Medicare may soon be prohibited from spending money on vacuum pumps that treat erectile dysfunction in the coming years — an effort that could save up to $444 million but might upset those who can’t afford drugs like Viagra to treat their condition.

The plan of cutting coverage of the pumps was proposed to help offset the cost of creating tax-advantaged savings accounts for disabled Americans, which would allow them to qualify for programs for low-income people. This bill was introduced by Republican Representative Ander Crenshaw of Florida.

Known as the ABLE Act — or Achieving a Better Life Experience Act — the new bill would allow people with disabilities to establish accounts at financial institutions where they could deposit up to $14,000 annually, then accrue savings without losing their eligibility for government benefits and Medicaid. Disabled people would be able to build up finances in their ABLE accounts to help cover housing and transportation, among other expenses. Currently, people with disabilities can’t have more than $2,000 in assets and can’t earn more than $680 per month, so the ABLE Act would improve their quality of life. But this would occur at the expense of older people who can’t afford Viagra and who are currently getting their vacuum pumps paid for.

The fact is, penis pumps have been costing the federal government a lot of money. Around this time last year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) informed Americans that Medicare was grossly overpaying for penis pumps — spending over twice their retail amount at about $172 million between 2006 and 2011. Gloria Jarmon, deputy inspector general, noted last year that the payments were “excessive.”

But as Jordan Weissmann writes on Slate, “[P]reventing Medicare from assisting elderly couples suffering from intimacy problems is cruel, and only entrenches the federal government’s bizarre stance that sexual health isn’t really part of human health. There is, after all, a very good reason why Medicare had to purchase 473,000 penis pumps over six years: In 2006, Congress banned the federal government from covering erectile dysfunction drugs like Viagra under Medicare Part D… The vacuum tubes seem to have been a second best option.”