WaPo Says the State Could Have Saved Jon And Kate

The Sunday Outlook section of The Washington Post digged into the dregs of reality TV to plead the case for more national health care subsidies. Post Magazine reporter Liza Mundy authored a piece titled "Jon and Kate Plus Health Care: Would better insurance have saved this marriage?"

Mundy guessed that if the federal government subsidized in vitro fertilization (IVF), Kate might have had only one baby instead of sextuplets. "Possibly nothing could have saved this marriage, but one thing would have made it less fragile: a mandate for health insurance to cover in vitro fertilization."

It’s one thing for liberals to insist that it’s reasonable for taxpayers to shell out a few hundred dollars for broader immunizations and preventative health care measures. Now imagine being asked to pay for a $10,000 round of IVF. Mundy argued it would achieve the liberal goal of lowering inequality:

The price tag for health-care reform is already higher than anybody expected, so it's probably unreasonable to think that it could include better insurance coverage for the millions of Americans who suffer from infertility. But such coverage for women of childbearing age could lower the extraordinary health-care costs associated with the birth of triplets or more. And it would even the reproductive odds, giving middle-class and lower-income Americans access to treatment that is currently reserved for the well-off or the unusually well insured.

Mundy tried to entertain the notion that if Kate Gosselin had tried IVF, she wouldn’t have had sextuplets. (Other than Kate’s wealth-and-television-producing instincts, there’s still a sticky wicket for pro-lifers: you may not be pressed to "selectively reduce" babies in the womb, but you would create multiple embryos and then "selectively implant" one or two.) But it’s hard to sustain the notion that this television-strained marriage is really caused by inadequate federal intervention.

Mundy's role models, as usual, are European socialist countries, who only like to create a single baby:

This is known as Single Embryo Transfer, and it's becoming increasingly common in European countries where IVF is often covered by national health insurance. In this country, only a small number of states mandate insurance coverage of IVF, and at least one, Connecticut, sensibly limits the number of embryos that may be transferred.

Mundy concluded her sales pitch like this:

And insurance coverage is hardly the big-ticket item you might think: In Massachusetts, which mandates coverage, a 2002 study argued that the rise in the annual premium is really a matter of just a few dollars. Yet replicating Massachusetts around the country is a tall order because of the persistent public view that infertility is somehow not a legitimate disease, or that infertility patients are to blame for their plight.

Last week, advocates descended upon Washington to make their long shot case for increased insurance coverage for infertility treatments. In Congress, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) have introduced a bill that would broaden insurance coverage for IVF. Advocates should work to make the long-term benefits clear: fewer high-order multiples, healthier children, less exhausted parents.

TLC has done a lot of the legwork for them. More than 10 million people tuned in to watch the televised implosion of the Gosselin family last week. Maybe no marriage could have survived that many Us Weekly covers or that many cameras. But really, it seems to have been the burden of being "plus 8," when all they wanted was "plus 3." If sweeping health-care reform includes more substantial IVF coverage, TLC will have fewer candidates for its carnival sideshow offerings, but that's a loss most of us could live with.

Mundy's offering a cute way of trying to put a public-interest sheen on TLC exploiting the breakup of this TV-strained marriage down to the last frayed thread. But we need more health intervention like we need another reality show exploiting a divorce.