The latest tax bill approved by the Republican-controlled government makes a bad situation even worse for women and children.
The Centers for Disease Control (2016) indicates pregnancy is a medical condition that can cause serious health problems such as pre-eclampsia, diabetes, and depression in women.
ProPublica reports that the United States has the “worst rate of maternal death in the developed world.”
With screening, breast cancer deaths are among the most preventable. Yet a report in a cancer journal concluded that because uninsured and women with Medicaid have greater odds for a later-stage diagnosis, “insurance status at diagnosis and sociodemographic factors are associated with breast cancer mortality.”
It is hard to imagine how pregnancy prevention and cancer screenings could be treated as unnecessary luxuries, but it could happen because of the GOP government’s actions this year.
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price signed CMS-9940-IFC – Religious Exemptions and Accommodations for Coverage of Certain Preventive Services under the Affordable Care Act, declaring organizations with moral objections to birth control do not have to include it in their insurance plans.
President Donald Trump harmed women and the working poor this year when he signed executive orders expanding association health plans without requiring them to cover essential health benefits, and cutting off the low-income subsidies to marketplace providers.
And now, under Trump’s tax “reform,” Congress seeks to eliminate the personal mandate to purchase insurance on Obamacare exchanges, weakening the ability to offer affordable coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2021, our poorest citizens will be paying more taxes under the plan than they are now.
Although poor women will now have a tougher time accessing birth control, Congress has also allowed the sunset of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which covers poor children.
Measures that potentially harm half our population as well as poor children are unacceptable. Women’s March of Jacksonville maintains that the sunset of CHIP, efforts to slash Medicaid, executive orders not to pay ACA subsidies and the elimination of the ACA personal mandate are an attack on the health and wellbeing of all women and children.
Urge your elected officials to oppose the alleged Trump tax “reforms” and work on health care legislation that moves us closer to the goal of keeping essential healthcare affordable for all.
Amy Cherie Copeland,
Captain, Healthcare and Reproductive Rights Action Committee,
Women’s March Florida