While everybody is freaking out about the coronavirus, please don’t let the GOP take this opportunity to slip inhumane legislation through Congress. The issues that existed at the very beginning of “The New Normal”—i.e., after the 2016 “election”— are still in play. Trump won’t even have to rely on his grenade-a-day distraction technique.
This is still happening:
1. In late December 2019, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a final rule that unlawfully reinterpreted Section 1303 of the ACA by requiring qualified health plans that participate in the state exchanges — like New York State of Health — to send separate bills and collect separate payments of at least one dollar for abortion services. If a consumer misses the one-dollar payment, they could lose all coverage on the exchange.
Attorney General Letitia James and a coalition of seven attorneys general has asked the federal courts to immediately rule on their lawsuit, stating that the new rule is incompatible with the ACA’s requirement of equitable access to health care and disproportionately affects states — like New York, California, Maine, Oregon, and Vermont — that are committed to ensuring access to comprehensive reproductive health care by requiring health plans to provide abortion coverage.
Under New York law, all private health plans regulated by the state are required to offer abortion coverage as part of their basic health care services, but the new Trump Administration rule requires insurers to separately bill for the portion of health insurance premiums attributable to abortion coverage.
The resulting rise in administrative costs will drive insurers to raise rates and withdraw from the ACA exchange.
2. Today’s EPA rollback will result in more air pollution in New York’s communities, more respiratory illnesses, and more New Yorkers dying because of increased air pollution. New York State will continue to fight EPA in court and work to implement the stringent California standards allowed by the federal Clean Air Act. The COVID-19 public health crisis makes it clear that policy must follow sound science.
3. Info synthesized from Everytown for Gun Safety email:
The NRA and its allies have pressured the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to consider gun shops essential businesses. During the COVID-19 crisis, the NRA has been engaged in reckless fear mongering. It has been reported that gun sales have been going way up, along with the stock prices of the two publicly traded gun companies…. Cities across the country are already seeing dramatic spikes in domestic violence calls. When a firearm is present in a domestic violence situation, women are five times more likely to be killed.
Laugh of the day, courtesy of American Political Journalism Survey by 3 profs at Florida State University, University of Virginia, and Brigham Young University, Idaho: “Our evidence shows that the use of the term “fake news” to classify news stems from a different cognitive process than other evaluations of journalistic quality.”
So politely put!