Planned Parenthood – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

10 REASONS WOMEN MUST #FlipThe1st!

David Posnett — Fri, 26 Oct 2018 14:25:08 +0000

Issue #2: August, 2018 by Jacquelyn Gavron and Amy Turner

Lee Zeldin repeatedly votes for laws that jeopardize the health and financial wellbeing of 55% of his constituents: the 310,000 females in New York’s 1st Congressional District. Women in NY01 deserve a representative who understands that when women succeed, families and communities do too. Here’s Zeldin’s voting record, which speaks for itself.

#1 “FEMALE” IS NOT A PRE-EXISTING CONDITION

Zeldin and the GOP-controlled house voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and replace it with the American Health Care Act (AHCA). Had it passed, 61,951 people in NY01 would have lost their health care (ACASignups.net). And insurance companies would be allowed to charge women more than men and refuse to cover:

Essential services—pregnancy, maternity and newborn care
Pre-existing conditions —pregnancy, C-sections, celiac disease, hysterectomies, eating disorders, and treatment for domestic violence and sexual assault
Preventive services—mammograms, screenings for cervical cancer, osteoporosis, anemia, gestational diabetes and preeclampsia; and breastfeeding support and supplies.

Did you know. . . Zeldin has received a whopping $267,975 in contributions from insurance companies since 2014. (OpenSecrets.org).

#2 WOMEN DESERVE EQUAL PAY

In Suffolk County, women earn $51,014 for a job that pays men $65,326—$14,312 less. (labor.ny.gov). Don’t expect Zeldin to help. He’s repeatedly undermined equal pay protection by:

Voting to block Congress from considering the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill to end the pay gap and protect workers from retaliation for sharing info on their wages. (H.R. 1619, 2015)
Voting to make it extremely difficult for women seeking equal pay to bring a class action lawsuit against their employers. (HR 1927, 2016).

#3 LET WOMEN CONTROL THEIR OWN BODIES

Zeldin voted for a bill to ban abortion at 20 weeks (directly challenging Roe v. Wade), which was opposed by the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists as a serious threat to women’s health and not based on sound science. Zeldin has supported:

Amending the constitution to ban abortion except to save life of mother
A nationwide ban on private insurance coverage of abortion
Federal legislation allowing parents to prevent their daughters from receiving abortions
Requiring rape victims to wait 48 hours before obtaining an abortion
Barring the government from distributing emergency contraceptives

#4 GUN VIOLENCE IS A WOMAN’S ISSUE

Zeldin co-sponsored the federally mandated concealed carry bill, which would override New York’s strict gun laws and let gun owners with a history of violence against women roam our neighborhoods with a hidden, loaded gun. Most people don’t know the hidden toll guns take on women:

50 women a month are shot to death by a current or former partner
4.5 million American women have been threatened with guns, often by intimate partners, so they live in fear for themselves and their children for days, months and even years.
U.S. women are 16x more likely to be killed with a gun than in other high-income countries.

#5 WE NEED PAID FAMILY LEAVE

Most workers are covered by the Family Medical Leave Act, which lets you take up to 12 weeks of leave a year to care for family members. But for most people, that leave is unpaid. The GOP solution? Take a “loan” from Social Security and delay receipt of your retirement income.

#6 SOCIAL SECURITY: ON THE CUTTING BLOCK

The GOP tax scam gives huge tax cuts to the wealthy and large corporations that add $2 trillion to the national debt. They’re using this as an excuse to slash Social Security—it’s especially important to women as they earn less, take more time out of the workforce, live longer, save less and get smaller pensions.

In NY01, 150,262 people receive Social Security. Zeldin said he’d “continue to support legislation that protects and supports Social Security and Medicare” (letter, 6/2017) but he:

Voted YES to a constitutional amendment that would allow Social Security to pay beneficiaries only if a federal budget surplus could offset them. (HJ Res.2, 4/12/18)
Voted to block the transfer of tax revenue to keep the Disability Insurance afloat—unless it was part of a larger plan to cut benefits or tax increases. (HRes 5, 1/6/15; Politico).

#7 GOP GUNNING FOR MEDICARE & MEDICAID

In New York, nearly 2 million women rely on Medicare for their health insurance. Zeldin voted for a budget resolution (H.Con.Res 71, 10-15-17) that would pay for Trump’s huge tax cuts by:

Slashing Medicare by $487 billion
Increasing the age at which you can apply for Medicare from 65 to 67 nscpssm.org

More women than men are covered by Medicaid as they often work in lower paying jobs, and many work for small businesses that don’t offer health insurance. But Zeldin voted to take way the Medicaid option. And Trump recently gave the go-ahead for states to take away Medicaid from people who aren’t working a minimum number of hours a month. This disproportionally hurts women because they:

Often work in low-wage jobs with inconsistent hours that may not meet the requirements.
Typically care for children or other family members and aren’t in the paid workforce

#8 UN-AFFORDABLE CHILD CARE

Trump’s tax scam doubled the maximum child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000—“but the parents of about 29 million kids won’t get the credit because their families earn too little.” (TPC.org).

#9 PLANNED PARENTHOOD

Zeldin has repeatedly voted to defund Planned Parenthood. Perhaps he doesn’t understand that Planned Parenthood provides a wide range of health care services to 2.4 million clients, including, prenatal care, breast exams, PAP smears, vasectomies, HIV and STD testing and treatment, and sex education.

#10 WOMEN DESERVE A REP WHO VALUES WOMEN

In January 2017, thousands of Zeldin’s constituents showed up at women’s marches in D.C., NYC, Port Jeff, Sag Harbor and other places to advocate for women’s rights. But rather than acknowledge their concerns, Zeldin questioned their sanity, suggesting that some of his constituents might hold views that are “off the reservation” and using his 37th birthday two weeks later as an occasion to express his “love” for “even those Hillary supporters who have lost [their] beautiful minds since the election.”

Abortion vote in the Senate: Why?

David Posnett — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 15:11:24 +0000

First, let me reprint Perry Gershon’s post from his FB page (with permission):

Tomorrow the Senate will debate the so-called 20-week ban on abortion. Let’s be clear — this is nothing more than the first step towards making a woman’s right to choose illegal, altogether. Lee Zeldin was a co-sponsor of the bill in the House. Zeldin’s bill is just one more part of his dangerous agenda to outlaw a woman’s right to choose.

Here are the real facts — almost 99% of abortions occur in the first 20 weeks of pregnancy, and the 1% that don’t are in very complicated situations, such as risks to the woman’s health. We must protect a woman’s right to choose. It starts with opposing this dangerous ban and replacing Congressman Zeldin with someone who isn’t afraid to say so, loud and clear.

