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silver iphone 6 on brown wooden table with news feed on screen
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Culture > News

There Are a Total of Zero Women Working on the Senate’s Healthcare Bill That Could Replace Obamacare

Caroline Pirozzolo

ICYMI, the House of Representatives voted on and passed a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) on Wednesday. Now, the Senate plans to write its own version of the bill rather than voting on the House’s – and here’s the real kicker: there are exactly zero women working on the Senate’s plan.

CNN reports that the Senate announced a group of 13 Republican members who will be in charge of creating the Senate’s version of bill, none of which are female. Members of the group include Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Health and Education Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, among others.

In defense of the group, a GOP aide told CNN, “We have no interest in playing the games of identity politics, that’s not what this is about; it’s about getting a job done,” he said. “To reduce this to gender, race or geography misses the more important point of the diverse segments of the conference the group represents on policy – from members who support Medicaid expansion, to those opposed to it, to those who have called for long term full repeal.”

That’s great and all, but what about all the women who could possibly lose their healthcare coverage due to “pre-existing conditions” like having a c-section or post-partum depression? Where will the input on access to birth control come from? Oh yeah, men – who don’t have to personally deal with these issues.

While the group would hopefully allow a woman to possibly join somewhere down the road, it still doesn’t excuse the fact that at least one female voice wasn’t included from the very beginning.

As Refinery29 points out, many of the voices that have been working to pass the House’s bill were already overwhelmingly white and male – and it’s unfortunately looking like we’ll be holding out little to no hope that the Senate’s version will be any different.

 

Caroline is the Evening/Weekend Editor and Style Editor at Her Campus, a senior public relations major at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a leather jacket enthusiast.  You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram @c_pirozzolo.