Fighting For Healthcare!

On Saturday, I had the privilege of representing NOW at the Healthcare Rally in uptown Charlotte. This is an excerpt of that speech.

"Senate Republican leaders unveiled their health-care bill Thursday morning, after weeks of crafting it behind closed doors. The bill, like the House’s, makes steep spending cuts to Medicaid and insurance subsidies, and uses the savings to fund substantial tax cuts for the health-care industry and wealthier Americans. The subsidy cuts fall disproportionately on lower-income and older Americans. Those who live in rural areas, where health-care costs tend to be higher, also stand to pay higher premiums according to analyses by the Kaiser Family Foundation.”  Women and especially women who are not wealthy will be the hardest hit. That should not be surprising since the bill was crafted behind closed doors by 13 wealthy white men. 

The Senate’s new healthcare bill makes it more expensive to be a woman.  If enacted, this legislation will turn back the clock on women’s health care. The bill introduced Thursday defunds many women’s vital health care needs and increases the cost astronomically on others. It defunds Planned Parenthood which provides family planning, birth control and health care for millions of low income women. That means fewer women will have any access to any kind of birth control.   

The bill allows states to redefine what counts as an Essential Health Benefit for Medicaid plans.  Currently, all plans must cover 10 categories of care. These include many women-focused services like maternity care, newborn care, contraception, mammograms, cervical cancer screenings, well woman visits, domestic violence screening and counseling, prescription drug coverage and mental health. The bill allows states to require that new mothers, starting October 2017, return to work within 60 days after giving birth or lose their coverage. This will affect young mothers who need to be home with their newborn and Medicaid will certainly give them no help with childcare to enable them to return to work. Medicaid cuts will affect women in other ways. Seventy five million Americans depend on Medicaid and 70% of these are adult women. 70% of people in nursing homes are women and 80% of these women in nursing homes are on Medicaid.

If that’s not enough, it’s possible that ALL women in the individual market as well as women who have employee provided insurance could also lose those protections, not just women on Medicaid. Again, the bill allows states broad waiver authority in what services are covered by insurance plans and again allows them to redefine the Essential Health Benefits for women. If states are able to redefine these, it is most likely maternity and newborn coverage that’s on the line. The Congressional Budget Office says women could end up paying as much as $1,000 a month for an additional rider that covers maternity care and pregnancy on top of their premiums and other health care costs. It prohibits tax subsidies from paying for any individual market plan that covers abortion. In other words, it is going to make it much harder to avoid a pregnancy and it’s going to make it harder to take care of that baby when the baby arrives. The United States already has the highest maternal mortality rate and the highest infant mortality rate of any industrialized nation in the world and reducing coverage will only make the problem worse.

In addition, although the plan bans insurance companies from refusing care based on pre-existing conditions, the rates for people with pre-existing conditions may be astronomically unaffordable and there can be life time caps of what the insurance company will pay.  Less expensive bare bones plans may not cover all of the medical services the person needs requiring more out of pocket expenses.

Now is the time to get behind a single payer Medicare for All healthcare plan. Healthcare is not a privilege only for the wealthy and women deserve the full range of healthcare services that women need.  Denying people affordable health care is immoral. A single payer plan is the morally right thing to do and the fiscally responsible thing to do.  We must defeat the Republican healthcare plans now and support Medicare for ALL.

(Research for this article is based on readings from Avalere Health, Kaiser Family Foundation, National Information Center on Health Services, Research and Technology NICHSR and Physicians for a National Health Program PNHP)

Led By Example

                                                         

      

    

     I will be speaking at Wedgewood Church in Charlotte this Sunday for Father's Day and would love to invite you to join us in this very special place. The service begins at 11:00 and my topic will be "Led By Example." My message will be about the tremendous influence my father, a Baptist minister, had on me. It will focus on how he led me to be an activist for human rights and justice for all people.  And above all, it was not from his words in the pulpit, it was from his actions. Hope you can join us if you are in the Charlotte area. 

