Gay Marriage, HIV & Why Everyone's Spouse May Lose Health Insurance Coverage

A little discussed spinoff the gay marriage phenomenon is how it may hurt the general population in a real, tangible way. It's safe to say that insurance companies cannot target gay spouses over straight ones for non-inclusion in coverage. Yet insurance companies run their business by disqualifying people whose health condition is expected to bankrupt them. They've heard of HIV and they've read the statistics on the demographics of who has it:

Facing gay marriage, what the insurance companies are actually facing is a sharp upswing in guaranteed losses. Statistically, a gay "husband" of an already covered man will stand an excellent chance of contracting HIV and therefore eventually AIDS. AIDS is very very expensive to treat. So insurance companies may right now be considering denying ALL spousal coverage to dodge that bullet without being sued for discrimination.

Being gay in the industry has to be considered a "pre-existing condition" to their adjusters. To get around denying that, will they deny all spouses?

And if that's the case, I think we've just found out one of the easily-spotted [among others such as normalizing a deadly behavior] real and tangible ways of how gay marriage can hurt the rest of society. You can say what you want pros and cons but in the end if we all get denied coverage because of this special interest behavioral group, that's gonna be a bummer. It may even be the final financial straw to the middle class.

 

Oh yes. Just like insurance companies will start denying everyone coverage because, hey, they can't legally deny black people and latinos insurance because of their likelihood of HIV and AIDS so they'll end up denying EVERYONE!!!!1111ELEVEN!

 

I think, just like other high risk folks they should pay more. Your fat, pay higher rates commensurate with the risk. Smoke, either tobacco or weed pay more commensurate with the risk, drink alcohol pay more commensurate with the risk, gay couple pay more commensurate with the risk, use illegal drugs.....pay more commensurate with the risk.

 

Your thinking does follow a logical path, but trips at the finish line.

http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/msm/

So 56% of people with Aids are MSM (Strictly gay men). If that number was 100% then it would be pretty easy. Unfortunately your theory doesn't take into account the fact that while Aids infected MSM is a majority, its a very very slim majority. How would you account for those who aren't Gay? How about those who are gay but still in the closet?

 

No dude. If a behavioral sub-class called "gay" accounts for only 2% of the entire population in the US, yet they account for 56% of all HIV cases, that means HIV/AIDS is intrinsic to the behavioral subclass of "gay men". AIDS is a gay male thing. It's that simple. And that's how insurers are looking at it, guaranteed.

I think that's going to be the trend. Pushing that over the edge is going to be the AIDS thing. Because, as I said in the OP, insurers would get sued in a nanosecond for saying "if you're gay, you're going to pay more" because treating AIDS is astronomically expensive. So to get around that and still deny gay men, they'll probably do just exactly your recommendations. The gay marriage thing will fast-track those corporate decisions.

 

That's your "reply" to all the points I've made that you can't rebut with links, science or a lucid standpoint. Some people think that losing their spouse's health coverage is important. Even if you don't.

 

The DEADLY male homosexual lifestyle is a PUBLIC HEALTH NUGHTMARE,and anyone daring to support healthy lifestyle choices as a matter of PUBLIC POLICY, must ACTVELY DISCOURAGE IT.

 

This is simply homophobia wrapped in insurance actuarial mumbo-jumbo. Spousal or partner transmission of of HIV is a comparatively rare affliction. What insurers are far more concerned with are heart disease, diabetes and cancer resulting from a lifestyle far more harmful than homosexuality - poor diet and activity levels.

 

Gays hardly have a monopoly on STDs. Heterosexual multiple-partner sex also spreads disease. You're not so worried about that?

 

That's assuming gay men would stay true to each other sexually. The statistics and their chosen icon [see my signature] tend to tell a different account. Insurance companies don't have the luxury of political correctness in calculating their bottom line...

It seems the gay and lesbian professor from New York has low hopes for fidelity among those she studies and apparently relates to. And Mr. Kalinikos, in a "committed" relationship, laments fidelity as a ball and chain. I'm not sure he understands what the word "committed" means...

These folks are what insurers study when tooling policies that will keep their business from tanking. And because it is politically incorrect to deny gays coverage if gay marriage is rubber stamped federally, insurers are moving to simply deny all spouses in hopes of avoiding AIDS coverage and therefore, bankruptcy.

 

>>>off topic removed>>>


With Obamacare, spouse or not, the insurance companies cannot reject ANYBODY for coverage. That kind of nonsense is OVER.

So gay marriage is a nonexistent issue in this regard.


Further, why don't we base moral policies on things that cause MASSIVE amounts of health problems. HIV is a drop in the bucket compared to the problems caused by obesity, for instance.

We ALL know people who get married often gain weight, the same for women who have babies! Also, anyone who likes pies and sweet things.

THESE people are the REAL drag on our healthcare costs and insurance bottom lines, so it is ESSENTIAL we pass laws against these behaviors to SAVE our insurance companies MONEY!

 

What is further despicable about the despicable claims of this thread, the fact that companies are cutting off spouse coverage is simply an ECONOMIC decision to cut COSTS, and is just one MORE way that companies and government are reducing the pay of workers.

Trying to blame gay marriage and homosexuality for this trend of the rich pocketing more money and profits from their workers' loss of compensation is complete and utter garbage.

The homophobe propaganda machine is working full time as these bigots increasingly lose their Taliban-like grip on the US society with their garbage swill of irrational hate and desire to control their countrymen and women.

