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13 Republican men will write the Senate version of Trumpcare

What could go wrong?

The male senators working on health care legislation that will affect more than 125 million women. CREDIT: Graphic by Diana Ofosu
The male senators working on health care legislation that will affect more than 125 million women. CREDIT: Graphic by Diana Ofosu

The group of Senate Republicans working on their chamber’s version of Trumpcare are all men, according to Bloomberg and Vox.

News about the senators working on health care comes a day after a photo of President Trump surrounded by dozens of jubilant white men celebrating the House vote went viral. The House version of the bill will cost 24-plus million Americans their health insurance and defund Planned Parenthood.

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/860215806113701888

There are five women among the 52 Republicans in the Senate — Lisa Murkowski (AK), Joni Ernst (IA), Susan Collins (ME), Deb Fischer (NE), and Shelley Moore Capito (WV). Politico reports that Collins and Murkowski “both oppose the bill’s attempts to defund Planned Parenthood,” which is a primary health care provider for millions of women and low-income Americans.

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Defunding Planned Parenthood isn’t the only way Trumpcare hurts women. The bill also eliminates the requirement that all health care plans cover maternity care, and allows insurance companies to charge more for certain “pre-existing conditions,” including those particularly affect women, such as domestic abuse and rape.

As ThinkProgress reported yesterday, “Prior to Obamacare’s requirement that health insurance plans cover maternity care, for example, 62 percent of plans on the individual market didn’t include it. Only nine states chose to mandate maternity coverage. And, often, women were forced to pay more for their plans than men anyways — even though these plans didn’t include coverage essential to women’s health care.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of claimed that all of the senators in the health care working group are white. Ted Cruz is actually of Cuban descent.