Today I saw this tweet:
Thanks to #Obamacare, health insurance providers will no longer be able to discriminate against LGBT Americans. pic.twitter.com/NuDlDjaDk9
(Sorry can no longer embed tweets)
I know for a fact this is not the case.
I can not get the Transgender related care I need without paying for it out of my meager income. And neither can any other Transgender person I know.
So this was my response to him:
@BarackObama I still have to pay out of pocket for Transgender related care. Care to revise your statement?
Understandably I'm not the only one wondering why he could make such a broad statement:
...First, focus groups showed a lot of skepticism from transgendered people that the health plans on the new marketplaces would meet their health care needs. And there was concern that, even if they called up the plan to find out, the person on the other end would likely have no idea...
Can you imagine the howling from the rightwingers when we can get our medical needs met? It will be deafening and I doubt I will see it in my lifetime.
And then there are the same sex partners. You know the ones that hospitals take great joy in not letting them visit, supposedly illegal now but it still happens.
..."They were some of the most eye-opening focus groups I've ever done," says Tresa Undem, a Perry Undem co-founder. "They have been discriminated against to such a big extent, in the insurance world and the health care world. They all have the same experience with exclusions, and they come to this issue incredibly skeptical."...
Basically Obamacare is seriously lacking when it comes to inclusiveness. Focus groups means they are just now thinking about addressing our needs.
..."The standard messaging you'll see from other groups is, 'Look at all these new options,'" says Undem, who has also done polling work for Enroll America. "That won't work with this group, because it says nothing about medically necessary care, or whether their partner gets coverage."...
We can do better than this.