Heather Timmons is White House correspondent for Quartz, where she writes—The word “women” literally never appears in the US Senate’s 142-page health-care bill:
Women have babies. If they didn’t, first the economy would collapse, and then the species would die out.
But because they do, from their late teens to their early forties, women have higher health-care costs than men of the same age. Carrying and birthing a child is a sometimes difficult, dangerous, complicated business, and one that, in America, can be incredibly expensive.
Despite the incontrovertible fact that men are biologically just as responsible as women for a pregnancy happening, before the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, women in the US paid more for health care and insurance because they are the ones who can get pregnant. Specifically, American women of child-bearing age paid somewhere between 52% and 69% more in out-of-pocket healthcare costs then men.
The Trump administration’s health-care reform bill now in the Senate, and the version that passed the House this May, will force some women to pay more again. Specifically, it strips out hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid, the insurance for the poor, which now covers over 50% of all births in many US states, and allows states to opt out of covering “essential” healthcare that includes maternity and newborn care.
The Senate bill was crafted behind closed doors, by 13 men and no women. A search of the language used in the 142-page draft document (pdf) shows that womanhood and motherhood are, quite literally, also omitted from most of the bill itself. [...]
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
QUOTATION
“A billion people depend on fish for their main source for animal protein. At the rate at which we are losing fish, it is a human problem of enormous dimensions, a health problem of a kind we haven’t seen before.”
~Pavan Sukhdev, 2011
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At on this date in 2008—SCOTUS Overturns Millionaire’s Amendment:
Remember the Millionaire's Amendment? Basically, it says that if a candidate self-funds his House or Senate campaign beyond a certain level (and the math is complicated) and makes the race less competitive, the challenger can start raising funds at twice or even three times ($6900/election) the contribution limits otherwise applicable, and the self-funder becomes subject to various mandatory disclosure requirements regarding his use of his own funds.
Well, based on today's 5-4 Supreme Court decision authored by Justice Alito, it's just a memory now. Since I can't imagine Congress acting anytime soon, in the 2008 cycle millionaire self-funding candidates can spend to their heart's content without there being any recourse for their opponents.
Essentially, what killed this law was that the raised contribution limits applied were only available to the challenger, and the Court found this to be unduly discriminatory
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: This week, Rs attempt to repeal Medicaid. Greg Dworkin notes the lies they’re using and the damage they’re doing. Rosalyn MacGregor previews the MI-GOV GOP field. Trump’s Miami money laundering is back in the news. It can’t happen here? It already did.
YouTube | iTunes | LibSyn | Keep us on the air! Donate via Patreon or Square Cash