Ignoring 50%
What happens when you leave women out of the healthcare discussion

On May 4th, 2017 the United States House of Representatives narrowly passed the new legislation to repeal and replace The Affordable Care Act (ACA). In a vote 217 to 213, twenty Republicans voted against the bill. The bill was sent on to the Senate, where it originally faced widespread rejection from Republican and Democrats a like. A vote was supposed to take place in the last week on June before the July recess, and right up until that vote a group of male Republicans senators, lead by the Majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), discussed and amended the bill in private. In fact, before it was presented to the floor, very few senators, including Republicans knew what was in the bill. 13 of the top Republican senators were crafting this bill to try and reach the magic 50 votes. Finally, the bill was revealed on June 22nd and most experts agree it’s essentially the same bill as the House version. It includes the same harsh cuts to Medicaid and Women’s Health.
Let’s start with Medicaid. Medicaid is the government program that helps pay for health insurance for lower income people. Medicaid is extremely important for many lower income people but especially for women. Medicaid pays for half of the births in the United States. Taking it away would leave millions of women without quality doctors and prenatal care. This is important because the number of pregnancy related deaths in the United States is rising. In 1990 roughly 120,000 women died from pregnancy related complications, now that number is roughly 280,000. It’s estimated that around 60% of these deaths are preventable. That means that with more quality health care or women, around 168,000 of those 280,000 deaths could have been prevented.
Planned Parenthood will also suffer under this new legislation. Is no secret that Republican lawmakers have wanted to defund Planned Parenthood for years. Planned Parenthood serves 2.7 million people across the country many of these people are women who live in lower income neighborhoods. For many of these women, Planned Parenthood is their main source of care. Millions of these women depend on Planned Parenthood for contraception, cancer screenings and pregnancy and STD tests. According to the Congressional Budget Office, defunding Planned Parenthood would increase the number of births in the Medicaid program by around several thousand a year, thus costing the United States Government more money in the long run.
Many women get their health care from one of the state insurance marketplaces, and under The Affordable Care Act these marketplaces had to cover maternity care. However, the new senate bill says that states no longer have to cover maternity care through their marketplaces. Before the ACA around 80% of these plans did not cover maternity care, this is because covering people with a preexisting condition is more expensive for the company and some companies argue that being female is a pre existing condition because many women can and will get pregnant and have babies. And this has to be covered. Removing this mandate will take maternity and prenatal care away from away from millions of women.
This bill will hurt millions of people if passed. But women will are even more vulnerable. These hard cuts and changes were all made by 13 male senators who will never require any of this care. However, the question is exists: Would this bill be different if women were included in the private discussions that took place in order to craft it?
On June 27th the vote on Healthcare was pushed back until after the July 4th recess. When the senators return they will have a vote. The Bill needs 51 votes to pass the Senate and the Republicans can only afford to lose 2 of their own colleagues. The main reason why Senator Mcconnell decided to push back the vote was because there is a large majority of Republican senators who were not included in the discussion to create the bill, who have come out against it. Two female senators Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine have expressed concerns about Bill’s cuts to Medicaid and Planned Parenthood as their main concerns. Both Murkowski and Collins have publicly opposed defunding Planned Parenthood.
“It makes absolutely no sense to eliminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood,” Senator Collins told ABC News. “There are already longstanding restrictions on the use of federal funds for abortion, so that’s not what this debate is about. And Planned Parenthood is an important provider of healthcare services, including family planning and cancer screenings for millions of Americans, particularly women.”
Even the other 3 female GOP senators who don’t oppose defunding planned parenthood, have expressed concerns about gutting Medicaid. None of the 5 total female GOP senators have said they will vote for the bill.
This law, if passed, will affect millions of Americans. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it would cause 22 million people to lose insurance, many of them women. Specifically, lower income women. This is some of the most important legislation of the year, and it was created by 13 male senators behind closed doors. If this bill would have been written the normal way, with open discussions and committee meetings that included female senators, this bill would look much different.
Unfortunately, we can no longer look to male GOP senators to take care of Women’s health. They have created this bill by ignoring its effects on millions of women. Once again, this is an extremely large piece of legislation that will affect the country as a whole, a country that is half women. But this bill was crafted by all men. How could we expect that is bill is good for our country when 13 men are making the decisions for 126.9 million adult women.
It no secret that women are not property represented in our government. Just 105 of 535 voting members of congress are women (that’s about 19%). And until we start to see more congresswomen we will continue to see legislation that ignores the concerns of women everywhere.
Of course, there is hope. The number of women in Congress has steadily increased since the First female Congressperson, Senator Jeanette Rankin was elected to the house in 1916. In 1992 there were just five women in the United States Senate. Now that number has risen to 21 women. In generations to come we will surely see more and more women run for elected office.
In the meantime, as a country, we have to hold Republican senators responsible for the mess this bill. There is no doubt that these men know that their bill will hurt women, they know that their bill will make it harder for low-income women to get birth control, they know that this bill with make it harder for women everywhere to have access to quality affordable maternity care, they know that deaths related to pregnancy are increasing, but they will try to pass this legislation regardless.
This election cycle and presidency has shown us time and time again that Republican lawmakers continue to put their party before their country. The Republicans have control of all three branches of government yet they have not been able to pass much of their agenda. They need a win. So in order to get that win they are willing to strip coverage away from the women and other marginalized groups.
We need to continue to call out these senators for putting their party’s agenda before the lives of hundreds of millions of American women.
