Womenstake

Tune in Tonight to Anderson Cooper for More on Women and Health Care Reform

by Adrienne Ammerman, Communications Manager, 
National Women’s Law Center 

Less than a week into our new public awareness campaign Being a Woman is Not a Pre-Existing Condition we’re getting increased media attention to the fact that women face major obstacles in our current health care system 

Tonight, NWLC Co-President Marcia Greenberger will discuss gender disparities in health care in a panel on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 at 10 p.m. Chris Turner -– who spoke at the launch of our campaign -– will also share her story on the segment. 

Other recent media coverage of the campaign includes U.S. News & World Report, NPR, Women’s eNews, and state coverage like the fantastic article today in the Denver Post. 

Are you a supporter of health care reform that works for women? You can encourage your local media to raise awareness around this important issue by submitting a letter-to-the-editor or a guest editorial on the topic. For some tips on working with the media check out the section Talking About Health Care Reform in our Reform Matters Toolkit. 

Gender Discrimination in Health Reform on Larry King Tonight

by Adrienne Ammerman, Communications Manager, 
National Women's Law Center 

You talked—they listened. 

Our elected leaders, the media... all of the sudden they’re waking up to the fact that women face major obstacles when it comes to getting the health care they need.

Here’s some proof: I just now received a media advisory in my inbox stating that ten – yes, TEN women senators will appear on Larry King Live tonight to discuss gender discrimination in the current health care system.

Finally!

The advisory reads:

“Under our status quo health care system, insurance companies charge women more than men for the same coverage in the majority of states.  In eight states and the District of Columbia, insurance companies also deny coverage to victims of domestic violence. In addition, very few insurance companies cover maternity care. Senate Democrats are on track to reform the health insurance system in a meaningful way and putting a stop to these discriminatory health practices against women.” 

So if you’re as interested as I am to see Larry take on the issue of gender discrimination in health care -– or even just curious about how they’re going to fit so many people around that table -– check out the show tonight at 9:45 Eastern. And don’t forget to let your family and friends know by posting it to your Facebook profile or sending out a tweet. 

A big thank you to Senators Mikulski, Boxer, Murray, Landrieu, Stabenow, Cantwell, Klobuchar, Shaheen, Hagan and Gillibrand -– and you –- for helping this issue get the attention it deserves.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor: Another Woman for the Supreme Court

by Adrienne Ammerman, Communications Manager, 
National Women's Law Center 

This post is part of a series about the nomination of Judge Sotomayor for the Supreme Court.

Yesterday, Marcia Greenberger blogged on Huffington Post about her experience at the Sotomayor hearings, and the importance of more women joining the Court.

And Marcia’s not the only one who’s pleased with the prospect of a little diversity on the Court. In her introduction of Judge Sotomayor, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) said that she takes great pride as a woman in this historic nomination, and that she is thankful for President Obama’s recognition of the need for another woman’s voice on the Court. 

Outside of the hearings, a CBS poll released yesterday found that a whopping “two-thirds of Americans think it is important to have another woman on the Court, including 72 percent of women, 79 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of Republicans.”

Another important finding of the poll was that “most Americans think that if she does serve on the Supreme Court, Sotomayor will treat all groups of Americans the same when she makes her judicial decisions.”

Moving Forward on Health Reform… and Moving Back on Choice

by Adrienne Ammerman, Communications Manager, 
National Women’s Law Center 

This morning I went to an amazing health care rally in downtown DC, sponsored by HCAN. Thousands of people were gathered by the Capitol building, and the energy was palpable—the energy of people saying: “We want health care reform, and we want it now.”

Yet – even as we move undeniably forward with health care reform, we’re moving backwards when it comes to our reproductive rights. Two states—Virginia and Arizona—recently succeeded in upholding restrictions on abortion.