It’s time for those seeking to replace Congressman Zeldin, to draw a line in the sand and oppose this dangerous attack on women’s health care and a woman’s right to choose.

It’s time for bold action, loud and proud.

Why are they doing this now? Three words: For The Base. Check this out:

https://thinkprogress.org/gop-abortion-shutdown-dfd173817d47/

And perhaps they wish to bait Dems seeking office?

It is already practically impossible to get an elective abortion nowadays after 20 weeks of gestation. Unless of course there is a danger to the mother’s life. The proposed legislation still contains some wording about exceptions (see below), but doctor’s and patient’s options are limited. Psychiatric reasons are now taken off the table! SO, a suicidal patient would be left to commit suicide (rather than have an abortion that might help)? Would that help save the life of the fetus? Generally suicide kills mother and fetus.

Here is the bill:

On House Bill HR 36

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/36/text

The bill provides exceptions for an abortion: (1) that is necessary to save the life of the pregnant woman, or (2) when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. A physician who performs or attempts to perform an abortion under an exception must comply with specified requirements.

“(b) Requirements For Abortions.—

“(1) ASSESSMENT OF THE AGE OF THE UNBORN CHILD.—The physician performing or attempting the abortion shall first make a determination of the probable post-fertilization age of the unborn child or reasonably rely upon such a determination made by another physician. In making such a determination, the physician shall make such inquiries of the pregnant woman and perform or cause to be performed such medical examinations and tests as a reasonably prudent physician, knowledgeable about the case and the medical conditions involved, would consider necessary to make an accurate determination of post-fertilization age.

“(2) PROHIBITION ON PERFORMANCE OF CERTAIN ABORTIONS.—

“(A) GENERALLY FOR UNBORN CHILDREN 20 WEEKS OR OLDER.—Except as provided in subparagraph (B), the abortion shall not be performed or attempted, if the probable post-fertilization age, as determined under paragraph (1), of the unborn child is 20 weeks or greater.

“(B) EXCEPTIONS.—Subparagraph (A) does not apply if—

“(i) in reasonable medical judgment, the abortion is necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself, but not including psychological or emotional conditions;

“(ii) the pregnancy is the result of rape against an adult woman, and at least 48 hours prior to the abortion—

“(I) she has obtained counseling for the rape; or

“(II) she has obtained medical treatment for the rape or an injury related to the rape; or

“(iii) the pregnancy is a result of rape against a minor or incest against a minor, and the rape or incest has been reported at any time prior to the abortion to either—

“(I) a government agency legally authorized to act on reports of child abuse; or

“(II) a law enforcement agency.

And here is one of many scholarly papers on this issue: does abortion help avert psychiatric complications (including suicide)? As you can see it is complicated, and it is best left to the specialists (Obstetricians and Psychiatrists) and their patients, not to lawmakers, who have no clue! Every case is likely to be different.

Termination of Pregnancy and Psychiatric Morbidity

Anne C. Gilchrist ^(a1), Philip C. Hannaford ^(a2), Peter Frank ^(a2) and Clifford R. Kay ^(a2)
- https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.167.2.243
- Published online: 02 January 2018

Abstract

We investigated whether reported psychiatric morbidity was increased after termination of pregnancy compared with other outcomes of an unplanned pregnancy.

This was a prospective cohort study of 13 261 women with an unplanned pregnancy. Psychiatric morbidity reported by GPs after the conclusion of the pregnancy was compared in four groups: women who had a termination of pregnancy (6410), women who did not request a termination (6151), women who were refused a termination (379), and women who changed their minds before the termination was performed (321).

Rates of total reported psychiatric disorder were no higher after termination of pregnancy than after childbirth. Women with a previous history of psychiatric illness were most at risk of disorder after the end of their pregnancy, whatever its outcome. Women without a previous history of psychosis had an apparently lower risk of psychosis after termination than postpartum (relative risk RR = 0.4, 95% confidence interval CI = 0.3–0.7), but rates of psychosis leading to hospital admission were similar. In women with no previous history of psychiatric illness, deliberate self-harm (DSH) was more common in those who had a termination (RR 1.7, 95%CI 1.1–2.6), or who were refused a termination (RR 2.9, 95%CI 1.3–6.3).

The findings on DSH are probably explicable by confounding variables, such as adverse social factors, associated both with the request for termination and with subsequent self-harm. No overall increase in reported psychiatric morbidity was found.

Letter to Sen. McCain

David Posnett — Tue, 19 Sep 2017 18:50:08 +0000

From Max Plesset MD (Springs, East Hampton)

Dear Senator McCain,

I have always respected your independence, judgement and thoughtful decision making. Now you have a serious malignancy and I am sorry for that. Undoubtedly you are receiving the best of care that the American health system has to offer. However, it is clear that the Graham-Cassidy bill will jeopardize the kind of care you are getting for a large number of our citizens and your constituents in Arizona. By transferring most if not all of the current federal health care dollars to block grants to the states many people, especially medicaid patients, will be at the mercy of the state spending priorities. Please uphold your integrity as you did before by voting no on this bill. Thank you for considering my email.

to send email to Sen. McCain:

https://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contact-form

A Cruel Joke — 13 men are in charge of healthcare for all American women.

David Posnett — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 15:57:46 +0000

POSTED IN THE GUARDIAN

Lucia Graves

Wednesday 28 June 2017 11.34 EDT

Regressive gender politics are resurgent in 2017, as demonstrated by a Republican bill that would be devastating to women’s health

John Barrasso, Mitch McConnell, and John Cornyn: three of the men behind the Senate healthcare bill. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP

A decade or two ago, the notion that 13 men would be plotting the fate of American women’s healthcare behind closed doors, that they would delight in defunding the women’s health organization Planned Parenthood and impeding healthcare access for millions of American women, would have felt like the politics of a bygone era.

Midway through 2017, it feels more like deja vu.

As Republicans prepare for their delayed vote on their updated measure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, women’s groups and senators have vocally hit out against male dominance of the healthcare debate – exemplified by the GOP’s 13-man working group that crafted the Senate bill.

The Democratic senator Kamala Harris told the Guardian the bill “is terrible for women”, while her New York colleague Kirsten Gillibrand has described it as “a cruel joke” and a “blatantly partisan attack on women’s health”.

