News release
Women and Young Children Hold Press Conference With Senator Patty Murray, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand To Speak Out About How Graham-Cassidy would Devastate Women and Families
September 25, 2017
Lisa Lederer, 202-371-1996
Hold “Children’s Markup” of Bill to Underscore Sham Hearing on Graham-Cassidy; Press Conference, Monday at 12 PM (Noon) in SVC 201
WASHINGTON D.C. - As the Senate Finance committee prepares to hear testimony on the unpopular and widely-criticized Graham-Cassidy proposal, Senator Patty Murray, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, moms, women and their families speak out about how Graham-Cassidy would devastate health care access for moms and families. An all male group of politicians is pushing Graham-Cassidy without hearing from the women and families who would be impacted the most. This is not how legislation should be drafted, especially legislation that is life or death for women and their families.
Moms, women and their young children have a message for the Senators who would take away maternity care for 13 million women, gut protections for people with pre-existing conditions (costing pregnant women about $17,320 more), leave at least 32 million people without health insurance, and prevent millions of people from getting basic care at Planned Parenthood health centers: ‘don’t take away our health care’.
Speakers will discuss why bipartisanship is the way forward. Congress should listen to the American people and focus on bipartisan fixes to strengthen health care for patients and families.
WHAT: Senator Patty Murray, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Women and their Young Children Speak Out About How Graham-Cassidy would Devastate Moms and Families
The young children will also hold a “children’s markup” of the bill -- to underscore the lack of process around a bill that could leave millions without the health care they need, and to demonstrate that even children as young as two are giving the health care proposal more serious consideration than Senate Republican Leadership.
WHERE: SVC 201
WHEN: Monday, September 25, 2017 at NOON
WHO: Women and their young children are available for interview:
- At age 17, Courtney Everette was diagnosed with endometriosis, a disorder of the reproductive system that causes pain and carries a risk of infertility. She was horrified at the idea that she might not be able to have children. Thankfully, hormonal birth control is effective treatment for endometriosis. While Courtney was in graduate school and uninsured, she was unable to pay for the birth control that kept her pain at bay and preserved her fertility. So she went to Planned Parenthood. She credits Planned Parenthood with giving her the ability to have her two children.
- Jamie Davis Smith lives in Washington, DC and the mother of four young children, including 11-year-old Claire. Claire was born with a serious genetic disorder. Her heart is in the wrong place and part of her brain is missing. She is unable to speak, walk steadily, use the bathroom alone or feed herself. She requires close supervision and tremendous support from family and health care workers to get through each day.
- BC Brown is a cervical cancer survivor. She visited a Planned Parenthood to get birth control when she was 18 and uninsured. During her exam, the clinician found rapidly advancing abnormal cells on her cervix. Several doctors refused to treat her because if her insurance status and income, until Planned Parenthood found her a doctor that was able to work with her income. By the time she had surgery, the cells on her cervix had become cancerous. For the next five years as she recovered, Planned Parenthood provided her counseling, comfort, and essential care.
- Peggy Roache is from Ellicott City, MD where she lives with her husband and 21 year old daughter, who they adopted from Russia when she was 11 years old. They have benefited from the Affordable Care Act immensely, buying quality, affordable coverage through their state's marketplace. Prior to the ACA, they paid premiums that were 2 to 3 times more expensive, and covered very little medical care. They discovered their daughter had epilepsy about a year after they brought her home and are incredibly grateful to know that, thanks to the ACA, she cannot be denied coverage because of her pre-existing condition.
Background: The Graham-Cassidy bill is dangerous for moms and families.
Say goodbye to your maternity coverage:
- Under this bill, women could lose critical nationwide coverage protections for maternity and newborn care coverage. Whether a woman has coverage for this service will depend where she lives. And regardless, the cost of insurance will increase.
- Maternity coverage could be gone for millions. States can immediately seek to waive nationwide protections that require private insurance plans to cover maternity and newborn care. Before the Affordable Care Act, millions of women didn’t have insurance coverage for maternity care or other basic care. This bill will take us back to that time.
- This bill again puts the maternity coverage of approximately 13 million women at risk. Without insurance, a vaginal birth can cost $30,000 and a C-section can cost $50,000 in out-of-pocket expenses.
- Women who receive no prenatal care are three to four times more likely to die of pregnancy-related complications than women who do, and women with high-risk pregnancies are five times more likely to die if they do not receive prenatal care. Health insurance coverage helps women access needed care earlier in pregnancy and avoid these risks, but under Graham-Cassidy, many may go without seeing a doctor because they can’t afford it.
- Because the bill also eliminates financial assistance to purchase private insurance plans, many women will be unable to afford insurance coverage at all and will lose out on being able to access all the of the preventive benefits insurance plans currently provide women for free like breast pumps, lactation consultations, critical prenatal screenings, and birth control.
Kids will suffer too:
- Similar to the elimination of maternity and newborn coverage, the Graham-Cassidy bill allows states to waive pediatric care. This could cut off millions of kids from doctor’s visits, eyeglasses, dentistry, and other care that is necessary to make sure your family is healthy.
- As Fernando Stein, MD, FAAP, President, American Academy of Pediatrics said in a statement: "As a pediatrician, I am fearful for my patients and the uncertain future they would face under Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Bill Cassidy's (R-La.) health care proposal…”
Women with pre-existing conditions, which includes pregnancy, will be charged more:
- Insurers get to unilaterally decide what is considered a pre-existing condition and thus, who they can charge more for coverage. Before the ACA, people who had a baby, whether vaginally or by C-section, could be deemed to have a pre-existing condition. Sixty-five million women were considered to have a pre-existing condition prior to the ACA.
