insurance plan covered nearly every pill except the one known far and wide as
the pill. So it's not surprising that the Seattle woman spoke up when she
realized that her own company's insurance plan left her in the lurch. She, too,
was spending more than $300 a year for contraceptives.
Hers is, in some ways, an old story. Women have been
paying for contraceptives ever since the first diaphragm was smuggled into
America.
But a few years ago, when insurance plans began picking up the
tab for Viagra, the lightbulb went on over the medicine cabinet. How come
employee health care plans covered pro and not contraception? Some of us thought
it was time to redefine the Pill as a female impotence drug. What greater
turnoff, after all, than the fear of pregnancy?
In any case, some 13
state legislatures have now mandated that private insurance plans that pay for
prescription drugs must also pay for contraceptives. But only half of insurance
plans cover any of the five contraceptives for women - from pills to Norplant -
and the issue has been stalled in Congress.
Now Erickson has filed the
first class action suit of its kind, citing Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to
win contraceptive coverage for women at Bartell. When men get
their basic health care covered and women don't, the suit charges, it's
employment discrimination.
Employers have long maintained that
contraceptives aren't covered because they aren't "medically necessary." Many
have described pills and diaphragms as a "lifestyle choice" on par with Retin-A
or cosmetic surgery or - as one California legislator put it - "hairspray."
But this time they'll be girding their lawyers to defend against sex
discrimination charges. And be prepared for some gender-bending arguments.
One of the arguments already being aired rests on the notion that as
long as the same policy is applied the same way to both men and women, there's
no illegal bias. Companies may well claim they aren't discriminating against
women but against contraceptives. Why, they don't pay for the pill for men
either! Of course, all five methods of prescription contraceptives are for
women. So this is like saying that women are equally covered for prostate exams
and men for pap smears.
There is a history to this sort of "equality."
Some 25 years ago, health insurance plans excluded vaginal deliveries. The
Supreme Court actually ruled that denying insurance for pregnancy was not sex
discrimination. The employer merely had two categories of workers: pregnant and
nonpregnant persons.
The tortured absurdity of this ruling led Congress
to pass the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. This banned sex discrimination on the
basis of "pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions" in all employment
areas, including benefits.
Fertility is, um, a preexisting condition for
a huge number of working women. And the need for contraception is nothing if not
a "related medical condition."
A policy that covers the cost of basic
health care for men but makes women pay for contraceptives discriminates quite
simply because it has a disparate impact - on the woman and her pocketbook.
Women are the ones who get pregnant. Without contraceptive
coverage, women end up paying 68 percent more of their own money for
health care.
Ironically, the cost of adding this coverage would be
$22 a year. Yet more insurance companies pay for abortion than
contraception. Indeed, more pay for sterilization than contraception.
Gloria Feldt, the president of Planned Parenthood, says that employers
have counted on the fact that "women want contraceptives so badly, they'll pay
anything. And they do."
But there is something larger at stake in this
discrimination suit. As Feldt says: "Men's health and bodies have always been
the norm in designing health plans. Women's have been the abnorm." What if women
were the norm? Would contraception still be considered medically unnecessary?
This is one area in which anatomy is destiny. We can't treat insurance
coverage the same any more than we can treat bodies the same. Until - let us
pray - a male contraceptive pill comes on the market, separate is the only way
to get equal.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: July 27, 2000 
