this article really doesn’t say much about most of the issues we are concerned with here on GA, but this one paragraph is revealing. what i like about alternet is that it at least bothers to insert some feminist analysis into the news.
While the bill doesn’t come close to fulfilling the promise of the sort of universal, single-payer coverage favored by progressives, it will, according to the Congressional Budget Office, create access to health insurance to 32 million currently uninsured Americans. But the victory came at the expense of a further erosion of women’s reproductive rights, even as it proscribed discrimination against women in premium costs and gender-specific pre-existing conditions.
At first I thought well ok, so they are discriminating based on women’s health, what else is new. Some insurance agencies already don’t provide money for abortions, and currently insurance people often charge 150% more for a 22 year old female than a 22 year old male with the same level of health, so I figured they’d at least end that discrimination practice which would be cool. But THEN in one of these spam-y emails from NARAL I saw this:
“As you may recall, the Nelson language requires Americans in the new system to write two separate checks if the health plan they choose includes abortion coverage. This unacceptable bureaucratic stigmatization could cause insurance carriers to stop covering abortion care. This would represent a major setback, given that more than 85 percent of private plans cover this care for women today.”
WHAT?! So now it’s possible private plans won’t even cover it? FTW.
Dangerous slopes we are on. And all of this is to appease democrats, so much for a two party system.
werd m.