

Sharron Angle mocks coverage for autism, pregnancy in August 2009

Las Vegas Sun:

In a video of Angle at a 2009 tea party rally released by the party’s tracker, Angle appears to mock a recently passed Nevada mandate for insurance carriers to cover treatment for autism. “Take off the mandates for coverage in the state of Nevada and all over the United States,” she shouts. “But here you know what I’m talking about. You’re paying for things you don’t even need. “They just passed the latest one, is everything that they want to throw at us now is covered under 'autism',” she said, using exaggerated air quotes to deliver the word ‘autism.’

In addition to mocking the idea that health insurance should cover treatment of conditions like autism, Angle also said she was against requiring that insurance cover pregnancy. Her argument: only women who are pregnant or may become pregnant should pay for such coverage.

That raises a couple of questions. First, I wonder if Angle would also agree that women should pay an extra fee if they want ovarian cancer to be covered or that men should pay an extra fee if they want coverage for testicular or prostate cancer.)

Second, I wonder what Sarah Palin thinks about all this, given that both she and her daughter recently had unexpected pregnancies and that her son Trig was born with Down syndrome, which, like autism, requires special medial treatment. You'd think that even Palin isn't as extreme as Angle on issues like this. But I wouldn't be shocked if she were.