Today, there is a war waging in the
American political climate based off the effectiveness of the Affordable Care Act
(Obamacare). President Donald Trump, and
many Republican lawmakers, are spearheading a movement against Democrats to
repeal the Affordable Care Act in order to place new standards on American
healthcare and its accessibility. If the
Affordable Care Act is repealed, millions of Americans will go without
healthcare, and a surprising new epidemic will potentially emerge out of the
ACA’s ruins. This epidemic is one that
Americans think of as part of the past, and not prevalent among members of
society needing healthcare. The epidemic
is a potential AIDS and HIV outbreak, mainly in the LGBTQ+ community, that could
rival the major outbreak America had in the 80’s and 90’s. Before the ACA, 24 percent of the 1.2 million
people diagnosed with HIV in America did not have healthcare.[1]
Without health insurance for these
individuals, proper care cannot be assessed, resulting in the overall spread of
the virus. This issue would mainly hit
poor, less educated areas that are filled with minorities such as African
American, Latino, Asian, etc. members of the LGBTQ+ community. The ACA’s role in preventing the spread of
HIV, along with its efforts to educate people about the virus, is vital to the
health of preexisting HIV cases and to individuals without HIV who identify
themselves as LGBTQ+.
These events parallel to a similar event
in history as seen in the VD epidemic among American soldiers between 1917-1919.
The man who is to blame for this epidemic was fundamentalist Christian, and the
Secretary of the Navy during WW1, Josephus Daniels. Daniels used his power in the military to
completely discontinue the sale of chemical prophylactics on U.S. Navy
ships. By discontinuing chemical
prophylactics as forms of blocking VD’s, Daniels relied on “moral prophylactics”
by handing out pamphlets and educating soldiers on the harmful effects of
sex. However, soon after the prophylactics
were banned, it was obvious there was no self-control among the soldiers. According to Devices and Desire by Andrea Tone, “Between April 1917 and December
1919, 380,000 soldiers-roughly one in eleven-were diagnosed with syphilis,
gonorrhea, or chancroid.”[2] This is strikingly similar to the administration
Trump is running, along with numerous Republican congressman, because they are
attempting to eliminate forms of healthcare that is keeping a major HIV and
AIDS epidemic from occurring. If you
take away a system that is doing its job, why change it? American politicians should take a step back,
and look at the wrongs from the past. As
seen with Josephus Daniels attempts to apply moral/self-control on sex within
the Navy, humans will keep doing what they think of as pleasurable no matter
the risk or cost. If Republicans
lawmakers can take a lesson from this event in history, we as Americans should
continue down the path the ACA has laid in front of us in order to suppress HIV
and AIDS from spreading. If the ACA is
repealed, there will more than likely be a drastic rise in HIV and AIDS
diagnosis’ sweeping the nation. Overall,
if we forget our history, it is doomed to repeat itself.
[1]
TheAdvocateMag. "Trumpcare
Could Bring HIV Roaring Back." ADVOCATE. March 20, 2017. Accessed March
21, 2017.
http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2017/3/20/trumpcare-could-bring-hiv-roaring-back.
[2] Tone, Andrea. Devices and
desires a history of contraceptives in America. New York, NY: Hill &
Wang, 2002., 99
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