- Insurers would charge pregnant women about $17,320 more, according to estimates from the Center for American Progress. Four out of five women will give birth in her lifetime.
- For many, the Graham-Cassidy proposal could mean that your health insurance isn’t just more expensive, it’s completely out of reach. Insurance companies could charge patients $28,660 more for having breast cancer, and $142,650 more for cancer that has metastasized.
- Black and Latina women face higher rates of many chronic illnesses, meaning these exorbitant costs will hurt the health and financial security of women of color the most. For instance, Black women are the group of people most likely to die from breast cancer. The ability to charge people more based on pre-existing conditions would permit insurers to charge a breast cancer survivor $28,660 more annually for insurance coverage. Without healthcare coverage, racial disparities in breast cancer rates could persist or even widen.
- As Haywood L. Brown, M.D., president of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), said in a statement: “This bill is an assault on women’s health… Prior to the ACA, women were routinely charged more than men for the same coverage, a practice that cost women approximately $1 billion annually. Graham-Cassidy would allow states to return to this practice. It also allows states to define a prior C-section, depression, breast cancer, and experiencing domestic violence as pre-existing conditions, and reason to deny coverage. Being a woman is not a pre-existing condition.”
Millions of women, including new and expecting moms, will lose access to health insurance altogether because of deep cuts to Medicaid. And new moms who keep their coverage would be forced to choose between being with their newborn or keeping their insurance:
- Women are the majority of Medicaid enrollees; in fact, two-thirds of adults with Medicaid coverage are women.
- The largest insurance program for women in the nation, Medicaid covers nearly half of all births in the United States, and one in five women of reproductive age relies on Medicaid.
- Due to discriminatory systemic barriers, women of color disproportionately comprise the Medicaid population, with 30 percent of Black women and 24 percent of Hispanic women enrolled in Medicaid, compared to 14 percent of white women.
- Children make up over half of the Medicaid and CHIP enrollees so they would be among the groups most at risk of losing their coverage. All parents -- regardless of their income -- should be able to make sure that their kid has the health care they need to stay healthy.
- The cuts to federal funding for Medicaid will likely force states to cut eligibility for many pregnant women and replace robust coverage with bare bones provisions for maternity care, birth control, and other critical preventive and primary care services simply so they can stay within budget.
- For women who are actually able to keep their Medicaid coverage, starting just next month (October 2017), mothers of newborns may be forced to find a job within 60 days of giving birth -- even if the mom needs additional time or medical care to recover from childbirth or the baby needs additional support to care for medical needs.
Women will pay more for less:
- The bill will cut off financial assistance for middle-class families to purchase health care insurance.
- Eighty-five percent of people purchasing insurance coverage under the ACA received a subsidy to help them with costs. The bill would repeal these subsidies, cutting off millions of families from affordable health care coverage.
- The increased costs of care would disproportionately impact women of color given the inequities in earnings for women. This is particularly true for the 15 million households — disproportionately led by Black and Latina women — where women are the head of households. People of color — even those who are insured — already report less confidence in being able to afford care.
Women will have less access to birth control:
- Under the ACA, virtually all health insurance plans must cover the full range of FDA-approved birth control without copay.
- More than 57 million women have saved more than $1.4 billion in out of pocket costs per year on birth control pills alone since the birth control benefit went into effect.
- Because the bill makes it harder for people to access health care coverage, millions of women will no longer be able to access birth control without co-pay. It also means that women will no longer have access the birth control method of her choice since price could get in the way. For example, without insurance, an IUD could cost more than $1,100 out-of-pocket.
- It is critical that women be able to determine when to start a family and that couples be able to plan for the families they want. Price and politics shouldn’t get in the way of personal family decisions.
- And let’s not forget that a recent medical study found that waiting 18 months between pregnancies reduces the likelihood of premature birth and pregnancy complications. Access to birth control is critical to healthy birth spacing and the health of moms, moms-to-be, and babies.
Patients will be blocked from care at Planned Parenthood:
- Under this bill, low-income patients would be prohibited from coming to Planned Parenthood health centers for care — leaving many women with nowhere to go for basic care such as cancer screenings, birth control, STI treatment, and more. We’ve seen what happens at the state level when policies like this are put in place, and they’re devastating.For example, in Texas, maternal mortality rates have doubled roughly since the state cut Planned Parenthood from key public health programs.
- Many women already have limited options for care such as birth control, cancer screenings, and regular checkups. Preventing them from coming to Planned Parenthood would leave many with nowhere to go for basic reproductive health care.
- 2.4 million people who rely on Planned Parenthood health centers for essential health services.One in five women in America have relied on Planned Parenthood in her lifetime.
- More than half of Planned Parenthood’s patients rely on Medicaid for care, and 56 percent of Planned Parenthood’s health centers are in rural or otherwise medically underserved areas.
- The American Medical Association (AMA) said that parts of the bill that block access to care at Planned Parenthood health centers “violate longstanding AMA policy on patients’ freedom to choose their providers and physicians’ freedom to practice in the setting of their choice.”
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Planned Parenthood Action Fund is an independent, nonpartisan, not-for-profit membership organization formed as the advocacy and political arm of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The Action Fund engages in educational and electoral activity, including voter education, grassroots organizing, and legislative advocacy.