New Yorkers 1, Howard Kanovitz, 1965

Well, here we are (the fourth circle, greed?). By now everyone knows the House of Representatives passed their version of healthcare, the AHCA–Trumpcare. It was easy enough for them to do, because several of them didn’t bother to read it, they didn’t wait for details and projections from the Congressional Budget Office, and nor were the details made available to the public. What we do know is that this bill takes us backwards in human rights. In addition to other atrocities, it opens the door for individual states to allow insurers to charge more for people with pre-existing conditions. Of course this doesn’t mean every state will, but we know the insurance companies have a long history of putting profit over people, which makes them quite comfy-cozy with the current GOP.

As it stands, it cuts nearly a trillion dollars of Medicaid funding. This will harm millions. The opening of the door to increased costs for those with pre-existing conditions will harm millions more. One of the possibilities that has people like myself (yanno, those of us without dangly bits) in an uproar is what we’ve already seen in the not-too-distant past.  Pregnant? Might become pregnant? Well, sure you can buy health insurance, buuuut we’re going to jack up the rates to make you decide between health insurance and food. Had postpartum depression?  Sorry, we’re going to charge you more now.

And the cherry on top, sexual assault. Many, including myself, have been talking, tweeting, blogging about this. Sexual assault as a pre-existing condition, which could allow insurance companies to deny you or kicking you over to a high risk pool–as in, unaffordable.

Politifact rated this claim as mostly false.  They’re correct. I still call bullshit. It’s true, we don’t know exactly what’s in the bill. It’s true, the bill doesn’t define what is/isn’t a pre-existing condition, the insurance companies do.  However, again, as we know from the not-distant past, before the ACA (Obamacare), people in America who had been treated or even tested for sexually transmitted infections were later denied insurance, or kicked to the high-risk pools.  We know that domestic violence and sexual assault rates are high. We know these are already underreported. We know women are still not treated as equal and autonomous human beings. We know we have someone sitting in the White House who bragged about sexual assault, who rates women according to their mammary glands. We know it’s mostly men who are drafting these bills and making these decisions. That matters. That there isn’t a significant number of people of color, representing all of the many communities and populations that comprise America matters.

So yes, it’s technically correct to say the AHCA isn’t labeling sexual assault a pre-existing condition resulting in unaffordable premiums, but it’s paving the way for this to become the case. Let’s be real here for a second. We don’t want to be inflammatory, don’t want to induce panic when it isn’t necessary, and it isn’t ever productive. But to say it’s out and out untrue is a whitewash, a normalization of what is unnecessarily going to harm us all.

I know it’s a long way to go before this bill becomes law. It goes to the Senate now, and supposedly the Senate plans to write their own version. That doesn’t set me at ease. I’ve heard many say the Senate won’t allow the cuts to Medicaid, particularly Medicaid expansion under the ACA, that they won’t allow the rollback on protections for pre-existing conditions. I hope that’s true, but I remember hearing our current president would never win, he wouldn’t get the backing of the more moderate, traditional members of the GOP, that religious groups wouldn’t support him. I also remember a time when politicians, even Republican ones, talked about protecting the most vulnerable among us, not speaking publicly about the disabled and ill as if they are gum to be scraped off the bottom of their shoes. Hell, I even remember a time when elected members of Congress wouldn’t brazenly admit to not reading a bill they were voting on.

So if my words are inflammatory forgive me, because I’m pretty sure a match has been struck shockingly close to my ovaries.