MountainMornings

Today Republicans will be voting on healthcare. Apart from a last ditch effort to blame their inability to “repeal” OR “replace” the ACA on Democrats, at least one Congressman from Texas believes the gridlock is a “repugnant” result of his female colleagues.

“Some of the people that are opposed to this, they’re some female senators from the North East… If it was ‘a guy from south Texas’ who was generating so much discord in the party, I would ask them to settle their differences in a gun fight,”  Blake Farenthold said. One woman senator is from Alaska, but I guess if you count West Virginia with Maine that makes it 2 -1

So it’s High Noon on the Hill?

While it is true that three GOP women profess they will not vote on any bill they haven’t seen or don’t understand, they may also be slightly peeved that they were excluded from the bargaining table in an infamous photo of an all men panel. Or maybe their reticence indicates a deeper truth – that women and children will suffer if Medicaid is cut:

“According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, about half of all births are now paid for by Medicaid, ranging from 72 percent in New Mexico in 2015 to 27 percent in New Hampshire.” Oh, and it also pays for about 62% of all nursing home residents, most of whom are women. So the party who calls itself the party for LIFE, would like to cut the life line of those women most in need of health insurance.

In fact, all their so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” will most likely have to close. The irony of it all…and since Planned Parenthood is under attack, your guess is as good as mine as to where our country will fall on the world’s Maternal Mortality Rates. Oh wait,

U.S. women are more likely to die during childbirth than women in any other developed country, leading the U.S. to be ranked 33rd among 179 countries on the health and well-being of women and children. Women in the U.S. face a 1-in-1,800 risk for maternal death, the worst among the developed nations surveyed in Save the Children’s 16th annual State of the World’s Mothers report http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20150506/NEWS/150509941

In 1979 when the Bride was born, the entire hospital bill was $2,600. That included a day in the NICU, which I’d rather not explain since I’m sure that doctor would not like my story. We paid for that bill ourselves because we didn’t have insurance at the time. Due to an ancient and unheard of practice, all my pre-natal visits were free, ie “professional courtesy.” Today, the cost for a C-section (I had a breech birth) is most likely tens of thousands of dollars!

Sen McCain will be returning to vote on some form of a healthcare bill that would affect up to 69 million Medicaid patients – there was an increase in 11 million after the ACA passed. This means 15 million people may lose coverage by 2026. It would have a devastating effect on women, on the elderly and disabled, and patients undergoing opioid addiction services. Is that what the heartland wanted when they elected Mr T? http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/06/27/534436521/from-birth-to-death-medicaid-affects-the-lives-of-millions

I’d like to think that just like Gary Cooper, who played the marshal in High Noon, McCain will stand alone and face down evil. He will exhibit compassion by doing the right thing. The producers of the iconic western in 1952 were being pressured by McCarthy’s Red-baiting fears to fire the writer and blacklist Carl Foreman, who was Cooper’s friend. John Wayne was leading the charge against Foreman when Gary Cooper said, “If Foreman goes, Cooper goes.”

“They’re making me run, I’ve never run from anybody before,” Marshal Will Kane said to the neophyte Grace Kelly.

Today is the day to get up and move, to call your senators people. Here are my grandchildren under a wishing tree; what will these senators tell their grandchildren?

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