But for many, it’s more than the substance of the bill that rankles. Specifically, it feels like a return to a kind of regressive gender politics they hoped had passed in America: a politics in which men make the decisions about what happens to women’s bodies.

“It’s outrageous that the future of healthcare for millions of women lies in the hands of 13 men,” Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, said. “It’s clear they don’t care about our opinion or our lives – because if they had asked us what we thought, we’d all be in a very different position right now.”

The Senate healthcare bill would increase the number of uninsured people in the US by 22 million, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, and is opposed by the American Medical Association on the grounds that it violates the Hippocratic oath.

It would also be particularly devastating to women’s health, in a number of ways. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate’s health committee, called it “nothing less than an attack on women’s health and rights”.

Harris said: “It blocks millions of women on Medicaid from getting care at Planned Parenthood. It allows states to stop requiring insurance companies to cover essential health benefits – like maternity care and birth control. Women in this country will not be silenced on this issue. We will only get louder.”

Under the Republican bill, women could pay as much as $1,000 more per month for maternity care, Murray told reporters in a conference call on Friday, and millions would lose access to even the most basic preventive care services at Planned Parenthood.

As Dana Singiser of Planned Parenthood put it on the call: “If we listed all the cruel things this bill would do we’d be here all day.”

Often the men who tout defunding Planned Parenthood seem to have no idea what the organization actually does.

Donald Trump signs the global ‘gag rule’, surrounded by men. Photograph: Ron Sachs / Pool/EPA

“Frankly, I am sick of coming down to the Senate floor to explain to Republicans what Planned Parenthood does,” Elizabeth Warren said in a recent statement posted to her Facebook page. “I am sick of explaining that it provides millions of women with birth control, cancer screenings, and STI tests every year. I am sick of pointing out again and again that federal dollars do not fund abortion services at Planned Parenthood or anywhere else.”

Because of the Hyde amendment, federal funding does not actually go toward abortion services, but to the other basic healthcare services Warren outlined, including life-saving cancer screenings and treatments.

It isn’t the first time in recent years she has had to explain to the men in charge of women’s healthcare how the largest US provider of reproductive healthcare operates. When the GOP mounted another effort to defund Planned Parenthood back in August 2015, she made a similar speech.

“Do you have any idea what year it is?” Warren asked at the time. “Did you fall down, hit your head, and think you woke up in the 1950s or the 1890s? Should we call for a doctor? Because I simply cannot believe that in the year 2015, the United States Senate would be spending its time trying to defund women’s healthcare centers.”

Perhaps she shouldn’t have been that surprised. For years, Republicans have worked to strip away women’s rights to make choices about their own bodies and more often than not, the efforts have been led by men. When Donald Trump signed the global “gag rule”, pulling US funding from any global organizations that so much as mention the word “abortion”, he did it flanked exclusively by white men in suits. A photo of President George W Bush signing a ban on a rare abortion procedure reveals yet another group of grinning, self-congratulatory men.

As Jill Filipovic, writing in the New York Times, has noted, in a way, men controlling women’s bodies is an election promise delivered. “At some point, we have to ask: Is this really a pattern of errors?” she writes. “Maybe these aren’t tone-deaf mistakes at all, but intentional messages to rightwing supporters.”

Warren seems to agree, at least with the notion that the bill is all about political messaging.

“Women come to the floor, we explain, we cite facts. But Republicans would rather base healthcare policy on politics than on facts,” she said recently, after the House speaker, Paul Ryan, called the bill “pro-life”. “Calling something pro-life won’t keep women from dying in back alley abortions; it won’t help women pay for the cancer screenings that could save their lives; it won’t help them take care of their families, have safe sex or afford their medical bills.”

Murray was even more sweeping in her assessment. “The moment we’re in right now is truly a pivotal one for women and women’s rights,” she told reporters Friday, adding that for every woman and everyone who cares about their access to healthcare, now is the time to fight back.

“Those 13 men cutting backroom deals about your healthcare access clearly didn’t want to hear from you, so make sure they do now,” she said.

Summary of CBO Report on Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017 (Senate Bill)

David Posnett — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 01:20:04 +0000

June 26, 2017

Cost Estimate

CBO and JCT estimate that enacting the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017 would reduce federal deficits by $321 billion over the coming decade and increase the number of people who are uninsured by 22 million in 2026 relative to current law.

52849-hr1628senate.pdf

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1.37 MB

Summary

An Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute [LYN17343] as Posted on the Website of the Senate Committee on the Budget on June 26, 2017

The Congressional Budget Office and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) have completed an estimate of the direct spending and revenue effects of the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017, a Senate amendment in the nature of a substitute to H.R. 1628. CBO and JCT estimate that enacting this legislation would reduce the cumulative federal deficit over the 2017-2026 period by $321 billion. That amount is $202 billion more than the estimated net savings for the version of H.R. 1628 that was passed by the House of Representatives.

The Senate bill would increase the number of people who are uninsured by 22 million in 2026 relative to the number under current law, slightly fewer than the increase in the number of uninsured estimated for the House-passed legislation. By 2026, an estimated 49 million people would be uninsured, compared with 28 million who would lack insurance that year under current law.

Following the overview, this document provides details about the major provisions of this legislation, the estimated costs to the federal government, the basis for the estimate, and other related information, including a comparison with CBO’s estimate for the House-passed act.

Effects on the Federal Budget

CBO and JCT estimate that, over the 2017-2026 period, enacting this legislation would reduce direct spending by $1,022 billion and reduce revenues by $701 billion, for a net reduction of $321 billion in the deficit over that period (see Table 1, at the end of this document):

The largest savings would come from reductions in outlays for Medicaid—spending on the program would decline in 2026 by 26 percent in comparison with what CBO projects under current law—and from changes to the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) subsidies for nongroup health insurance (see Figure 1). Those savings would be partially offset by the effects of other changes to the ACA’s provisions dealing with insurance coverage: additional spending designed to reduce premiums and a reduction in revenues from repealing penalties on employers who do not offer insurance and on people who do not purchase insurance.
The largest increases in deficits would come from repealing or modifying tax provisions in the ACA that are not directly related to health insurance coverage, including repealing a surtax on net investment income and repealing annual fees imposed on health insurers.

Pay-as-you-go procedures apply because enacting this legislation would affect direct spending and revenues. CBO and JCT estimate that enactment would not increase net direct spending or on-budget deficits in any of the four consecutive 10-year periods beginning in 2027. The agencies expect that savings, particularly from Medicaid, would continue to grow, while the costs would be smaller because a rescinded tax on employees’ health insurance premiums and health plan benefits would be reinstated in 2026. CBO has not completed an estimate of the potential impact of this legislation on discretionary spending, which would be subject to future appropriation action.

