Nancy Pelosi: GOP Health Care Plan Would Make 'Being A Woman A Preexisting Condition'

“A 54-year-old doesn’t need certain things. They don’t need maternity care ,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said last week. “They don’t need certain medical services that are being provided to them by this government product that is being forced on them right now.”

Democrats are hitting back hard on these potential changes. 

“[Eliminating] essential health benefits means Republicans are making being a woman a preexisting condition,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters Thursday. “Again, stripping guaranteed maternity care is a pregnancy tax, pure and simple.”

Republicans have long opposed the idea of making insurance companies cover benefits like maternity care. 

In 2009, during the debate over the Affordable Care Act, then-Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) argued, “I don’t need maternity care, and so requiring that to be in my insurance policy is something that I don’t need and will make the policy more expensive.” 

“I think your mom probably did,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) shot back. 

More recently, Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) said it wasn’t fair to make men “purchase prenatal care .”

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) also seemed skeptical of the whole idea of essential benefits on Thursday. 

(For the record, mammograms also test for breast cancer in men .)

The way insurance works is that everyone pays into a system so people are able to get money when they need it. You may never have cancer, but your insurance payments are helping to cover people who will. Women don’t have prostates, but their insurance premiums help fund men’s prostate cancer screenings and treatments.