Valerie Jarrett slams GOP for not including women in healthcare discussions

Valerie Jarrett, a longtime adviser to former President Obama, on Wednesday slammed Senate Republicans for their process of pushing a “disaster” healthcare bill through Congress and particularly for holding closed-door meetings that did not have any female lawmakers present.

“My real hot button is, why were 13 men in a room deciding about healthcare that impacts my life. You have 21 women in the Senate, they couldn’t have picked one of those women to be there?” Jarrett said during a Democratic National Committee panel with Chairman Tom Perez and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.).

“And so, of course, they were thinking about taking about maternity care, well now they are hearing from women around the country, ‘Well, don’t do that.’ Well, if they had had a woman on the committee, they wouldn’t have made that mistake,” she added, criticizing Republicans for crafting legislation secretively.

{mosads}Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) addressed the issue of not inviting women to negotiate healthcare reform in May, promising to extend an invitation in the future.

Jarrett called the healthcare bill “a disaster for the American people,” while pointing to the Congressional Budget Office analysis that said 22 million Americans would lose healthcare coverage as well as those who would suffer from the deep cuts to Medicaid. No Democrats support the legislation.

Jarrett argued that Republicans should be supporting the law of the land, the Affordable Healthcare Act (ACA), also known as ObamaCare, until they pass a new law rather than seeking to weaken the system.

“Until there is a new plan, this is the law of the land. Instead of weakening it, we should be strengthening it,” Jarrett said. She called the new GOP version a “tax cut for the wealthy” that rides on the backs of the poor, middle class, and disabled Americans.

The former Obama adviser also said she has asked Republicans who opposed ObamaCare for seven years what they would do in lieu of the ACA.

“Well, for seven years, they’ve been running on this platform of ‘let’s repeal and replace ACA’ and we’ve asked them for seven years what’s their plan, because it’s a complicated piece of business and it fits together like a puzzle,” Jarrett said, arguing that their new version does not improve healthcare coverage for Americans.