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Loading ...Baldwin bill seeks to end LGBT health disparities
06.24.2009 10:30am EDT
Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin introduced the Ending Health Disparities for LGBT Americans Act (ELHDA) on Tuesday, the first comprehensive approach to improving all areas of the health care system where lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans face inequality and discrimination.
“Our current health care system fails LGBT Americans on many levels,” said Baldwin in a statement.“Although we have ample anecdotal evidence of these disparities, the federal government lacks even the most basic data on sexual orientation and gender identity and health. This bill invests in research and takes critical steps towards improving the health of LGBT Americans and their families,” Baldwin said.
Joining Baldwin in sponsoring the bill are House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA), and Reps. Barbara Lee (D-CA), Mike Honda (D-CA), and Nydia Velazquez (D-NY). Baldwin has worked for more than a year to craft the bill, which she calls “comprehensive” and “fully inclusive.”
In addition to investing in data collection and research, the bill establishes non-discrimination policies for all federal health programs, provides funding for cultural competence training for health care providers, extends Medicare benefits to same-sex domestic partners, creates a new office of LGBT Health within in the Department of Health and Human Services, and provides funding for community health centers who serve the LGBT community.
The legislation has earned the support of the Human Rights Campaign; National Coalition for LGBT Health; The AIDS Institute; Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) National; National Center for Transgender Equality; AIDS Action; American Psychological Association; Mautner Project: The National Lesbian Health Organization; and the National Center for Lesbian Rights.
Melissa – before you can be a decent woman, you have to be a decent human being.
Not rich, or passable, or even anatomically typical. Just human.
You’re capable of that, your empathy to those girls forced to rent their bodies shows that. Please extend it to others.
There are degrees of transsexuality. Those who are lesbian, and less classically female in their neurology than others, often transition later. Those who are straight, and also more sterotypically female than most women, cis or trans, have to transition early or die.
But it’s a difference of degree, not kind. Take a group of cisgendered women, magically transform them at birth so they look male, and you’d see the same split. One more apparent than real.
Grace is one of those misguided, high income, mid-life crisis, heterosexual, cross-dressers who is probably so impassable that he would be taken as a complete man (not even an unpassable transsexual) by strangers unaware of the fact that he got is willy chopped off if he were to go out to an unfamiliar neighborhood with unisex clothing on and no makeup or jewelry despite tons of money put into cosmetic procedures.
Full fledged members of the Dickless Fatherhood like Grace think that think that they are more of a woman than a lower or no income transsexual that is psychosexually a heterosexual female and a virgin as a physical consequence of being a psychosexual invert. They also tend to sociosexually peer relate to heterosexual cross-dressers (albeit with a sense of superiority over cross-dressers that they think their vaginal badges of superiority entitles them to do) and other sex change mistakes like themselves rather than biological lesbians! They act like such men that almost all of them are sexually rejected by biological female lesbians. That is why they prey on emotionally weak heterosexual women to marry them before dropping the bomb on their wives!
Your economically elitist, Conservative-Republican, heterosexual-male, misogynist beliefs are obvious by your statement. Grace’s statement is just like when Dickless Fatherhood members who work in men’s prisons (usually as tradesmen and often as corrections officers) and see heterosexually oriented, passable, transsexual women in prison, they tend to use disassociating pronouns like “them” and “they” to describe those inmates. DF members also rant a lot about how much these economically marginalized inmates “get what they deserve” for committing crimes that were necessities for their survival.
I know your sorry, pathetic, economically conservative ass bitterly resents having to pay for other people’s sex change operations but tough shit! Not everyone can be middle-class or higher. Human Rights are Rights as the name expresses and not elitist privileges you asshole!!!
Given that it is a legal requirement in many jurisdictions that SRS be completed in order to get adequate documentation, I thought that this bill might make coverage under Medicare mandatory.
I wonder if any GLBs would tolerate a $30,000-100,000 medical fee for being able to get married, or even enter a Federal Building, as we do?
That’s the trouble – equality does not mean “the same”, it means “equal”. Just as Gays have issues Trans people do not (unless they’re gay too), Trans people have medical issues Gays don’t. And this does nothing for GLBTs, only GLBs.
