On the Senate floor yesterday, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) railed against gender discrimination by insurance companies, citing an example of a women who was refused coverage unless she agreed to sterilization. Mikulski said, “I thought that’s what they did in Nazi Germany, or in the old Communist China.”
Mikulski begins by voicing her opposition to the Nelson abortion amendment , and emphasizing her belief that “health care reform is the most important social justice vote that we will cast in this decade.”
She then went on to emphasize the importance of “ending the punitive practices of insurance companies against women,” which often count “simply being a woman” as a pre-existing condition.
Mikulski continued that “eight states consider domestic violence a pre-existing condition,” before describing the case of a woman who had a medically mandated C-section, and was then denied insurance unless she got sterilized. “Coerced sterilization in the United States of America! I thought that’s what they did in Nazi Germany, or in the old Communist China,” she said.
Here’s the full clip: