Friday, December 08, 2017

How The GOP Tax Cuts Affect Trans People

Not good.

With the high unemployment and underemployed in the trans community we will be hit hard. The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey reported,
The findings show large economic disparities between transgender people in the survey and the U.S. population. Nearly one-third (29%) of respondents were living in poverty, compared to 14% in the U.S. population. A major contributor to the high rate of poverty is likely respondents’ 15% unemployment rate—three times higher than the unemployment rate in the U.S. population at the time of the survey (5%).
In addition many trans people cannot afford to buy health insurance on the open market, the survey reported…
Respondents were asked a series of questions about health insurance coverage. Eighty-six percent (86%) reported that they were covered by a health insurance or health coverage plan, and 14% reported that they were uninsured. This compares to 89% of adults in the U.S. general population who were covered by a health insurance or health coverage plan in 2015…
[…]
The most common source of health insurance reported by respondents was an employer sponsored insurance plan (either through the respondent’s employer or someone else’s employer) (53%). Fourteen percent (14%) of respondents had individual insurance plans that they or someone else purchased directly from an insurance company, through healthcare.gov, or from a health insurance marketplace, and 13% were insured through Medicaid
Yahoo News reported in an article that,
The current tax bill in the Senate would devastate support systems and services for LGBT Americans, especially transgender people, by making deep cuts in their accessibility to healthcare and other programs they rely on.

The bill would raise the cost for people living with HIV/AIDS, cut food stamps, housing and homelessness efforts and lead to cuts in Medicare and Social Security—social programs important to the LGBT community.

“This bill is a disaster for everyone really, but specifically for LGBT [people],” Christopher Stoll, a senior staff attorney at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, told Newsweek. “It will result in deep cuts in programs that LGBT people depend on.”

This tax bill will repeal Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate provision used extensively by people living with chronic health conditions, like those with HIV/AIDS—gay and bisexual men accounted for 82 percent of HIV diagnoses among males and 67 percent of all diagnoses in 2015, according to census data.
[…]
“For transgender people living with HIV in particular, this bill could mean the loss of life-saving treatment and fuel an epidemic that the U.S. government has ostensibly pledged to end,” Kris Hayashi, the executive director of Transgender Law Center said in a statement.
Besides healthcare the bill will also cut,
LGBT people disproportionately struggle with poverty—20 percent of LGBT people have annual incomes less than $12,000, compared to 17 people of non-LGBT people. Transgender people are four times more likely to have incomes under $10,000 per year, despite having higher rates of education.
[…]
Medicare could be cut up to $25 billion just in 2018, millions could be cut from social security, and deep cuts are being made into the food stamp program, housing and homelessness efforts—all of which benefit LGBT people disproportionately.
The cuts will not only affect us but also any group of people that are affected by discrimination causing high unemployment or underemployed. The cuts will be devastating on those who are disabled.

The tax bill will have the most impact on the most needy of us while rewarding the most greedy.

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