 

I know it sounds more comfortable to you to put it that way fiddlerdave, but here's the facts. Women spouses of men are expensive, yes. That's because of maternity. Yet even as costly as maternity is, it really is in most cases just a dozen or so prenatal visits, hardly any medication at all since most MDs dissuade pregnant women from meds. A one to four day stay in the hospital depending on if there was a c-section. Baby goes home and then a few well checks on baby until they are up and about. That's the norm.

The norm with an HIV gay male spouse will be 5-15 years of expensive anti-virals until he becomes resistant and finally succombs to AIDS. Then it's in and out of the hospital with life-threatening conditions for as long as possible until he dies. Some stays may be up to 2 weeks or more. From an insurer's point of view, this is not sustainable in a business model.

And like I said, they cannot discriminate against gay men so every spouse will have to lose so they can still carry on business.

At the bottom end of just the medication factor, if an HIV positive gay male spouse lives 10 years before succombing to AIDS, his medication alone will cost: $240,000. A quarter million.

 

Last time I checked, insulin is much cheaper than the antiretrovirals used in suppressing AIDS. And you can cure heart disease and diabetes with lifestyle changes. HIV is a one-way street. There's no turning back.

 

The clap or genital warts aren't a death sentence. And actually, gays do have a monopoly on HIV/AIDS, the incurable deadly epidemic of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries.:

 

I think the main objection insurers have to gay males becoming "spouses" is lifestyle. It's just out there and obvious.

And if a professor of gay and lesbian studies, and gays themselves, say marriage is a ball and chain to their preferred lifestyle, what's the fuss all about? Money? Access to orphans to adopt?

It's these and frankly thousands of other examples of the gay lifestyle, including parades down main street doing mock gay sex acts in front of children while scantily clad that makes insurance adjusters sit up in their chairs and take notice. And we're all going to pay if gays access the privelege of marriage. I think as far as the topic of this thread goes, it would be more sensible for us to legalize polygamy first. Five wives getting pregnant is still cheaper than one gay male spouse's HIV/AIDS care...

 

Find the "lies" in this post and point eacn one out specifically, with citations to links you have that prove your assertion that I'm lying...or be reported for ad hominem, again.

 

you are asserting that insurance companies are excluding spousal coverage because of the impending legalization of same sex marriage. you have been called out on that claim in 3 threads now, and you are running in circles. the onus is on YOU to prove your claim.

 

So the Huffington Post printed an article about a fake professor and a fake book? Well then just look at the first quote to determine where an insurer might deny all spouses based on gay promiscuity and HIV. Was that faked by the Huffington Post also?

 

nothing in that article supports your assertion insurance companies are dropping spousal coverage in the wake of same sex marriage.

your obsession with gays, and your pathological lying, is psychotic.

 

Even if it was an "obsession with gays, pathological and lying psychosis", it doesn't change the statistics that insurance companies are looking at when considering covering the "new spouses". And it doesn't darken the fact that insurers cannot discriminate against gays, so all spouses will face unilateral denial of coverage as a direct result of gay marriage if it gets passed. 60% of voters on the poll here agree...

 

>>mod edit>>> off topic

Encouraging gay behaviors by society sanctioning them via marriage has another outfall besides cancelling spouse coverage for all with private insurers. HIV/AIDS is so expensive and the people become so quickly destitute with it that it is going to be the number one drain on medicare. Nearly 1 million people have HIV/AIDS in our country at present. If half of those are getting their treatment on the dole, that's $500,000 x 500,000 we are spending as taxpayers to support the gay promiscuous lifestyle. Add to that numbers of young people surging in the ranks of new HIV cases, concurrent with the media blitz making gay "OK, cool & trendy" with youngsters...and there's going to be a huge problem in the future. We need to understand if gayness is handed off to new generations, how, [via molesatation or modeling] and if that handoff is going to cost us bigtime. Should we as a society be encouraging new surges in numbers of gay people or should we be funding child health care, pregnancy care etc. with those dollars we're throwing down the HIV/AIDS drain?

 

Don't worry, Obamacare will solve the gay/AIDS/HIV problem by making the victims 'comfortable' with cheap pain killers. Not to worry.

 

Well I'm not the greatest at math, but if we're paying for 500,000 HIV/AIDS patients that cost $500,000 over the span of their disease [average 10 years from onset to death, very conservatively], then we're spending $250 billion over that 10 years or 2.5 billion a year on a disease that 2% of the overall population accounts for 65% of HIV/AIDS patients. I'd call that a behaviorally-intrinsic epidemic. Why are we tap-dancing around that and why isn't anyone talking about what is really going to bankrupt medicare?

If we sanction gayness through gay marriage, instead of just extending compassion for those with homophilial compulsions while suppression promotion of those behaviors, then we are sanctioning our own fiscal collapse. We are really willing to do this for the sake of not having certain people threaten to commit suicide if they can't teach "gay is cool" to kids, by example or outright? The number one group of escalating new HIV cases is young boys & young men ages 13-29. Where is this upsurge coming from if everyone is "born that way" at a set percentage of the human population?

 

This thread was moved to the dungeon of gay and lesbian issues where this is an issue involving everyone. That is specifically stated in the title. Therefore, the move of this thread consitutes a deliberate attempt to bury it away from the general public's eye and condemn it to reverse-bullying and denigration. It is a topic important to all. It is the most current of current events since gay marriage is RIGHT NOW being heard in SCOTUS at the potential detriment of all as is the topic of this thread.

It belongs in current events. It has links. It fulfills all the qualifications of current events. It addresss all of the general population, not gays and lesbians.