Who's Deciding the Future of Maternity Care? A Room Full of Men
By Maggie Mallon. Photos: Courtesy of Twitter.
One of the big accomplishments of the Affordable Care Act—also known as Obamacare—was requiring the costs of pregnancy, maternity, and newborn care (among other benefits) to be covered under all insurance plans. Prior to the ACA becoming law in 2010, women often paid more for insurance than men, few companies offered maternity packages, and insurers could flat out deny coverage to those who were or might become pregnant.
Sounds like a pretty broken system, no? But it appears there are a handful of lawmakers in Congress now who yearn for the glory days when women could be charged sky-high premiums over their role in, you know, perpetuating the human race. And shocker of shocks: They're all men.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump and VP Mike Pence met with a group of ultra-conservative congressmen, collectively known as the Freedom Caucus, to discuss the House GOP's health care bill, the American Health Care Act, and see if they can strike a deal with this opposition force. This group believes that House Speaker Paul Ryan's original plan does not go far enough, and demanded that insurance companies be rid of the requirement to cover maternity costs. And in hopes of getting the deal done, Trump and Pence seem to be on board.
The only females present in the room was from Kellyanne Conway and two unidentified women standing in the back.
House Minority Leader (slash-woman who actually knows a thing or two about maternity care) put it best when she told reporters on Thursday that getting rid of maternity benefits means, "Republicans are making being a woman a preexisting condition."
This story originally appeared on Glamour.
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