Effects on Health Insurance Coverage

CBO and JCT estimate that, in 2018, 15 million more people would be uninsured under this legislation than under current law—primarily because the penalty for not having insurance would be eliminated. The increase in the number of uninsured people relative to the number projected under current law would reach 19 million in 2020 and 22 million in 2026. In later years, other changes in the legislation—lower spending on Medicaid and substantially smaller average subsidies for coverage in the nongroup market—would also lead to increases in the number of people without health insurance. By 2026, among people under age 65, enrollment in Medicaid would fall by about 16 percent and an estimated 49 million people would be uninsured, compared with 28 million who would lack insurance that year under current law.

Stability of the Health Insurance Market

Decisions about offering and purchasing health insurance depend on the stability of the health insurance market—that is, on the proportion of people living in areas with participating insurers and on the likelihood of premiums’ not rising in an unsustainable spiral. The market for insurance purchased individually with premiums not based on one’s health status would be unstable if, for example, the people who wanted to buy coverage at any offered price would have average health care expenditures so high that offering the insurance would be unprofitable.

Under Current Law. Although premiums have been rising under current law, most subsidized enrollees purchasing health insurance coverage in the nongroup market are largely insulated from increases in premiums because their out-of-pocket payments for premiums are based on a percentage of their income; the government pays the difference between that percentage and the premiums for a reference plan (which is the second-lowest-cost plan in their area providing specified benefits). The subsidies to purchase coverage, combined with the effects of the individual mandate, which requires most individuals to obtain insurance or pay a penalty, are anticipated to cause sufficient demand for insurance by enough people, including people with low health care expenditures, for the market to be stable in most areas.

Nevertheless, a small number of people live in areas of the country that have limited participation by insurers in the nongroup market under current law. Several factors may lead insurers to withdraw from the market—including lack of profitability and substantial uncertainty about enforcement of the individual mandate and about future payments of the cost-sharing subsidies to reduce out-of-pocket payments for people who enroll in nongroup coverage through the marketplaces established by the ACA.

Under This Legislation. CBO and JCT anticipate that, under this legislation, nongroup insurance markets would continue to be stable in most parts of the country. Although substantial uncertainty about the effects of the new law could lead some insurers to withdraw from or not enter the nongroup market in some states, several factors would bring about market stability in most states before 2020. In the agencies’ view, those key factors include the following: subsidies to purchase insurance, which would maintain sufficient demand for insurance by people with low health care expenditures; the appropriation of funds for cost-sharing subsidies, which would provide certainty about the availability of those funds; and additional federal funding provided to states and insurers, which would lower premiums by reducing the costs to insurers of people with high health care expenditures.

The agencies expect that the nongroup market in most areas of the country would continue to be stable in 2020 and later years as well, including in some states that obtain waivers that would not have otherwise done so. (Under current law and this legislation, states can apply for Section 1332 waivers to change the structure of subsidies for nongroup coverage; the specifications for essential health benefits [EHBs], which set the minimum standards for the benefits that insurance in the nongroup and small-group markets must cover; and other related provisions of law.) Substantial federal funding to directly reduce premiums would be available through 2021. Premium tax credits would continue to provide insulation from changes in premiums through 2021 and in later years. Those factors would help attract enough relatively healthy people for the market in most areas of the country to be stable, CBO and JCT anticipate. That stability in most areas would occur even though the premium tax credits would be smaller in most cases than under current law and subsidies to reduce cost sharing—the amount that consumers are required to pay out of pocket when they use health care services—would be eliminated starting in 2020.

In the agencies’ assessment, a small fraction of the population resides in areas in which—because of this legislation, at least for some of the years after 2019—no insurers would participate in the nongroup market or insurance would be offered only with very high premiums. Some sparsely populated areas might have no nongroup insurance offered because the reductions in subsidies would lead fewer people to decide to purchase insurance—and markets with few purchasers are less profitable for insurers. Insurance covering certain services would become more expensive—in some cases, extremely expensive—in some areas because the scope of the EHBs would be narrowed through waivers affecting close to half the population, CBO and JCT expect. In addition, the agencies anticipate that all insurance in the nongroup market would become very expensive for at least a short period of time for a small fraction of the population residing in areas in which states’ implementation of waivers with major changes caused market disruption.

Effects on Premiums and Out-of-Pocket Payments

The legislation would increase average premiums in the nongroup market prior to 2020 and lower average premiums thereafter, relative to projections under current law, CBO and JCT estimate. To arrive at those estimates, the agencies examined how the legislation would affect the premiums charged if people purchased a benchmark plan in the nongroup market.

In 2018 and 2019, under current law and under the legislation, the benchmark plan has an actuarial value of 70 percent—that is, the insurance pays about 70 percent of the total cost of covered benefits, on average. In the marketplaces, such coverage is known as a silver plan.

Under the Senate bill, average premiums for benchmark plans for single individuals would be about 20 percent higher in 2018 than under current law, mainly because the penalty for not having insurance would be eliminated, inducing fewer comparatively healthy people to sign up. Those premiums would be about 10 percent higher than under current law in 2019—less than in 2018 in part because funding provided by the bill to reduce premiums would affect pricing and because changes in the limits on how premiums can vary by age would result in a larger number of younger people paying lower premiums to purchase policies.

In 2020, average premiums for benchmark plans for single individuals would be about 30 percent lower than under current law. A combination of factors would lead to that decrease—most important, the smaller share of benefits paid for by the benchmark plans and federal funds provided to directly reduce premiums.

That share of services covered by insurance would be smaller because the benchmark plan under this legislation would have an actuarial value of 58 percent beginning in 2020. That value is slightly below the actuarial value of 60 percent for “bronze” plans currently offered in the marketplaces. Because of the ACA’s limits on out-of-pocket spending and prohibitions on annual and lifetime limits on payments for services within the EHBs, all plans must pay for most of the cost of high-cost services. To design a plan with an actuarial value of 60 percent or less and pay for those high-cost services, insurers must set high deductibles—that is, the amounts that people pay out of pocket for most types of health care services before insurance makes any contribution. Under current law for a single policyholder in 2017, the average deductible (for medical and drug expenses combined) is about $6,000 for a bronze plan and $3,600 for a silver plan. CBO and JCT expect that the benchmark plans under this legislation would have high deductibles similar to those for the bronze plans offered under current law. Premiums for a plan with an actuarial value of 58 percent are lower than they are for a plan with an actuarial value of 70 percent (the value for the reference plan under current law) largely because the insurance pays for a smaller average share of health care costs.

