ColorLines‘ Akiba Solomon details what she says are “serious, buzz-killing holes” in the Affordable Care Act.
Suggested Reading
As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, women have a lot to gain from the parts of the Affordable Care Act that remain intact. Co-pay-free birth control! Annual Well Woman exams! Legal protection against gender-based price gouging!
But there are still some serious, buzz-killing holes. For instance, poor, undocumented women don’t qualify for key preventative benefits. And then there’s the SCOTUS-produced loophole that allows states that are openly hostile to Obamacare and the letter “O” to decide whether they’ll expand Medicaid coverage without the threat of losing federal dollars. (Read Imara Jones’s comprehensive analysis for the big picture.)
State discretion on Medicaid expansion is particularly troublesome for black women living with HIV, says C. Virginia Fields, CEO of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS. “In [several] of the 26 states that brought the Supreme Court challenge, we have large pockets of Black women living in poverty and with AIDS: Alabama, Florida, Georgia,* Mississippi and South Carolina.
Read Akiba Solomon’s entire piece at Colorlines.
The Root aims to foster and advance conversations about issues relevant to the black Diaspora by presenting a variety of opinions from all perspectives, whether or not those opinions are shared by our editorial staff.
Straight From 
Sign up for our free daily newsletter.