Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley Needs Medicare To Cowl Wigs

TSR Politics: Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley isn’t just representing her congressional district of Massachusetts but additionally the 7 million individuals who reside with alopecia on this nation.

That’s why the state rep is combating for Medicare to cowl wigs. “[I know what it’s like] to expertise a metamorphosis not of your personal selecting,” Pressley advised Vanity Fair of her dwelling with alopecia, an autoimmune illness that causes hair loss.

“Once you really feel like your physique is betraying you and you are feeling much less like your self—that’s already difficult,” Pressley stated, however “to be bald as a girl actually does disrupt typical and societal norms of what’s applicable, what’s skilled, what’s engaging, what’s female,” she stated. “It’s a lot greater than beauty…It takes an actual toll.”

Ayanna reintroduced a invoice Thursday, alongside together with her fellow Massachusetts Rep. James McGovern, on the final day of Alopecia Consciousness Month, to pay for wigs for these experiencing hair loss on account of medical remedies or illness, The Root studies.

Ayanna says that many individuals dwelling with alopecia–which has no identified trigger or treatment–search out medical wigs to handle their hair loss. However medical wigs usually are not often a low value choice for individuals dwelling on mounted incomes, in response to Ayanna.

“Docs have advised me that sufferers have refused lifesaving most cancers remedies as a result of they have been afraid they have been going to lose their hair and didn’t know cope with it,” McGovern stated. 

McGovern speaks from his personal private expertise, which is why the difficulty can also be near his coronary heart.

McGovern’s 20-year-old daughter, who has a uncommon most cancers prognosis, has additionally handled hair loss.

“The factor she’s most anxious about is having to undergo chemotherapy,” he stated. “Shedding your hair at 20—that’s actually type of a traumatic factor.”

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