The latest Republican effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act with the Graham-Cassidy bill is the worst version of Trumpcare for women’s health yet. While it includes some of the same restrictions previous iterations had, such as removing pre-existing conditions protections and mandating essential health benefits, it further regresses access to reproductive health care. Jezebel reports:
The brainchild of Senators Bill Cassidy (R-La) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the latest Trumpcare bill slashes federal health care spending, including Medicaid, and would defund Planned Parenthood, instead, proposing block grants for states to control their healthcare markets.
...[Amy Friedrich-Karnik, senior federal policy adviser at the Center for Reproductive Rights] explained that the bill also blocks Medicaid patients from using Planned Parenthood, which bars access to essential preventative care like birth control, cancer screenings, and STD testing and treatment. “It also slashes Medicaid overall and into the future, and so really impacting particularly low-income women and women of color who rely on Medicaid broadly for their health care,” she said. According to the Kaiser Health Network, Medicaid pays for nearly half of all births in America and covers family planning services for 13.5 million women.
"Reduces access to birth control" means more unplanned pregnancies. Medicaid cuts mean less prenatal care and decreased maternal health. People who receive private insurance wouldn’t get off easy either: without pre-existing condition protections, pregnancy can be used to justify higher rates. There is nothing humane about these plainly political attacks on what should be basic health care.