Early Christmas Eve morning, the U. S. Senate approved the much-anticipated healthcare-reform bill — but it’s still unclear whether the LGBT community will be included in the final version of the legislation.
The Senate version, which passed strictly along party lines with all Democrats and two independents voting for it and all Republicans against, is considered the more conservative version of the legislation, dropping the House’s “public option” and numerous provisos that would have benefited the LGBT community.
Among the House’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s most conspicuous LGBT stipulations is the elimination of the tax that same-sex domestic partners pay on shared health insurance, a penalty married couples don’t incur.
The legislation would also allow for those with HIV/AIDS to be eligible for federal programs like Medicaid earlier in their illnesses.
The bill additionally takes steps to break down barriers LGBTs face in healthcare access, prohibiting providers from discriminating against patients based on their “personal characteristics” and urging the Department of Health and Human Services to take steps to examine health disparities faced by certain populations, including the LGBT community.
Ron Powers, director of programs at LGBT health facility Mazzoni Center, said the House version made important strides toward heightening the level of care available to LGBT individuals.
“Any time a bill specifically names sexual orientation or gender identity, it’s a recognition that we’re a population that’s here and that needs to be dealt with,” Powers said. “In identifying that health disparities face the LGBT community, it recognizes that certain conditions and diseases do disproportionately affect our community, and what follows from that is research and funding.”
Powers noted that Mazzoni Center has encountered difficulties pursuing funding options because of a lack of reliable research on the health issues facing LGBT people, an issue he believes could be remedied by the HHS action recommended in the House bill.
“The biggest problem facing Mazzoni Center when we go out to get funding is that there’s really no good data out there to say why this funding is important or why specific services or care for the LGBT community is needed,” Powers said. “By identifying LGBT as a health-disparity population, people start asking the right questions. In general with healthcare, one of the biggest problems is that care providers don’t ask the right questions. They don’t ask people their sexual orientation or what their sex practices are, and it then follows that the patients may not be getting the most complete care.”
Powers expressed frustration at the sweeping changes instituted by the Senate bill.
“I’m somewhat disappointed by the Senate bill because I think it watered everything down to the point of, ‘Why bother?’”
Leaders from both houses are expected to convene a conference committee in the coming weeks to iron out the differences between the two bills.
Two of the pro-LGBT House amendments were spearheaded by openly gay U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.), whose spokesperson Jerilyn Goodman told the Dallas Voice last week that the representative is “fully committed to a thorough conference of the healthcare-reform legislation in which she can advocate for the LGBT provisions included in the House bill.”
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].