Although the average benchmark premium directly affects the amount of premium tax credits and is a key element in CBO’s analysis of the budgetary effects of the bill, it does not represent the effect of this legislation on the average premiums for all plans purchased. The differences in the actuarial value of plans purchased under this legislation and under current law would be greater starting in 2020—when, for example, under this bill, some people would pay more than the benchmark premium to purchase a silver plan, whereas, under current law, others would pay less than the benchmark premium to purchase a bronze plan.

Under this legislation, starting in 2020, the premium for a silver plan would typically be a relatively high percentage of income for low-income people. The deductible for a plan with an actuarial value of 58 percent would be a significantly higher percentage of income—also making such a plan unattractive, but for a different reason. As a result, despite being eligible for premium tax credits, few low-income people would purchase any plan, CBO and JCT estimate.

By 2026, average premiums for benchmark plans for single individuals in most of the country under this legislation would be about 20 percent lower than under current law, CBO and JCT estimate—a smaller decrease than in 2020 largely because federal funding to reduce premiums would have lessened. The estimates for both of those years encompass effects in different areas of the country that would be substantially higher and substantially lower than the average effect nationally, in part because of the effects of state waivers. Some small fraction of the population is not included in those estimates. CBO and JCT expect that those people would be in states using waivers in such a way that no benchmark plan would be defined. Hence, a comparison of benchmark premiums is not possible in such areas.

Some people enrolled in nongroup insurance would experience substantial increases in what they would spend on health care even though benchmark premiums would decline, on average, in 2020 and later years. Because nongroup insurance would pay for a smaller average share of benefits under this legislation, most people purchasing it would have higher out-of-pocket spending on health care than under current law. Out-of-pocket spending would also be affected for the people—close to half the population, CBO and JCT expect—living in states modifying the EHBs using waivers. People who used services or benefits no longer included in the EHBs would experience substantial increases in supplemental premiums or out-of-pocket spending on health care, or would choose to forgo the services. Moreover, the ACA’s ban on annual and lifetime limits on covered benefits would no longer apply to health benefits not defined as essential in a state. As a result, for some benefits that might be removed from a state’s definition of EHBs but that might not be excluded from insurance coverage altogether, some enrollees could see large increases in out-of-pocket spending because annual or lifetime limits would be allowed.

Uncertainty Surrounding the Estimates

CBO and JCT have endeavored to develop budgetary estimates that are in the middle of the distribution of potential outcomes. Such estimates are inherently inexact because the ways in which federal agencies, states, insurers, employers, individuals, doctors, hospitals, and other affected parties would respond to the changes made by this legislation are all difficult to predict. In particular, predicting the overall effects of the myriad ways that states could implement waivers is especially difficult.

CBO and JCT’s projections under current law itself are also uncertain. For example, enrollment in the marketplaces under current law will probably be lower than was projected under the March 2016 baseline used in this analysis, which would tend to decrease the budgetary savings from this legislation. However, the average subsidy per enrollee under current law will probably be higher than was projected in March 2016, which would tend to increase the budgetary savings from this legislation. (For a related discussion, see the section on “Use of the March 2016 Baseline” on page 15.)

Despite the uncertainty, the direction of certain effects of this legislation is clear. For example, the amount of federal revenues collected and the amount of spending on Medicaid would almost surely both be lower than under current law. And the number of uninsured people under this legislation would almost surely be greater than under current law.

Intergovernmental and Private-Sector Mandates

CBO has reviewed the nontax provisions of the legislation and determined that they would impose intergovernmental mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) by preempting state laws. Although the preemptions would limit the application of state laws, they would impose no duty on states that would result in additional spending or a loss of revenues. JCT has determined that the tax provisions of the legislation contain no intergovernmental mandates.

JCT and CBO have determined that the legislation would impose private-sector mandates as defined in UMRA. On the basis of information from JCT, CBO estimates that the aggregate cost of the mandates would exceed the annual threshold established in UMRA for private-sector mandates ($156 million in 2017, adjusted annually for inflation).

New polling numbers are out for ‘Trumpcare’, and they’re a disaster for Republicans

David Posnett — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 16:54:01 +0000

But when is this going to affect voters’ behavior?

POSTED ON DAILY KOS

By Hunter

Wednesday Jun 21, 2017 · 2:15 PM EDT

Which is exactly why they’re trying to ram a Senate bill through without letting the public know what’s in it.

Take Action

Send a letter to Republican senators and stop Mitch McConnell from forcing Trumpcare!

As Republicans continue to barrel towards repealing the nation’s healthcare reform efforts regardless of the suffering it will cause, their efforts continue to get even more wildly unpopular among voters.

As the GOP-led Senate prepares to take up the measure, only 35 percent of voters surveyed approve of the bill passed by the House last month. Nearly half of voters, 49 percent, disapprove of the bill. The other 16 percent don’t know or don’t have an opinion, the poll shows.POLITICO/Morning Consult polling indicates the bill has become less popular since the House advanced it in early May. Immediately after the bill passed, slightly more voters approved of the bill, 38 percent. Opposition to the bill was lower, too, immediately after the House passed it: 44 percent.

Which is the one and only reason Senate Republicans are keeping their version of the bill a closely-held secret until the last possible moment: They know the public is going to hate it. It’s going to look very much like the House bill, it’s going to uninsure millions of American citizens for no other reason than to pass the House-style tax cuts, people are going to die as a direct result and nearly everybody in America knows all of that.

Many in the Republican base are still fine with it, because they would agree to saw off their own legs and glue live chickens to the stumps if they thought Barack Obama would be against them doing that, but anyone with a preexisting condition, anyone who has health insurance now that didn’t have it before, anyone on Medicaid who couldn’t get it before and anyone who has a basic sense of decency isn’t a fan. And Republican disapproval, too, is rapidly rising:

Among Republican voters, 30 percent disapprove of the GOP health care bill. That is up from 15 percent of Republicans disapproving in early May.

That’s a trend that Republicans can’t afford to see continue, hence both the secrecy and the speed. There won’t be hearings because the Republican leadership simply can’t afford to have their own base continue to hear about this thing—and given that only a third of all American voters like it, total, that shows you just how despised it is among voters who aren’t a part of their base.

[I]ndependent voters disapprove of the bill by a 2-to-1 margin: 26 percent approve, versus 53 percent who disapprove.

That’s abysmal. You could get higher approval ratings by promising to give everyone in America free herpes.

