OPINION:
Why is the Clinton campaign obsessed about spinning what Donald Trump says about women? It’s because they’re desperate to have you not notice the damage President Obama and the Democratic Party are actually inflicting on women’s lives.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned about the Obama debacle, it’s the importance of realizing what politicians say is very, very different from what they do. So while liberals everywhere want you to become enraged at some politically incorrect things Mr. Trump has said, let’s take a look a look at what Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton and their Democratic machine have actually done to the quality of women’s lives during these past seven years.
Last year Stephen Moore reported in The Washington Times the poverty rate among women was 16.1 percent, a 20-year high. He also reported, “The female labor force participation rate is now 56.4 percent, the lowest in more than 25 years … . An all-time high 57 million women over the age of 16 are out of the labor force today and not collecting a paycheck.”
According to CNN, data from the Census Bureau confirms 3.7 million women fell into poverty under Mr. Obama’s watch, while the median annual wage for women has dropped $732.
Factcheck.org confirms 92.3 percent of the jobs lost in Mr. Obama’s first term were lost by women. Of the 740,000 jobs that were lost, 683,000 belonged to women.
This perfect storm of destroying women’s lives doesn’t even take into account the disastrous impact Obamacare has had on women.
Little did we know, when Mr. Obama was insisting his signature health plan was going to lower our health care costs, they would instead skyrocket. This is the governmental equivalent of sending the Hindenburg to rescue the passengers on the Titanic. “Don’t worry, we’re coming to save you!” No, actually, please don’t.
What we learned after The Washington Post declared Mr. Obama’s “You can keep your plan” the Lie of the Year was that the disproportionate impact of the increased costs and stunning network limits of Obamacare hit women the hardest.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, and as reported by the Daily Caller, “Women age 18 and older visited the doctor an average of 121 times [per 100 persons] more than men in 2010. Couple that with monthly premium payments that have risen an average 193 percent for the typical 30 year old woman and you find that Obamacare is anything but affordable.”
Women were taken aback when their health insurance plans were cancelled, and the new plans had a shocking limitation on which doctors you could see and which hospitals you could visit. Women’s health care, by its very nature, involves longer relationships with our doctors, often spanning generations in a family. And it’s not just our health care, but the care of our children as well that was so disturbed. Having a doctor who understands your family’s history is key to women. All of that was lost when the Democrats decided “affordability” was more important than freedom of choice.
Many people were also perplexed when the Democrats excitedly announced a special perk of Obamacare: the “adult children,” of parents (those up through age 26) would be covered on their parents’ health care plans.
This was odd, as the Obamacare scheme required the young and health to actually buy into the system. What else were the government apparatchiks up to?
Perhaps this was the answer: Young women were being tossed into the Democrats’ health care volcano. You see, the Obamacare health insurance plans cover prenatal costs for pregnant women, but for those “adult children” on a plan, labor and delivery costs are not covered.
According to a WebMD report: “Having a baby is a common women’s health event, yet insurance coverage isn’t always assured. Although the federal government recently clarified that many insurance plans must cover prenatal care as a preventive service without charging women anything out of pocket, it didn’t address a crucial — and much pricier — gap in some young women’s coverage: labor and delivery costs … . But prenatal care is a small portion of the cost of having a baby, and families that have to pay for an adult child’s labor and delivery charges, including the hospital bill, could be on the hook for thousands of dollars.”
Virtually every action Mr. Obama and his government cronies and friends, including Hillary Clinton, have taken has damaged women’s lives and puts their futures on hold. Poverty, lower wages, lost jobs, useless health insurance, lost doctors and health care networks.
All of this destruction delivered by Barack and Hillary, a man and a woman who say very nice, measured things about women. They pander, patronize and wear their feminism on their sleeves. And as they pat women on the head with one hand, they ruin the lives of their supposed charges with the other.
Yet, they tell us it’s Donald Trump who is to be reviled because of the occasional word he might use about women. With what we’ve seen during the past seven years, I’d say those who deserve rejection and indictment are the pandering, sweet-talking liars.
• Tammy Bruce is a radio talk show host.
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