“This is a coordinated attack on women’s access to health care,” said Rachel Easter, counsel on the reproductive rights team at the National Women’s Law Center. Lower-income women would especially bear the brunt of the GOP’s bill, which also seeks to defund Planned Parenthood, where the majority of patients rely on public assistance for health care, writes HuffPost’s Laura Bassett. Rolling back the Obamacare requirement that health insurers cover everyone, including people with so-called “pre-existing conditions,” is particularly punishing. Sometimes they just charged women more for health insurance or sold plans that didn’t include maternity care. It was common, for example, for a female nonsmoker to be charged more for health insurance than a man who smoked, according to a report from the National Women’s Law Center.

Source: Huffington Post May 04, 2017 18:06 UTC