There is a concerted effort by the far right and Republicans to deny us healthcare. Here in Connecticut there was a bill that was introduced in 2015 by Rep. Rob Sampson (R 80th) to strip us health insurance, HB 5193, An Act Concerning Health Insurance Coverage for Gender Reassignment Surgery.
The bill read,
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Assembly convened:
That title 38a of the general statutes be amended to specify that health insurance policies delivered, issued for delivery, renewed, amended or continued in this state shall not be required to provide coverage for gender reassignment surgery or related surgical expenses.
Statement of Purpose:
To specify that health insurance policies delivered, issued for delivery, renewed, amended or continued in this state shall not be required to provide coverage for gender reassignment surgery or related surgical expenses.
With the Democratic controlled legislature the bill was DOA but they still submitted it to make a point, the representative who submitted the bill bill said in a CT Post article,
State Rep. Robert Sampson, R-Wolcott and sponsor of the bill, said his intention is to correct a "mandate" by the State Insurance Department directing insurance companies to cover the procedure.
Sampson said such decisions should be vetted by the Legislature.
I wouldn’t have a problem of being vetted by the legislature if it was true… in public hearing insurance was brought up, on the floor of the House and Senate it was discussed. The legislators knew what they were voting on.
So that brings me to what I wanted to discuss today, the assault on our healthcare. I came across a paper on the attempt to swash our healthcare.
Under Attack: Transgender Health In 2020
Journal of Health Care Law and Policy
Volume 24Issue 1
By Paula M. Neira and An Na Lee
INTRODUCTIONAnxiety. Fear. Frustration. These words described 2020 for most people. However, for transgender and gender-diverse people (“TGD”), who have endured health disparities and inequity prior to the onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic, these feelings were amplified. The 21st century’s second decade promised hopeful progress in advancing TGD people’s rights and improvements in their healthcare. Rather than the historically negative tropes portraying TGD people as deviants or as a joke’s punchline, TGD people were portrayed positively with their issues discussed seriously in mainstream media. With passage of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) in 2010, an increased number of individuals obtained access to health insurance coverage. Transgender military personnel gained the ability to serve authentically and access medically necessary care when the ban on their service ended in 2016. With the election of Donald Trump, those gains were threatened by concerted actions driven by partisan politics that ignored medical science and best practices.
So who is behind this attack on our healthcare? Why now?
II. RELIGIOSITY & POLITICS: AN UNHOLY ALLIANCE
The alliance between faith-based organizations and the Republican Party (“GOP”) long predated the Trump administration. The GOP’s demonizing of sexual and gender minority communities to further partisan politics is not new. Yet, the toxic combination of religiosity and partisan politics embraced by the Trump administration, emboldened those who have harbored long-standing anti-TGD animus to seek actions designed to roll back or deny civil rights and services, including access to healthcare, to the TGD community. In 2018, the Kansas GOP state committee, voted to “oppose all efforts to validate transgender identity.” In effect, the Kansas GOP sought to eliminate the existence of TGD people from society. In opposing the provision of medically necessary care to TGD people, the committee resolution affirmed that “God’s design for gender as determined by biological sex and not by self-perception.” The Family Research Council, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), and Liberty Counsel, all self-proclaimed to be faith-based organizations, have championed actions that have direct and indirect negative health implications for TGD Americans. These organizations are designated as anti-LGBTQ hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center for their continued defamation, intentional misinformation, and willful intellectual dishonesty about TGD people. While some of their efforts predate the 2016 elections, Trump’s victory was a catalyst for furthering their agenda.
You might recognize Alliance Defending Freedom they are the ones who brought the law suit here in Connecticut over trans athletes and they have also had their hand in many anti-trans bill.
An agenda designed to harm TGD individuals by removing civil protections, denying medical care, and fostering societal stigmatization and discrimination, was first laid out in 2016 with the launch of “Project Blitz” during a teleconference between, the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, the National Legal Foundation, and WallBuilders, all self-identified Christian organizations, and state legislators. Attacking TGD people is only part of a broader objective of imposing a sectarian-based government at all levels in the United States. Initially, these groups distributed a guide with twenty model bills to over 750 state legislators in 2018. In 2019, Project Blitz, since renamed “Freedom for All,” produced an expanded guide with twenty-one model bills along with strategic guidance and talking points. In 2020, Freedom for All was behind the majority of the 226 anti-LGBTQ bills proposed across the country in various state legislatures. Approximately ninety of the bills can be considered anti-transgender.
This is not something new, they have been planning the assault on us a long time, just like when they overturned Roe v. Wade they been refining their strategy for many years. They put judges who favor their view of hate against us, they have hand picked legislators who share their hatred of us. And now they are bring to fruition.
The Trump administration did everything they could to wipe us out!
While the Trump administration took broad steps to remove TGD people from data collection such as declining to include sexual and gender minority demographics from the 2020 census, HHS has consistently attempted to remove the TGD community from health data collection.1 An early Trump administration action erased health data collection on transgender seniors...
...HHS removed the emphasis on health inequities and disparities for minority populations…
[…]
However, the most troubling action to perpetuate discrimination against TGD in healthcare was HHS’s issuance of a final rule reinterpreting §1557 of the ACA. Under the Obama administration’s guidance, discrimination on the basis of sexual stereotyping and gender identity was prohibited as forms of sex discrimination…
[…]
The rollback of protections for TGD youth began within one month of Donald Trump’s inauguration with the reversal of the guidance from 2016 requiring schools to protect transgender youth under Title IX...
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
IV. CONCLUSION
The state of TGD health in 2020 was precarious. The Trump administration’s ascent was a catalyst for advancing a sectarian-based, partisan agenda designed to regress TGD civil rights and to enhance existing barriers to medical care. Despite the government’s own findings, medical experts’ advice, and public opposition, multiple federal departments and state legislatures, then controlled by the Republican party, proposed or enacted policy and law that will impair the health of already-marginalized individuals and populations.
This report was released in 2020 and the conservatives have taking their effort against us on us to the states claiming “States Rights” and you know that if the get a federal trifecta that all the talk of “states rights” will go out the window and they will pass anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.
Our only hope is to vote them out of office! You can't vote your pocketbook for this election you have to vote for the future of your country.
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