[F]ew voters are cheering for the legislation’s passage. Only 27 percent think it will make the U.S. health care system better, compared to 41 percent who think it will make the system worse. Just 17 percent think it will decrease costs for them and their families, while 46 percent think costs will increase.

Voters are making a dramatic statement here: All but a handful detest this “reform” effort and oppose Republicans following through on it. And nearly everyone is clear on the effects, saying this bill will hurt both the overall U.S. healthcare system and them, personally.

The bad news is that the Republican lawmakers installed by those voters simply do not seem to care. At all. Rather than listening to voters warning them about how disastrous the bill will be they’ve decided to hunker down and simply not tell anyone what will be in it from now on, rushing to pass a final version within days of public release so that the public won’t have a chance to either review it or complain.

Why? What’s in this for Republican lawmakers? It’s going to cost them votes even among their own base, it’s going to open them up to endless future campaign commercials each featuring individual Americans from their own states and districts who lost insurance, or care, or even loved ones due to the Republican effort, and in return they get—what?

What’s being promised to them that outweighs all that?

What I’m Doing to Keep Birth Control Free in the Face of Trump’s and the GOP’s Health Care Rollback

David Posnett — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 19:37:56 +0000

Op-Ed in Teen Vogue

By Eric Schneiderman

The summer after I graduated high school, I worked in an abortion clinic in Washington, D.C.

This was a year before Roe v. Wade, and abortion was still outlawed in states throughout the country. Many women still had to travel far from home for safe, legal reproductive health care.

I used to drive our patients from the airport to the clinic and back again. I still remember the fear in the eyes of many women as they tried to leave the recovery room too early because they wanted to get home as quickly as possible. Their parents or husbands or bosses had no idea they were there. Abortion was still something that was whispered about — and anti-women laws made it far more dangerous than it should have been.

After Roe v. Wade, I remember thinking, Well, at least we’ll never see that kind of inhumane treatment of women in America ever again.

But unless Americans — especially young Americans — rise up to stop President Trump and his allies in Congress, I’m afraid we could be heading back to those bad old days.

We’re already seeing the Trump administration take some big steps to limit the rights of women to control their own bodies.

The new House health care bill, which passed this spring, aims to defund Planned Parenthood and the vital health care it provides. I’ve made clear that if Trump signs the bill into law, I will challenge it in court.

And right now, Trump’s team is considering a new rule that would allow any company to drop coverage for birth control — a cruel and unnecessary rollback of common sense policy. I don’t need to tell you that access to affordable birth control is not a trivial issue. The pill can cost up to around $1,200 per year. If you’re earning minimum wage in New York, that’s about the equivalent of a full month’s pay.

So it’s no surprise that before the Affordable Care Act’s free contraception mandate, more than half of women under age 34 had been through times when they couldn’t afford birth control. Before the Affordable Care Act’s contraception rules went into effect, about 20% of women paid out of pocket for oral contraceptives. Now less than 4% do, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate, the National Women’s Law Center reported that American women now save roughly $1.4 billion per year on oral contraceptives — and more women now have the financial freedom to choose the birth control that’s right for them, like an IUD.

If you care about women’s autonomy, if you care about preventing unplanned pregnancies, protecting cost-free access to birth control is a no-brainer.

I won’t sugarcoat it — these rights are under attack. But we can fight back.

In my state of New York, I’ve introduced a bill that would require all health plans to provide cost-free contraceptive coverage — no matter what Washington does. It would also mandate that health plans cover emergency contraception and male contraception.

States have the power to make a real difference, and New York isn’t alone. A number of states have taken similar action.

So get on the phone. Call your state senator. Call your governor. Call your state attorney general. Tell them to ensure anti-choice leaders in Washington can never take away your access to affordable contraception. States have the power to protect you, even if the federal government won’t. Demand that they stand with you and fight for your rights.

There are many people in Washington who want to take us back to the pre-Roe days. But there are allies in every state ready and eager to fight. Find them. Join them. And together, we can protect the rights of all women to the reproductive health care they need.

Thank you for taking the time to read my op-ed. Together we will ensure that all New Yorkers have access to cost-free contraception.

All my best,

Eric Schneiderman

Trump Rebrands “Abstinence Only” as “sexual risk avoidance”

David Posnett — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 13:07:24 +0000

Under a clinical-sounding label, the shame-and-ignorance approach of the Bush era makes a comeback under Trump

Published in Salon, June 13, 2017

AMANDA MARCOTTE

(Credit: Getty/wundervisuals)

Thrice-married libertine Donald Trump got himself elected president by rallying the religious right vote behind him. The devil’s bargain that Christian conservatives made with Trump is easy enough to understand: They ignore his history of sexual incontinence, including rumors of a literal “pee tape,” and he gives them more power over the sex lives of private individuals, especially young people and women. In office, President Trump has done just that, launching a multitude of attacks on legal abortion and contraception access.

Now it seems as if a third front is opening in the Trumpian war on other people’s sex lives: The return of abstinence-only education, which many Americans believe had died off after President George W. Bush left office. Well, abstinence-only ed is coming back, but this time around, its proponents hope that voters, especially parents, don’t notice the return to the classroom of religious anti-sex propaganda.

The first sign that the Trump administration hoped to ease into the classroom more just-say-no-to-sex messages came in late May, when the White House proposed a budget that would slash nearly every government expenditure but would increase by $277 million spending on abstinence-until-marriage programs. Last week news surfaced that Valerie Huber, the head of a pro-abstinence organization called Ascend, will join the Department of Health and Human Services as chief of staff to the assistant secretary for adolescent health; the position will allow her to push for more support for abstinence-until-marriage programs in schools.

To be clear, abstinence-only ed was never completely dead. The Obama administration mounted many efforts to get rid of federal funding for abstinence-focused programs, and some were successful. But congressional Republicans managed to preserve at least some abstinence-centered funding, and since sex education curricula are mostly controlled by local school boards, abstinence programs have continued to flourish in many school districts. Religious conservatives have continued to push them onto schools under the noses of parents who might otherwise revolt at hearing that their kids are being subject to programs that shame the 95 percent of Americans who have premarital sex and that have repeatedly been linked to higher rates of teen pregnancy.

Part of what kept abstinence-only approaches alive is that the religious right has rebranded it as “sexual risk avoidance,” as if it were a public health initiative instead of religion-tinged sexual shaming.

“Over the years they got very smart,” explained Debra Hauser, the president of Advocates for Youth, in a phone conversation. “When we were like, ‘science over ideology,’ they turned around and produced their own journals and their own science.”

