GOP’S NO HEALTHCARE CUT LEFT BEHIND BILL IS PARTICULARLY CRUEL TO WOMEN

If Republicans have their way, women with reproductive health issues will soon be sent to dentists, food banks or nursing homes for help. That’s why the horrifically misnamed Better Care Reconciliation Act may one day be more accurately known as the Population Growth Act of 2017. This is what happens when 13 male senators draft a health care bill in secret.

Apparently, it was not enough for the GOP to simply take insurance away from 22 million people and jack up premiums for those least able to pay. It’s not every day a political party gets to make a real difference in social policy. So the Senate bill, quietly and secretly crafted by that body’s majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and a dozen of his closest bros, went all out and cut off federal funding for Planned Parenthood, the nonprofit organization that provides vital health care services for millions of low income patients, mostly – but not exclusively – women.

Despite its role as a lightning rod for the anti-abortion crowd, Planned Parenthood outlets offer the gamut of health services, including birth control, cancer screenings and STD testing and treatment. Abortion accounts for only 3% of its services and is not even available at many clinics. Yet, as if this consensus-free healthcare debate was not divisive enough, conservatives tossed in their long dreamed of plot to defund Planned Parenthood.

The Senate legislation cuts off all federal funding for Planned Parenthood for only one year. Why just a year? A compromise with those who support the program? Alas, the maneuver is far more conniving and diabolical. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office costs out every change in the healthcare bill, and that math plays a huge role in rounding up votes, both for and against. According to the CBO, the cost of not funding Planned Parenthood carries a ten-year price tag of $130 million. That’s how much budget crunchers say it will cost Medicaid for the obstetrical care of women unable to get contraceptive assistance through Planned Parenthood. So the Gang of 13 Senate guys came up a smoke-and-mirrors workaround: cut the funding for just one year, win a better overall CBO score and then come back, once the limelight of healthcare battles has faded, and make the cutoff permanent.

The bill’s Republican sponsors insist that there are many other federally qualified health providers offering family planning services and that the legislation would transfer funding from Planned Parenthood to those other facilities. The CBO, however, noted that one in five counties served by Planned Parenthood have no federally qualified clinics offering contraceptive services. The New York Times took a look at those alleged Planned Parenthood alternatives cited by the Republicans. The list included, inexplicably, hundreds of ophthalmologists, nursing homes, dentists, cosmetic surgeons, audiologists, addiction treatment centers and food
banks. Pity the poor woman who goes looking for contraceptive services at a dentist office or a food bank, and walks away with a cheap toothbrush and a box of Cheerios.

Anyone suggesting that the CBO’s projected population expansion is crude guesswork should check out a paper published by the New England Journal of Medicine. That research focused on Texas where the state cut off Planned Parenthood funding in 2013. Medicaid pregnancies increased by 27% in the first 18 months. Alina Salganicoff is the Kaiser Family Foundation’s director of women’s health. She told CBS news recently that the burden of this funding cutoff “disproportionately impacts the young and low income, or people who want to get confidential care.” “For a lot of women,” she said, “Planned Parenthood is their only source of care.”

Sadly, complete and utter disregard for women’s health, has been at the heart of the political battle over abortion since Roe v Wade was decided in 1973. Poor women have been denied Medicaid assistance for abortions since the passage of the Hyde Amendment in 1976. Yet, this legalized economic discrimination, renewed by Congress every year since 1976, has never been enough for the anti-abortion forces. They know that Planned Parenthood performs 35% of the abortions that occur in this country, even though the procedure represents only a small part of its medical practice. They want them shut down completely, even if doing so will prevent Planned Parenthood’s low income patients from getting family planning assistance or being screened and treated for diseases. When it comes to their never-ending war on abortion, women without money are always fair game for collateral damage.

However, their leverage this time around, while not great, is better than it was during the Hyde Amendment days of 1976. The Senate had no female members then. There was no need for a select male cabal to secretly legislate away women’s rights; the entire Senate was a male cabal. Today there are 22 women in the U.S. Senate, and two of them – Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – both Republicans, are opposed to the Planned Parenthood defunding. Majority Leader McConnell can afford to lose only two Republican votes, and he has a growing list of senators who are shaky over various other aspects of the legislation.

It takes a lot of chutzpa and cynicism to call this bill the “Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017”. There is absolutely no “better care” in this act for anybody. And the only thing being reconciled is a tax cut for the rich, on the backs of less fortunate Americans who will lose access to critical health services. If the Republican leadership wants genuine reconciliation, it will deep-six this monstrosity and work with Democrats to pass meaningful legislation that makes “better care” a reality for everyone.