Neff: Prognosis not good for gay health reforms
I’m in sunny Florida, but I’m coughing and sneezing and I have the watery, bleary, weary eyes of so many other sufferers in the cold-and-flu season.
My health is on my mind.But your health is on my mind too.
And our healthcare and U.S. healthcare reform has been on my mind for the better part of a year.
I went into the winter holidays knowing that the public option component of healthcare reform had coded, and it was not on an order to resuscitate.
Before I checked out for some Christmas merrymaking, I listened to the proponents of the U.S. Senate and I told myself to be thankful that the proposed legislation — despite major compromises on public option and abortion — would do some good, perhaps great good.
I also told myself to keep in mind that after New Year’s lawmakers would be moving into the conference process, in which they would bargain and negotiate and re-craft one piece of legislation from the best components of the bills from both chambers.
The House bill, remember, contains a number of positive amendments for the LGBT community:
• The bill would designate LGBT people as a health disparities population, opening up health data collection and grant programs focused on health disparities related to sexual orientation and gender identity. With collection of data and funding of research, the specific health issues facing LGBT people can be better addressed.
• The bill would end the unfair taxation of employer-provided domestic partner health benefits so that more same-sex couples could afford employer-provided coverage for their families.
• The bill would incorporate the Early Treatment for HIV Act, which allows states to cover early HIV treatment under their Medicaid programs, instead of withholding treatment for Medicaid recipients until they develop full-blown AIDS.
• The bill would prohibit consideration of personal characteristics unrelated to the provision of healthcare.
The Human Rights Campaign called the House’s inclusion of these provisions “a tremendous advance for the health needs of LGBT people.”
But now, it seems, the prognosis is not good for those provisions.
The Hill newspaper reported last week that President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Harry Reid met in early January to discuss a course of action. The leadership apparently agreed to proceed without a bicameral conference and instead to negotiate tweaks to the Senate bill. A vote may come as early as this month.
The Senate bill lacks the public option, which I think is akin to bottling a multi-vitamin that lacks vitamin c.
And the Senate bill lacks the pro-LGBT provisions.
Do you feel like I do? That we are among the first to lose when the bargaining begins? That we are the first constituency the Democrats ask to make concessions? Can you hear an aide counseling, “We lifted the HIV travel ban, that should count for something”?
U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., went on the record last week saying that he was optimistic some of the LGBT provisions could be preserved in a final bill.
We can count on Frank and openly gay Reps. Tammy Baldwin and Jared Polis to champion our cause in Congress.
But we’ve got to engage too, in what should be our first federal feud of 2010. After the long months of debate and discussion, let’s not let a bad deal be brokered behind closed doors, even if it’s a deal among our friends. We must fight for Congress to deliver Obama a better bill than the flawed measure the Senate passed on Christmas Eve, even if that’s the legislation that the president wants.
Thanks Lisa for pointing out this important issue, again. It is easy to overlook given we are being thrown under the DADT and DOMA bus constantly.
Just one clarification: I really don’t consider eliminating the tax on my husband’s portion of my healthcare an issue of affordability. I am extremely grateful for the coverage my company voluntarily provided long before we got marriage equality here in Mass.
I signed up right away, and i did the math. We were buying him an expensive plan, around $3,600/year. Adding him to my plan increased my cost only about $1,300…add the taxes to that and it is still a bargain. So, I was better able to afford his care because my company was subsidizing it.
This is an issue of fairness as you say, and in my opinion, constitutionality. As the prop 8 trial hopefully will show, you cannot give a tax break to one group of married people and not another. The feds do not define marriage so this is unconstitutional (as is DOMA).
Im not married yet (in anticipation that I am in the eyes of the Feds in my lifetime @24), so I can’t comment on extra costs to cover my husband…but if it would cost me more then any single one of my coworkers, then I would be wicked pissed! I don’t exactly know how I would fare here in CT..?? But I do know that I am SUPER pissed that I wouldn’t be able to file joint Fed taxes with my husband…because they refuse to recognize us as spouses. Pecker heads.
Unfortunately, I don’t feel Frank is as fierce an LGBT advocate as he might claim he is. I don’t know…I just have this feeling that he’s not the person we want him to be. He seems too pessimistic about too many LGBT issues for me to really trust him. Maybe he’s better then one less LGBT advocate..?? But then what are we fighting for if we don’t think we can get anything done?
The Feds do define marriage, and thats exactly what makes separate healthcare provisions and DOMA unconstitutional!
Almost everything comes down to that.
The issue here on the national level is that DP/CU are not always recognized by the insurer your company carries. For instance my partner and I (together 15 years! thank you very much) had coverage with his company provider. Then they changed to another carrier who refused to recognize us, they dropped me and our son, since I am the legal parent. So I had to get coverage from my job, they also didn’t recognize DP, for the both of us and he carried insurance on himself. We had to have two different policies. Had we been m/f we could have signed a common law marriage declaration and been covered in a heartbeat. When I was let go from work I lost coverage for myself and our son and his company will still not cover us. Looking for work and uninsured in this market scary that me tell you. Recognizing DP/CU are elective by insurers. That needs to stop and this agreement makes it almost sure to continue.
Until we are viewed equally and on paper by the federal government we are still being subjected to stigmatization that is supported by those we send money and vote into office. This is just the latest in a series of back stab’s by our “fierce” advocate. It makes me sick to think of the money I sent them and the work I did to help him get elected. And it should make you all sick too. We should have stayed with Clinton!
Where have the major LGBT orgnizations been? The Gay & Lesbian Medical Association? Crickets.
Mark Daniel Snyder,
Right from the website of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association:
“Recent Accomplishments Include:
Prominent involvement on the President’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. GLMA’s executive director and three GLMA members — including the Council Chair — serve on this important committee.
Numerous meetings with senior government officials including the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Director of the CDC, and the National AIDS Policy Director to discuss LGBT and HIV health issues.
Launching Journal of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association>, the world’s first peer-reviewed, multi-disciplinary journal dedicated to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered health.
Leading the successful campaign to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation within the American Medical Association (AMA) and playing a pivotal role in the publication of the AMA’s gay-sensitive report, Health Care Needs of Gay Men and Lesbians in the U.S.
Successfully lobbying the National Institutes of Health to gather information on lesbians as part of the Women’s Health Initiative, which led to the historic Institute of Medicine committee on Lesbian Health Research Priorities and Methodology.
Leading the effort to revise the restrictive CDC guidelines on HIV-positive health care workers.
Promoting quality research through the Lesbian Health Fund. Results have been presented at medical conferences and have been published in peer-reviewed journals.
Publishing Anti-Gay Discrimination in Medicine: Results of a National Survey of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Physicians.
Organizing an historic summit on HIV prevention for gay men, bisexuals and lesbians.”
These this organization counts as among its more recent accomplishments.
Thanks for posting this!
Even thought I’m not in a Domestic Partnership (cant marry in WA state) These issues are ones that I care about very much as I do hope to see in my life time (@22 now) same sex marriage, and look forward to the day I find that special some one. How ever it is increasingly discouraging that gay issues are the first to be thrown under the bus to gain GOP support (even thought they still vote straight down the aisle agents literally every thing)