The Stakeholder
Sessions Stands Behind Remarks that Women are Like Smokers, Insurance Companies Should Charge More
One week has passed since NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions (TX) made controversial remarks defending the insurance industry's practice of charging women more than men for health insurance by equating being a woman to being a smoker:
REP. PALLONE (D-NJ): Why should a woman pay more than a man?
REP. SESSIONS (R-TX): Well now. We’re all different. Why should a smoker pay more than a non-smoker?
Yesterday his office provided their first public response to the controversy in a statement to the Dallas Morning News that stood by the comparison.
"We scoured the statement provided by Representative Sessions’s office about his insulting remarks to look for the phrase 'I was wrong,' but found nothing," said Jesse Ferguson, Southern Regional Press Secretary for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "I guess it’s hard too hard for him to criticize his patrons in the insurance industry for charging women more than men for the same health insurance. For Representative Sessions and the GOP leadership, being a woman is a pre-existing condition worthy of discrimination but, increasingly, for women across this nation being an extreme Republican is a pre-existing reason to vote for someone else."
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