Virginia’s 6th District Rep. Bob Goodlatte held a surprise telephone town hall meeting last night, following his disgraceful vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act and to enact the horrendous AHCA (aka, “Ryancare/Trumpcare”) instead. See below for Goodlatte’s bizarre, fallacious response to a question by a woman regarding a friend of hers who was raped.
The woman’s question is about how “sexual assaults and rape could be considered pre-existing conditions under this bill” and how “frightful” it is that the bill “eliminates certain health benefit coverage standards [under the ACA] that made a majority of health plans required to cover services like maternity care…newborn care, prescription drugs, mental health services, all very important/necessary things.”
Goodlatte’s weird response, as you can hear in the audio clip below, is that it’s “not possible” that sexual assaults and rape will be considered pre-existing conditions under the AHCA. Goodlatte outright lies, claiming that “more people will be able to get health insurance” under the AHCA, despite an estimate from the authoritative Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that 24 million would lose their health insurance coverage under a previous version of this legislation (note: this bill was voted on without a CBO score, which is yet another crazy thing about it). Goodlatte then claims that “those essential health benefits that you referred to are continued in this plan; however, states can choose to opt out of those” (uh yeah, Bob, that’s kind of the whole point!).
Perhaps most bizarrely, Goodlatte then mansplains about the AHCA not funding “any organization that provides abortions.” What’s particularly weird about this response is that the caller never even asked about abortion. Also weird about Goodlatte’s response is that, as the Kaiser Family Foundation explains, “Since 1977, federal law has banned the use of any federal funds for abortion, unless the pregnancy is a result of rape, incest, or if it is determined to endanger the woman’s life.” So why on earth is Goodlatte talking about this? So, so weird – but highly revealing of the way this guy’s mind works, that’s for sure! I just hope there’s a strong Democratic challenger to the guy I call BADlatte, for “good” reason, next November.
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