There won't be any SlutCare in Trumpcare, says White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer. Sure they're taking away essential health benefits, the stuff that makes maternity and newborn health care available to all women, but that doesn't mean women can't get that coverage. They just can't be sluts and get it. In other, words they have to be married.
“Is the president concerned that without having those essential benefits you will have a situation where women are de facto paying higher insurance? Obviously they would be paying for maternity leave,” the reporter asked as a follow up.
“No, you could have a family plan,” Spicer replied.
At best, Spicer’s answer is extraordinarily dismissive of single mothers — the reality is that not every woman who needs maternity care is going to be on a family plan, which are designed for couples and those with children or other dependents. At worst, it’s a tacit endorsement of only married women having access to affordable maternity care.
Even if they got their insurance through a family plan, that family plan would still cost more if they wanted it to include maternity care. And, not all pregnancies are planned—which is why Obamacare treats it as an unexpected medical expense like any other.
Not all families can afford insurance, either. There are plenty of couples out there where neither partner can get health insurance at work—and there will probably be more if Trumpcare passes—and plenty of families that have no coverage at all. Fewer since the Obamacare was signed into law, but still too many because of Republican governors and legislatures that refused to expand Medicaid.
Single moms? Working poor? Those are 21st century realities. People who just plain don't count for Republicans, who are perpetually living in the 1950s "Leave it to Beaver" United States. Where the white men earned the paycheck and had the insurance and everybody else was seen but not heard in the background. Especially women.
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.