By Jennifer Vanasco
Health care is a gay issue. It is a transgender issue. It is a lesbian issue.
But you wouldn't know it from reading the mainstream media.
The national debate on health care is raging this summer in Washington, D.C. and around the country, and yet I've seen very little about the way this debate will shape the future lives of LGBTs, or what gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders think about the health care options politicians are proposing.
Even we in the gay press are doing a lousy job of analyzing the prospective plans, or of taking a hard look on where gay and lesbian health care stands today.
This is surprising, really, because the gay and lesbian civil rights movement cohered around the tragedy of AIDS in the 1980s and early '90s. When so many of us were dying, when health workers were treating our sick gay brothers like lepers to be feared instead of victims to be helped, we were focused on corralling our monetary and mental resources into providing loving health care for all in our community.
Now, if you asked the ordinary gay person on the street to list the top three issues for LGBTs, I bet health care wouldn't be one of them. Heck, I bet health care wouldn't be in the top five.
AIDS, maybe. But even AIDS seems to be less present in our minds than it once was.
Right now, our movement is focused on marriage, the military, immigration, hate crimes and employment discrimination. These are all issues we should be fighting for. And they are easy to get our minds around.
But health care is perhaps the most important issue of all. Our health care system – and how it treats us and whether researchers are studying our needs – affects every single one of us.
AIDS is a critical part of that, of course, but it's only one part. We do need to keep educating people about the dangers of AIDS, especially our young people, who were born in the '80s and were likely tired of seeing the red ribbon before they were 10.
But there are other issues.
A recent study showed that gays and lesbians are still more likely to smoke than straight people: 37 percent of lesbians and 33 percent of gay men smoke, compared to 18 percent of straight women and 24 percent of straight men.
The Gay & Lesbian Medical Association says that gays and lesbians suffer from a higher rate of depression than the general population, perhaps because there is still widespread prejudice against homosexuality.
Transgender people are at increased risk for heart attack and stroke.
There is hepatitis. There is MRSA. There is breast cancer. There is prostate cancer.
And there is the pervasive truth that for many gays and lesbians and especially transgender people, it is difficult to get health care at all. We may not be protected from discrimination from doctors or in hospitals. We may be worried to go to a new doctor and have them give us lesser care because he or she is anti-gay or anti-trans or both. We may live in states where we can't have access to our partner's health care benefits.
We may not have access to our partners or our partner's children when they are sick because of draconian laws or policies that do not recognize our relationships. We might be denied access to sperm banks or other fertility treatments. And, if we are elderly, we may be in nursing homes that do not respect or acknowledge our sexual orientation.
We have not done a great job of articulating to the public and to politicians why our health care issues are so important and why we must be included when policy is made.
But they are important. To all of us. And it is time we applied the creativity and passion and fundraising skills we produced during the AIDS crisis to the larger issue of LGBT health care.
We need a slogan. We need a ribbon. We need something to get the public on board – and we need it now.
Jennifer Vanasco is an award-winning, syndicated columnist. Email her at [email protected]. Follow her at Twitter.com/JenniferVanasco.