As a post-op MTF transsexual who has a lesbian sexual orientation, I welcome any steps towards equality for LTGB individuals. For me when I read this article, I did not see anything negative for the t community but rather positive steps towards guaranteeing that all LTGB folk are not discriminated against in health care and that our partners have the same rights as couples in straight relationships. I would imagine that many things that gay couples would like to see are not there either, and the bill is not about providing SRS or any other particular procedure, it is about equality.
Craig: How is being thrown under the bus for the umpteenth time a step forward for me and others like me?
Transsexuals are thrown under the bus by queers so often that they are now standard equipment installed on the undercarriages of all buses going through predominately queer neighborhoods! I encourage you readers to look at the undercarriages of buses going through your cities’ gay districts. None of you people will find a bus going through that district without a transsexual installed to the undercarriage.
“gay marriage truth” makes the point I was thinking…if this bill aims to improve all areas, as this piece says, it has to remove the discriminatory taxing of my husbands benefits provided by my company.
I’m also confused….doesn’t EVERYONE get medicaire at a certain age? Why would we need to extend it to our partners?…do they mean partners that are non-US citizens? I’ve been paying FICA for a long time and expect to get my medicaire gay or not.
I do have to add, I recently had open heart surgery and the experience at Brigham and Woman’s was amazing. They are in the top 3 of heart surgery COE’s so I expected no less…but for all you that struggle with hospitals that are bigoted, there is hope. This world class hospital (ok, it is located in mass….) treated my husband with the utmost respect…even the people in the waiting room, who saw him when we were on a return visit, ran out to hug him, meet me, and revisit the pain he went through during the ten hour surgery.
The surgeon always addressed him, not the rest of my family, when he came into my room with news. He was called into the surgical conference room to approve a procedure while I was still on the table…not my parents who were standing right there.
It was an amazing experience…they even had a bed for him in my room and the staff provided him with bedding, towels and toiletries…he stayed with me for 3 weeks and everyone was so happy to welcome him.
Maybe it was because we were nice to them and many of the other patients were rude….but I think it is because their mission statement clearly says that they believe the health of the patient requires a comfortable, informed family. Their mission directed them to welcome him.
There is hope.
How about a Bill to end legalized FINANCIAL discrimination against same sex couples in this country? Many of us are already lucky enough to get health benefits for our spouses or domestic partners through our jobs, but the federal government still insists on levying additional taxes on those benefits. Taxes that are NOT paid by opposite sex couples in the same relationships.
Throwing a few crumbs our way in bits and pieces without addressing the real issue here – inequality – is not going to solve anything except widen the gap. Address the real issue and solve ALL the problems.
It would be nice to see something like this come directly at the behest of ‘our’ President.
I agree with MelissaG, this sounds like an LGB bill from I’ve heard so far, not an LGBT one. Nonetheless, it is a positive step forward.
So how much support does this bill have and is the political environment such that we can expect this to pass any time soon?
This is supposed to be a bill that provides health care equality to lgb and T people, yet there is no mention of access to medical procedure that is the most important to transsexual people – SEX REASSIGNMENT SURGERY.
This is what transsexuals get for not fighting the queer community’s false claims of transsexuals being a part of the queer community and transgender umbrella as well as representing transsexuals’ interests to the public hard enough!
It is nice to see one more step towards a more fair world. I think what frustrates everybody is the fact that they are taken in such a slow pace when deep inside everybody, I mean everybody gay or straight, knows this is a right and not something given as consent.
“extends Medicare benefits to same-sex domestic partners, ”
YES! To thank our Stonewall Generation!!
Well I’m sure with the Presidential memorandum extrending benefits to same sex partners on the Federal level President Obama will closely review all this research and hopefully repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. Remember the Pharisees and Saducees of our day are watching us for an opportunity to say “aha, aha” though they themselves have done such a poor job at maintaining marital relatinships and havesome of the highest divorce rates ever in this country. The religious right is just WRONG. Good Luck Congresswoman Baldwin and may the God of Abraham be with you and for you in your administration.
A good step forward and essential as we work for a health care system that serves everyone.