About half of those people committed non-contact sex offenses like as exhibitionism, voyeurism, mooning, streaking, solicitation of a minor, downloading child pornography, etc. The ability to achieve erection had nothing to do with their crimes so they should not be included in the pool of people who would be affected by Coburn's amendment. That would reduce the size of the affected pool to 334,500 people.
But most of those people would not commit another sex crime anyway, whether they have erectile dysfunction or not. Recidivism is lower for sex offenders than for any other class of criminals except murderers about 5.3% (Center for Sex Offender Management, May 2001). We should therefore also exclude the 94.7% of the pool who pose little or no risk of committing another sex crime. That would further reduce the pool to about 17,700 offenders.
But the number of men who suffer from chronic erectile dysfunction is small -- about 2.6% (National Kidney and Urologic Diseases Information Clearinghouse, 2002. Many more people experience occasional ED). So that reduces the pool of people affected by Coburn's proposal to about 446 people.
Yet rape and child molestation are rarely about sexual gratification alone. Thus, denying violent sex offenders the means to achieve physical gratification will have little effect on whether or not most of them commit another violent sex crime. They can do that without sustaining erection. If we assume that just 20% of violent sex crimes are committed solely to achieve sexual gratification (I have no source for that number and think it is probably high), then the pool that Coburn wishes to control shrinks to just 92 people.
If those 92 people cannot obtain ED medication through traditional means, then they can probably get it through non-traditional sources -- through a friend or from on-line, cross-border, or black market sources. If we assume that 90% of the 92 people would get their ED meds in one of these ways, then the number of people who would be denied ED meds by Coburn's amendment is down to a mere 11 people countrywide.
However, Coburn's proposal would extend only to people who buy their health insurance with federal assistance or through insurance exchanges. Eighty-five percent of the population is already insured so the pool would be further reduced to just 15% of the 11 people left.
Thus, by the time it emerges from committee, Coburn's bill will probably affect only those male violent sex offenders who are likely to reoffend mainly to achieve sexual gratification but who can't get it up, and who can't buy ED meds through non-traditional sources, and who need federal assistance to buy any insurance at all.
That would be just one person, somewhere in the whole of these United States. And that guy is probably still in jail.
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