Health Care Bill Makes History; LGBT Inclusions?

The House passed a historic bill Sunday evening, but specific provisions for LGBT Americans were not included in the passing bill, reports the Advocate.  

After months of intense debate in Congress, the final vote for the health care bill was 219-212, changing the health care system.

Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) said that provisions were not included on the Senate's version of the bill although her proposals were approved in the original House legislation. Her additions were banning discrimination against LGBT people, the Early Treatment for HIV Act, ending taxes for gay workers whose partners are covered under their work health insurance and launching a program to study LGBT health and discrimination.

Baldwin said that at least the bill keeps the legislative door open to pass LGBT health care provisions in the future.

"We will have many opportunities to deal with this legislation's imperfections," she said. "We don't vote on health care reform of this magnitude very often, but we regularly deal with all sorts of bills that relate to different programs in health. I hope to be able to advance the provisions that we lost with other bills."

Baldwin associated the loss of LGBT requirements to the Massachusetts special election that put Republican Scott Brown in the late Sen. Ted Kennedy's seat. The loss of the Senate supermajority forced the House to take up the Senate-passed bill, which did not contain concrete language regarding gay and lesbian health.

The bill passed on Sunday will have some relief for people with HIV on Medicare who rely on expensive medications. Data inclusion is not in the bill. Data would provide information to doctors and researchers about gay health, information that currently isn't collected by federal health studies. For example, it is unknown whether lesbians are more susceptible to breast cancer. Of the data known about gay and lesbians, only limited statistics on depression, HIV rates and smoking are available.

The health care reform bill will provide more than 30 million Americans with access to coverage. The bill prevents health care providers from denying Americans coverage because of pre-existing conditions and expands coverage to nearly 95 percent of Americans.

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