I've been reading Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus's Chairman's Mark, his outline for health care reform. To the already very long list of federal benefits and obligations heterosexual married couples are entitled to that same-sex couples are denied because of DOMA, you can soon add one more: how much you pay for health insurance.
Under the Chairman's plan, the rating bands (within which insurers can vary rates) will allow lower or higher rates according to family composition. While the Chairman's Mark includes no language, will anyone be surprised when the definition of "family" includes married spouses of only the opposite gender, and their children?
This is the way federal law constantly inflicts a thousand small (and some very large) cuts on same-sex couples every blessed day of our lives. DOMA is that federal law, and it is intolerable.
One Comment for “How A Wedding Band Affects Your Rating Band”
posted by TRich on
Isn’t DOMA the main thing that takes the wind out of the sails for a Constitutional Amendment defining marriage as exclusively heterosexual across all 50 states? Isn’t the fear that all states would have to recognize any other state’s gay marriages one of the two major reasons why social conservatives want a Constitutional Amendment (the other being “activist” judges)?