In The New Republic Online, “line of the day” post by Jonathan Cohn, see the “…back-and-forth at the Senate Finance hearings, between Jon Kyl, the Arizona Republican, and Debbie Stabenow, the Michigan Democrat. The subject is requirements that all insurance policies cover certain benefits.”

KYL: “I don’t need maternity care.”

STABENOW: “I think your mom probably did.”

Watch the video here.

As Jonathan Cohn comments on the exchange: “I’m hard-pressed to think of a single exchange that better captures the sensibilities of our two political parties–or the principle of shared risk upon which universal coverage is based.” (The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has taken note, as reported on TalkingPointsMemo, and has sent a fund raising letter to draw attention to the exchange–and how it reflects different values.)

Here, I’m stalled: I think Cohn’s excellent point is a kind of conversation stopper.
If we start from different principles, where do we go from here?

How about self interest and humanity? That’s where I’ll go. A very helpful article at Forbes.com reviews what health care reform means to women. In case you weren’t aware, most private insurance policies currently allow pregnancy as a pre-existing condition for exclusion from coverage. Most jurisdictions are able to have gender ratings that hike up charges for women over men.

Now lots of even the most pessmistic folks seem to think that health care reform at a minimum offers hope that we’ll make such “pre-existing condition” exclusions illegal and that we will establish community ratings that end subgroup ratings, like the gender one. That is the minimum, but I’m still holding out for Medicare for all, something that 65% of Americans favor, according to a recent Time/CBS poll. (yet we are still debating this because….?)

But there’s more: Columns like Adina Nack’s “HPM, Stress and the Inner Game” remind us about the important ways that health care is subjective–and those subjective aspects can cause negative (or positive) health outcomes. When we are disempowered, it wears us down, undermines the immune system. The overarching point of real health care reform is for us all to understand that, in the words of Deborah Lewis, “I do not believe that we earn our illnesses….” This suggests that women–and men too–should be empowered to seek and assert their need for care.

The dilemma is that in a world where it is “special treatment” to get preventative care, like mammograms (only 20 states require private insurance companies to cover these after age 40), or maternity care, or the like, such a personal empowerment view doesn’t get us all the way there. What gets us all the way there is health care for all. Maybe Macbeth would not care about it. But the rest of us, who have a mama, just might.

–Virginia Rutter