Before Obamacare, insurance companies could and did make it even more difficult and expensive for women to get health coverage than it was for men. Women often paid higher costs than men for the same coverage, and basic things like maternity coverage could be shockingly hard to come by. Obamacare fixed that … and now, Republicans are trying to take us back.
“[Eliminating] essential health benefits means Republicans are making being a woman a preexisting condition,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters Thursday. “Again, stripping guaranteed maternity care is a pregnancy tax, pure and simple.”
Republicans keep saying variations on “but men don’t need maternity care, so why should they pay for it.” There are two possibilities here: Republicans don’t know how insurance works, or they know but they’re trying to fool voters. And let’s face it, it’s almost certainly the latter. Republicans don’t want voters to understand that insurance pools risk: you might not get cancer, I might not get cancer, but someone is going to and we don’t know who it will be. So each of us puts in our premiums so that if we turn out to be the one with cancer, we’ll be covered. Sean Spicer might not need maternity coverage, but the mother of his children has, and:
Women don’t have prostates, but their insurance premiums help fund men’s prostate cancer screenings and treatments.
“We shouldn’t allow insurance companies to say men’s health care is basic health care, but women’s health care is not,” [Sen. Debbie] Stabenow recently told The Huffington Post.
Not only are Republicans saying that men’s health care is basic health care but women’s health care is not, though, they’re also saying that low-income women should bounce up off their postpartum donut pillows and pack their newborns off to daycare and get back to work within 60 days or risk losing their Medicaid. (Note: Newborn daycare programs are difficult to find, expensive, and generally don’t accept babies under at least six weeks—42 days—of age.) If any of this troubles you? Well, says Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, these are local problems so just go ahead and change your state government.
Let's make this failure complete. The vote is happening TODAY. Even if you already called your member of Congress, do it again by calling the Capitol Hill switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Jam the phone lines, urge them to vote NO.