Viagra for Teachers

It was reported this morning that the Milwaukee Teachers Union is fighting the school board over Viagra. The school district is facing a financial crisis. In an effort to cut costs, the school board decided to discontinue funding Viagra in its health plan. The Milwaukee Teachers Union is upset. The school district had tried to cut costs in April by laying off 682 employees but that effort was unsuccessful. In that instance, the Teachers Union triumphed. In a new effort to cut costs, the school district targeted Viagra.

The Teachers Union argues that Viagra is necessary to treat "an exclusively gender related-related condition" and banning its coverage would in effect discriminate against men. This is not exactly true. While one gender may have a reason to use it, both genders benefit from it. For Viagra to be truly useful, at least two people are required. Both genders can benefit from Viagra or suffer from its absence. Leaving that aside, the essence of the argument is that Viagra is necessary and should therefore be covered. But sexual dysfunctional is not a medical condition that in any way affects a person's health or impedes that person's participation in society. While impotence can be a frustrating and even humiliating occurrence, it in no way jeopardizes a person's health. Humiliation, frustration, and embarrassment are not conditions that require medical treatment, though if the pharmacology industry creates a drug for those, they will be.

Unless a child is desired, sexual intercourse is not necessary. Even then, it is not essential. Science had provided alternatives. Properly understood, there is no need for Viagra at all. There is only desire for it. There is no ailment, condition, or illness that requires sexual intercourse as a treatment. Perhaps the closest one can get to a "necessary" requirement for it is if it is deemed necessary to save a marriage or relationship. But that is not a medical condition.

There is a growing confusion in society between necessary and desirable medical procedures. No matter how badly a face lift or a tummy tuck is desired, they are not necessary in any medical sense. Insecurity and vanity are not the same thing as as need and necessity. There are no limits to human vanity and desire. They are wealth creating engines that drive our economy. Most often, they are characteristics that spur the economy to keep up with their constant permutations. They also drive health care. Plastic surgery is a constantly evolving field almost exclusively driven by vanity. Sexual dysfunction is another. When the desire to look younger or have better sex become confused in the mind of an individual with the need to look younger or have better sex, psychological turbulence results. It is seen as unfair that the "rich" benefit while the rest of us languish. It is not fair that Hugh Hefner can get all the Viagra he needs or Angelina Jolie can get all the surgery she wants while we cannot. It is believed that everyone has the right to look younger, better and have great sex. We don't any more than everyone has the right to be tall, thin, or look like a GQ underwear model.

Life is full of little injustices. Some people are good looking. Others are not. Some people are tall. Others are not. Some people have good sex. Others do not. Every one wants those things but everyone doesn't get them. When a procedure or drug offers a remedy to our insecurities or a solution to our desires, everyone wants it. The problem is that not everyone can afford it: unless a way is found to make it affordable. A way has been found. That way is health insurance. If health insurance can be bent to include the desires of people rather than simply the needs of people, the floodgates will be opened. With national health care, there will be relentless pressure to expand it to include the desires of the vain, the frustrated, and the insecure. Politicians have always found it difficult to say no. Health care will be no different. The candidate who promises a breast lift to every woman who wants one and Viagra to every man who needs it will have a distinct advantage over the candidate who says we cannot afford it.

If anyone ever discovers a pill that will retard the aging process, unless that drug is cheap, the nation will go broke in a week. More broke I mean.