GOP Greatest Single Threat to Mothers on Mother’s Day

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

I know it is sort of gauche to politicize Mother’s Day. But then politicians politicize family values all the time. And besides, the Republican Party is being mean to moms, and today is when they should be called out for it.

The way this gentleman called out Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-NJ) on the danger that Trumpcare poses to his wife, who has a pre-existing condition (she fought off cancer once) and his children, who also have pre-existing conditions. He pointed out that Trumpcare lets Health Insurance companies cycle people with pre-existing conditions into expensive high risk pools, meaning that lots of people will die because they can’t afford coverage. He had the right congressman to complain to– letting insurers not cover pre-existing conditions was specifically MacArthur’s idea.

To GOP Rep Tom MacArthur – “You have been the single greatest threat to my family.”

Trumpcare doesn’t specify that rape be treated as a pre-existing condition. It just allows insurers to seek a waiver (from Tom Price who will give it) allowing them to charge a lot more for such conditions. Insurers have been known to want to avoid covering medicine for STDs incurred or possibly incurred as a result of rape. You never like to think about a mom being raped, but it happens. And then to have certain complications of that dreadful, horrid experience not be covered by her insurance?

Under Trumpcare, insurers would not have to cover maternity care!

Just that point alone would justify the title of this column. That is mean to mothers. Big time.

Rolling Stone says Trumpcare would permit states to extend Medicaid to fewer pregnant women and children.

Mean to mothers.

A lot of women get affordable health care via Planned Parenthood (it does lots of things besides family planning). Trumpcare forbids Medicaid money from going to PP for one year.

Insurance companies in the US before Obamacare considered the male body the default. In essence, being a woman was treated as a pre-existing condition, as Janel George pointed out to VICE. Obamacare put an end to that practice. The fat, balding, greying plutocratic men of the GOP are bringing it back.

Happy Mother’s Day, everyone. Except to GOP congressmen, who obviously don’t know what the phrase means.