She added, “When we said, ‘This is a just-say-no program that didn’t work for drugs under Nancy Reagan and isn’t gonna work here,’ they said, ‘No, this isn’t abstinence until marriage; it just stresses abstinence.’ They turned around and went to this language about ‘sexual risk avoidance,’ which completely obfuscates what they’re actually doing.”

With Huber’s appointment, this rebranding and Republican control of all three branches of government, there’s good reason to fear a renewed push for schools to terrorize kids about sex, rather than providing true sex education.

Mary Anne Mosack, who replaced Valerie Huber as the head of Ascend (formerly called the National Abstinence Education Association), took issue during a phone interview with the implication that “sexual risk avoidance” is the just-say-no style of education that critics like Hauser say it is.

“We teach that [marriage] is the best context for sexual activity,” Mosack said, repeatedly insisting that this doesn’t mean that her organization’s approach is an abstinence-until-marriage program.

My conversation with Mosack, which lasted nearly a half hour, was maddeningly elliptical about what exactly the goals of the program are. I repeatedly pointed out that the average U.S. age of first marriage is 28 years old — a full 11 years after the average age for first having sexual intercourse — and asked if it’s unrealistic, and quite possibly unhealthy, to expect young people to wait that long to have sex. Mosack sidestepped the question, trying to redirect the conversation away from younger adults to teenagers. She said Ascend’s main goal was to “normalize . . . sexual delay” for teenagers, adding, “We’re talking about middle school and high school.”

But when I then asked her if the point of the programs was to have younger people wait until, say, college before engaging in sexual activity, she said that, no, Ascend believes that virginity until marriage is the “best outcome.” And then around we went again.

Mosack’s position, if I’m being generous, seemed to be that if you tell young people to wait 15 years, maybe you can hope they wait five years — or three. To me that sounds less like education and more like setting up kids for failure. It certainly didn’t seem like a good way to frame human sexuality, which should ultimately be about pleasure and human connection, not described in terms that strongly resemble the Christian idea of sin. And it also doesn’t seem like a good way to impart health information that young people will need when they do inevitably start having sex.

“Make no mistake, there is still an underlying theme of shame, fear and the use of traditional gender stereotypes and roles” in these rebranded programs, Hauser said.

Mosack disagreed with Hauser’s position, insisting that the programs take a “holistic approach” to sex education.

I asked Mosack for some examples of curricula that her organization endorses, so I could see it for myself. At this point she got cagey. While her organization has certified hundreds of programs, she said, she wouldn’t give me any names or contact information, instead she said would pass my number along so that representatives of those programs could contact me. (No one has.)

It didn’t take much digging, however, to find a 2016 Ascend document that featured an extensive list of programs the organization had deemed successful “sexual risk avoidance” examples; many of the programs continue to use the “abstinence” language in their titles.

It just so happens that many of the Ascend-recommended programs were reviewed in 2016 by the Texas Freedom Network, which advocates for the separation of church and state and resists religion-tinged and anti-sex propaganda being pushed as “education” in schools.

Texas Freedom Network found that reframing abstinence-only programs as “sexual risk avoidance” led to a few minor improvements over the Bush-era programs. The amount of outright misinformation about contraception has declined and the programs have thankfully started to incorporate important information about consent. But the review still found that the programs demonize contraception. Much of the shaming and sexist messaging that gave abstinence-only education a bad name in the first place is still a major feature of the programs.

For instance, two Ascend-recommended programs — REAL Essentials and Choosing the Best — continue to teach that having sex makes a person dirty and incapable of falling in love.

“REAL Essentials explains that glue (i.e., sex) is a bonding agent that works best on a surface that is ‘clean and dry’ (i.e., virgins),” the Texas Freedom Network report read. “Choosing the Best includes a similar exercise using adhesive tape. The exercise involves placing tape on a student’s skin, then removing it to show what has transferred from the skin to the tape. What remains on the tape is supposed to represent the emotional baggage resulting from sex.”

The idea of the exercise, of course, is to suggest that people who have sex become dirty and incapable of “sticking” to new partners.

The reviewers also found sexist stereotypes in Ascend-recommended programs like Scott and White Wellness and Sexual Health (formerly called Worth the Wait) and REAL Essentials. Their curricula framed men as sexual and women as romantic, treating marriage as a tense exchange whereby a woman provides access to her body in exchange for a man’s pledge of love.

In reality, of course, people of all genders experience both sexual desire and romantic yearnings — and the two are not experienced in opposition, for most people.

With the deceitful rebranding of abstinence-only programs and the Republican domination of government, there’s more than enough reason for parents to worry that these misleading, shaming programs will return to public school curricula. In many cases they’ve been there all along, despite the Obama administration’s efforts to kill off abstinence-only programs.

That doesn’t mean parents are powerless in this regard. In fact, Hauser argued, fighting for real sex education is a good avenue for people looking for opportunities to resist the Trump agenda.

“At the school-district level is where sex education is determined, both in policy and in practice,” Hauser explained. That means that as few as five or six parents, can often be enough to convince a superintendent to reject federal pressure or funding to replace real sex education with abstinence-only, she said.

The kids themselves can be the resistance’s best ally. They can be warned that schools may bring in activists from crisis pregnancy centers and other religious right organizations. Or students can cautioned to be on the lookout for anti-sex lectures that feature things like the tape stunt or similar ones involving chewing gum or cups of spit. The list of Ascend-approved curricula can serve as a cheat sheet for parents: If your kid comes home with abstinence-only books, it’s time to call the school and raise hell.

Americans Now View Health Care as a Right. Republicans Can’t Change That.

David Posnett — Tue, 09 May 2017 02:29:06 +0000

Posted on Slate.com

By Mark Joseph Stern and Perry Grossman

President Donald Trump congratulates House Republicans for passing the AHCA.

Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

One day after House Republicans passed the American Health Care Act, Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy outlined his vision of Obamacare repeal. Any bill the Senate passes, Cassidy explained, must pass “the Jimmy Kimmel test,” meaning that everyone, including newborns, can “get the care they need.” These remarks align with Cassidy’s comments in March, when he told the New York Times that “there’s a widespread recognition that the federal government, Congress, has created the right for every American to have health care.”

There is, of course, a chance that Cassidy could simply ignore this “widespread recognition” and vote for a monstrous bill anyway. But that will not change the underlying truth of his initial observation. Although the United States lacks a constitutional right to health care—unlike more than half of the world’s countries—seven years of Obamacare have established, in most Americans’ minds, a basic right to affordable medical treatment. Republicans might be able to repeal Obamacare, but they can’t reverse that sea change. And any attempt to do so will likely wreak political devastation.

