Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Michele Bachmann Strikes Again

Michele Bachmann's opposition to a proposal that would make breast pumps tax-deductible leads me to believe that she hates babies. Well, specifically, she hates black babies and the babies of mothers who work. Either that, or she hates tax deductions.

My breast pump cost $249 and was not covered by insurance. It's a good pump, but it isn't a hospital-grade pump or anything fancy. For someone who needs a pump either because she is working, or because her baby is in the NICU, or because she needs to regulate her supply, or because she just prefers pumping to direct breast feeding or formula feeding, a tax deduction could help out a lot. Especially if she needs an expensive pump, not a cheap(!) one like mine.

But Michele Bachmann is so virulently anti-Obama that she has actually come out against a proposal that is specifically designed to help infants and new parents by reducing their tax burden. My head, it spins.

Molly disapproves.

Not history-related, but I'm afraid you'll have to put up with some occasional mommyblogging from now on.

2 comments:

Fin said...

Blargh. The stupid, it hurts.

You have to be Michelle Bachmann to think that "allowing breast pumps to be purchased from medical Flex Spending Accounts" is the same as "the government buying breast pumps."


(To be perfectly fair, though, we didn't look into whether insurance would cover our pump. We just grabbed it from Amazon.)

Caitlin GD Hopkins said...

No, I checked.

From Aetna:
"Aetna does not cover breast pump purchase under standard Aetna benefit plans. Non-reusable manual or electric breast pumps that are available commercially are not considered by Aetna to fall within the standard contractual definition of durable medical equipment in that they are normally of use in the absence of illness or injury."

They will only cover it if the baby has some sort of injury or illness that interferes with breastfeeding.