This weekend's Republican response to President Obama's weekly address featured Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC), who used her time to insist that the real war on women is... Obamacare.
“If you want to talk about a ‘war on women,’ look no further than this healthcare law,” Ellmers countered in the weekly address. “After all, it’s often women who make the healthcare decisions for our families. We put a lot of time and thought into these choices and how they’ll affect our budgets. So by canceling your insurance—despite a promise to let you keep your plan—the Obama administration is essentially saying it knows what’s best for you and your family.”
Minority leader Nancy Pelosi called the rhetoric "pathetic," as Joan McCarter explains it -- the "family friendly way of saying bullshit."
Ellmers’ characterization of the insurance cancellations is wildly misleading, The Affordable Care Act isn’t canceling anyone’s insurance; some private insurers are dropping individual plans, which consumers can replace under the law -- usually with a cheaper, better plan.
As Steve Benen notes, Ellmers, incidentally, has a problem with the ACA stopping insurers from charging women more.
“Obamacare” prevents insurers from charging women higher premiums for comparable coverage; it covers procedures such as mammograms and cervical cancer screenings as preventive care; it expands access to contraception without a co-pay; it ends the practice of treating pregnancy as a pre-existing condition; and it brings affordable coverage to millions of women who were uninsured under the old system.
Trying to label this as part of a “war on women” is ludicrous. No rational person could possibly look at reality and take this rhetoric seriously.
Here's a newsflash for the GOP: it's 2013. There are men who make health care decisions for their families. Some couples even decide these things together. So actually, the Republicans have extended their war on women to a war on modern men.
