Take Urgent Action to Protect Young People’s Access to Healthcare!
Deadline: April 11th
Background:
The Department of Health and Human Services published a proposed rule outlining changes they want to make to healthcare access. The rule contains changes that would harm young people including:
Excluding people with DACA from enrolling in health insurance
Banning gender affirming care
Making it harder for young people to enroll in health insurance coverage by increasing bureaucratic hurdles
Luckily, we have an opportunity to share with the department what impact these proposed changes would have on our communities through submitting public comments.
What is a Public Comment Period?
For a department to finalize a regulation (aka make a rule), they are required to:
Publish a proposed rule
Elicit feedback on the rule (public comments)
Respond to the public comments in the final rule.
The public comment process is a little known, but historically effective way to stop or slow down harmful policy changes. The agency MUST respond to each unique comment they receive. The more comments they receive, the longer this takes. The longer this takes, the less likely they can finalize the rule quickly, or at all. And, if they fail to follow this process, it's grounds for a lawsuit.
How Can I Submit a Public Comment?
Submitting a comment is easy!
Follow one of the links below
Personalize your response (very important!)
Submit!
You can submit a comment discussing all three of these areas, or just one. Some people submit one sentence comments. Others submit many pages. The template is a suggestion – personalize to make it work for you!
To comment on all 3 issues together: click here
To protect young adult access to health insurance: click here
To protect DACA recipient eligibility for healthcare: click here
To protect gender affirming care: click here
!!!!The public comment deadline is April 11th at 11:59pm EST!!!!
What Now?
After you submit your public comment, encourage your friends to submit their own comments.