To understand how health care came to be seen as a right, it’s useful to examine a surprisingly close analogue: marriage equality. For many years in the United States, marriage was viewed as a kind of privilege—a biblical sacrament that states choose to honor through legal recognition. But marriage isn’t a sacrament for everyone, and not everyone who wanted to get married could do it: Many states restricted marital privileges on the basis of irrational classifications like race.

Civil rights attorneys successfully challenged this vision of marriage as a benefit, rooted in religion, that states can revoke for some individuals. The target was Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law. A trial judge upheld the law, explaining, “Almighty God created the races” and “placed them on separate continents” because “he did not intend for the races to mix.” But in Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court disagreed, ruling that marriage is a constitutionally protected fundamental right that “cannot be infringed by the state.”

Thanks to Loving and its progeny, Americans now tend to discuss marriage as a right guaranteed to all, not a privilege available to some. Our discussion of marriage as a “right” has transformed the biblical notion of marriage into a legal one. That’s why, by 2015, marriage equality seemed so inevitable. If the government cannot limit marriage rights on the basis of race, why should it be able to limit them on the basis of sex?

Over the past seven years, we have witnessed a similar (if subtler) transformation in discussions around health care. Republicans have long characterized access to quality health care in terms of an economic good, available to those who can afford it, with those unable to afford it at the mercy of private charitable organizations—frequently, religious organizations. This is consistent with the vision of a party that has worked hard to devolve core portions of the social safety net to faith-based groups for decades. For Republicans, the inability to afford health insurance isn’t merely a matter of economic misfortunate; it’s a moral failing. Alabama Republican and Freedom Caucus member Rep. Mo Brooks captured this sentiment precisely when he said in an interview with Jake Tapper that “people who live good lives” don’t develop pre-existing conditions and are thus entitled to pay less for health care, while others might find themselves priced out of the health insurance market altogether.

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro acknowledged that Brooks’ statement was “expressed in the dumbest way possible,” but he agreed that failing to purchase health insurance was irresponsible and immoral and wrote: “None of this means we shouldn’t have social support for those who fall through the cracks—who lose their jobs during a pregnancy, for example. That’s what communities and churches and hospital charities are for.” Republican attitudes on this topic were perhaps best summarized by Mark Green, Republican Tennessee state senator and Trump’s former nominee for secretary of the Army, who in 2015 called government involvement in making health care broadly available to poor people an “injustice” because “[t]he person who’s in need … they look to the government for the answer, not God.” In these terms, health care is a privilege for those blessed enough to pay for it—or blessed enough to accept religious charity.

Democrats have been pushing for universal health care since the New Deal. In 1978, Sen. Ted Kennedy captured his party’s sentiment by declaring that health care is “a basic right for all, not just an expensive privilege for the few.” But the massive expansion of health insurance coverage brought about by Obamacare gave that language popular traction on an unprecedented scale. Most Americans now expect the government to establish some minimum standard of care. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that “60% of Americans say the government should be responsible for ensuring health care coverage for all” and, most strikingly, that Republicans with family incomes of less than $75,000 per year are increasingly a part of that group. Those numbers may continue to grow as tens of millions of people find their health care coverage jeopardized by Trumpcare.

Top Comment

To me, all the psychobabble around political theory is bunk. What matters is what works. And all the evidence on earth is that our absurd, right-wing system doesn’t, and that universal coverage is much better.

In spite of Thursday’s vote, congressional Republicans appear to recognize that reality and address it by simply lying about Trumpcare, peddling outright falsehoods about the generosity of their “reforms.” These lies, however, will only get Republicans so far. At a certain point, whatever bill they pass will take effect—and if it looks anything like the AHCA, it will throw millions off their insurance, possibly killing thousands. Americans will view the mass suffering engendered by Obamacare repeal as pure political cruelty, a transgression of the government’s duty to protect its citizens’ lives.

Perhaps we won’t reach that point: If Cassidy is serious about health care as a right, and if other Republican colleagues are genuine in their concerns about the House bill—we may see Trumpcare wither and die in the course of internecine Republican squabbles, possibly after the bill’s undoubtedly abysmal Congressional Budget Office score comes out. But if Republicans follow through on this suicide pact to “repeal and replace” Obamacare with whatever legislative abomination they can pass, they will wreck the U.S. health care system and leave millions of Americans unable to afford treatment. The resulting nightmare will only confirm an existing intuition: In 21^st-century America, health care is not a privilege or a benefit or an entitlement; it is a human right. And those who attempt to strip insurance from the vulnerable will discover just how unpopular their callous selfishness truly is.

GOP rep says no need for Planned Parenthood, women can simply get birth control at the grocery store

David Posnett — Sat, 06 May 2017 18:26:13 +0000

Posted on DailyKos

By Jen Hayden

Thursday May 04, 2017 · 2:26 PM EDT

This man is in charge of health care for women. Let that sink in for a minute.

In this exchange, a constituent asks Rep. Grothman why he supports defunding Planned Parenthood. She reminds him ZERO federal dollars go toward abortion services and warns him not to use that as an excuse. Rep. Grothman isn’t quite sure what Planned Parenthood does, but he is sure women can just hop on down to the grocery store and get the same services. Rep. Grothman’s response and similar responses from his all-white, all-male Republican colleagues in the House are precisely why we need more women in office. Women’s lives and their futures depend on it.

Thanks to Kaili Joy Gray at ShareBlue for the transcript.

GROTHMAN: You look at every city, and you can get birth control in, I would guess, in Neenah—

WOMAN: You would guess?

GROTHMAN: … uh six or ten different places. In pharmacists [sic], in many grocery stores, not to mention you can get it in a variety of clinics.

WOMAN: I’ve never gotten a prescription from a grocery store.

GROTHMAN: My guess is, in a city the size of Neenah … there have to be six or eight clinics where you can get birth control.

WOMAN: But what about rural communities?

GROTHMAN: I don’t respond to questions out of the blue. But I will say this: If you look at where all the Planned Parenthood clinics are in the state of Wisconsin, they are usually in more urban areas. I looked one time and got a list of all the clinics, Planned Parenthood clinics, in the state of Wisconsin. I don’t think there were any that I’m aware of, just pursuing it, in which you would say the village was so small that they didn’t have any other health care providers. I mean, they’ll throw that out, but if you look, it is usually in larger areas.