     "Welcome to you if you are female or male or some of each, gay or straight or some of each, black or brown or white or a mix of each, old or young or middle-aged, rich or broke or barely surviving or middle class, doubting or believing or some of each or one or the other depending on what is going on in your life or the world. Wedgewood Church is a community of curious and creative spiritual seekers, striving to learn and embody the Way of Jesus and other religious leaders, striving to love and do justice for all people. Welcome!" ( Wedgewood's Extravagant Welcome)

The Equality March for Unity and Pride

   The Equality March for Justice and Pride was held in Charlotte, NC on June 12, 2017 along with 100 other cities worldwide. I was honored to be able to speak at the event.   Hundreds of marchers walked from First Ward Park to Marshall Park in the hot summer sun. When the rally began at Marshall Park, the crowd was enthusiastic with determination not to give up the fight for LGBTQ equality!  Below is an excerpt from my speech.

" Good afternoon Charlotte! It’s hot out here…but you know, no matter how hot it gets in Charlotte or Raleigh or Washington, DC WE WILL BE OUT HERE FIGHTING FOR LGBT EQUALITY!!  We can never get discouraged! We can never get too tired!  We can never give up! No matter how long it takes, WE WILL BE HERE FIGHTING.

The National Organization for Women has been fighting discrimination since its inception in 1966.   We fight for equal opportunities for ALL people in ALL areas including employment, education, health care, the military just to name a few.  We must continue that fight. We must get out and vote and elect people who will support equality for ALL people. People who believe from the bottom of their hearts that the liberty and justice we talk about in the pledge of allegiance means liberty and justice for EVERYONE regardless of their race or their sexual orientation or their gender identity. Elect people who don’t just talk the talk but walk the walk.  GET OUT AND VOTE!!

And we must educate our children. We must educate our children to respect all people. We must combat this epidemic of homophobia that is being passed down from generation to generation, prevalent in the South!  And we must educate the children who are being taught to hate in their homes.  We must reach out and show them that we are people who believe in love thy neighbor.  NOW is going after the media to portray women in more positive images and we must do the same for our LGBTQ community.  We must not feed that homophobia or the degradation of women with negative portrayals in the media.  Let media know it will not be tolerated and that we will not watch that  type of programing.  

Above all, equality in pay, job opportunities, political structure, social security and education will remain a dream without a guarantee of equality in the Constitution.  The progress we have made towards women’s equality can be lost at any time because those advances depend on legislation that can be weakened or repealed by whatever political group holds the power. Today that is happening under the current administration.  They are trying to take us backwards in our fight for equality. But we will not be deterred or stopped! Although we have not yet succeeded in ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment, we have not given up the fight. Winning a constitutional guarantee of equality for women STILL remains one of NOWs top priorities. We are only 2 states away from symbolically ratifying the ERA. The Equal Rights Amendment has been introduced in both houses of the NC General Assembly. LET’S GET THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT PASSED NOW. LET’S GET BEHIND THIS AND MAKE NORTH CAROLINA ONE OF THOSE TWO STATES!!  And just like we have not given up on a constitutional guarantee for women through all these years, we must also work to pass a constitutional amendment that would ban sex based discrimination forever!  No matter how long it takes we will keep fighting and we will prevail!!  The National Organization for Women stands with you! WE WILL NEVER EVER GIVE UP THE FIGHT!! Thank you!"

 

The Wage Gap

"It's Not A Myth, It's Math!"

Presentation to Charlotte NOW on the Wage Gap

The wage gap is one of the most pressing issues for women today. The wage gap affects women from all backgrounds, but its effects vary among different demographics. Women are paid less than men within each racial and ethnic group, and the pay gap between men and women within groups is smaller among African Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, and Native Hawaiians as compared with that of whites and Asian Americans.  In North Carolina the median pay for a woman with a year round full time job is $35,481 while for a man with a year round full time job the median pay is $41,857. Women make 85 cents for every dollar a man makes but as you see from the slide above, the wage gap is even wider for women of color. In all 13 North Carolina Congressional Districts, women earn less than men. When we analyze the data even further, the statistics become even more staggering. If you are a member of a group who would like a presentation of the current data related to the Wage Gap, please contact me.  I will be happy to visit your group.