my employers' health insurance will cover an abortion for your dependent teenager if she gets pregnant, but won't cover prenatal care and delivery if she decides to have the child. This just seems weird to me - does anybody know about their employer policy, or would you be willing to look? I wonder if it's industry standard or my employer being butt-headed.

From an employer/insurance co. point of view, pregnancy stuff is usually seen as "optional" coverage, sorta' like dental or eye exams. In fact, when I worked at a bakery cooperative, we had to choose between dental coverage and pregnancy coverage (it would have cost too much to give ourselves both).

But I have no idea how state laws affects this issue....

I am weirded out by the idea of cats getting zits. Or maybe just by sarameg's description. Could go either way.

I think it is pretty strange myself.

I am weirded out by the idea of cats getting zits. Or maybe just by sarameg's description. Could go either way.

Oz gets chin zits. It's pretty common in male cats. My sister's male cat had it, too. She even got a special shampoo for him to avoid it.

I should note that my employer owns several hospitals. Haven't found anything out yet about state regulations.

So far I've discovered that if I give birth after 35 weeks gestation when I'm out-of-network, I have no insurance coverage at all. I.e. I can't travel anywhere after 35 weeks. Which, I wasn't planning to, but, good to know.

In fact, when I worked at a bakery cooperative, we had to choose between dental coverage and pregnancy coverage (it would have cost too much to give ourselves both).

I'm guessing at a bakery, the dental won out?

I have to admit, I'm skeptical of the "covers Viagra but not BC" example. Does anyone have an example of a real case where this happened? (I only ask because I've never heard of it happening anywhere except as a pat example of hypocrisy during discussions like this, and it always struck me as a little too perfectly appropriate.)

I'm guessing at a bakery, the dental won out?

Nope. Pregnancy coverage won out.

When Petri got breakouts on his chin, the vet told me that the plastic food bowls can eventually start leeching chemicals that cause that. I switched to ceramic bowls and he never had any more acne trouble.

How much does it cost to get your teeth cleaned, out of pocket? Anybody done it lately? I don't have dental insurance, but do have it as an option. But since my stepfather was until recently a dentist it was never an option. (I mean, okay, he lives in Boston, but we have good teeth! But now he's retired.)

Huh.

The Most Homophobic Place on Earth?

Crimes against gays are mounting in Jamaica and across the Caribbean

Brian wears sunglasses to hide his gray and lifeless left eye—damaged, he says, by kicks and blows with a board from Jamaican reggae star Buju Banton. Brian, 44, is gay, and Banton, 32, is an avowed homophobe whose song Boom Bye-Bye decrees that gays "haffi dead" ("have to die"). In June 2004, Brian claims, Banton and some toughs burst into his house near Banton's Kingston recording studio and viciously beat him and five other men. After complaints from international human-rights groups, Banton was finally charged last fall, but in January a judge dismissed the case for lack of evidence. It was a bitter decision for Brian, who lost his landscaping business after the attack and is fearful of giving his last name. "I still go to church," he says as he sips a Red Stripe beer. "Every Sunday I ask why this happened to me."

Though familiar to Americans primarily as a laid-back beach destination, Jamaica is hardly idyllic. The country has the world's highest murder rate. And its rampant violence against gays and lesbians has prompted human-rights groups to confer another ugly distinction: the most homophobic place on earth.

In the past two years, two of the island's most prominent gay activists, Brian Williamson and Steve Harvey, have been murdered — and a crowd even celebrated over Williamson's mutilated body. Perhaps most disturbing, many anti-gay assaults have been acts of mob violence. In 2004, a teen was almost killed when his father learned his son was gay and invited a group to lynch the boy at his school.

Wow. I had no idea. Depressing....