The Washington Post reported today: “A sharply divided federal appeals court ruled constitutional yesterday a Virginia law banning ‘partial birth’ abortion… bringing the state in line with a federal ban on the controversial procedure.”  The federal ban was upheld by the Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, despite its lack of an exception to protect a woman’s health.

And, as my colleague Judy Waxman warned might happen back in March, on Tuesday, the Arizona Senate passed a copycat ban that mimics the federal ban upheld by the Supreme Court. The Arizona ban is now headed to the governor’s desk for her signature. For more information on what you can do, check back here or sign up to receive updates and email alerts here.

Raising Our Voices for the Health Care We Need

by Adrienne Ammerman, Communications Manager,  
National Women’s Law Center  

I headed to NYC last Wednesday to attend the first day of the Raising Women’s Voices conference. The first panel was “Connecting Stories and Policy,” which examined how different campaigns and organizations have used women’s stories to make policy change. It included speakers from Choices in Childbirth and Women LEAD for Health.

A common thread in the presentations was that – while stories can be a powerful way to change minds, hearts, and policies – advocates have to be accountable when it comes to collecting stories. Tina Reynolds from WORTH (Women on the Rise Telling Herstory) spoke passionately about working with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women so that they aren’t re-victimized by how their stories are used, and they instead “come from a place of power” in talking about their experiences.

During the following session, Mary Marshall Clark from the Columbia University Oral History Program elaborated on the idea of accountability and ethics in story collection, saying “we don’t take stories to own them ourselves.” The program always gives participants the option of changing their stories, adding to them, or withdrawing them from the archives altogether.

Clark’s program has partnered with Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health to collect stories from doctors who performed abortions when they were illegal. I imagine that they’re both fascinating and harrowing, and would love to hear more about how they’re being used… perhaps as a cautionary tale of what would happen if Roe v. Wade were overturned?

This leads me to think about how we take stories and create a narrative – and from the narrative how we can move to action. Genetic Alliance used stories to pass the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act. WORTH is hoping that their stories about women’s experiences giving birth in prison while shackled will lead to policies to end this barbaric practice.

When it comes to using our stories to advocate for health care reform, most of us have stories about how our broken system affects us personally. For all of our readers out there—do you think our personal health care stories have the power to make reform happen this year?

What is your story?

Trading Ramen for Reproductive Choices

by Adrienne Ammerman, Communications Manager
National Women’s Law Center

Here at NWLC we join our partners at Planned Parenthood, advocates for women’s health across the country, and a majority of American voters* in celebrating the passage of legislation to make birth control affordable again for millions of women who access birth control at community health centers and college clinics.  

The nominal drug pricing provision, also known as the affordable birth control provision, was included in the 2009 omnibus appropriations bill that passed the U.S. Senate Wednesday.

As Lynn Harris explains in her post on Salon.com: 

“As a result of a SNAFU in the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act, which tightened eligibility requirements for low-cost drugs, women had been paying up to 10 times more per month for basic contraception (depending on whom you ask, the equivalent of approximately 385 packages of ramen noodles).”

To further break this down into dollars and cents, this means that women who once paid five to ten dollars each month for basic birth control have instead been paying 50 dollars or more– putting contraception out reach for countless women. 

It should go without saying that, at a time when our economy is tanking and thousands of Americans are losing access to health care every day, it’s more critical than ever that women have access to affordable birth control options in order to plan and space their pregnancies. It’s a great feeling to think that we may finally be getting to a place where common-sense and compassion rule.

Let's take a moment to publicly thank our champions: Senators Reid, Harkin, and Stabenow; Speaker Pelosi; and Representatives Crowley, Obey, Schakowsky, Kirk, and many other members of Congress who helped make this day possible. 

And now, let's direct our energy towards the battles ahead, including passing the Medicaid Family Planning State Option. 

*As we know from recent polling, almost three-fourths (73 percent) of voters strongly favor increasing access to affordable birth control for women at all income levels.

Pulling Back the Curtain on Health Insurer Misconduct (Again)

by Adrienne Ammerman, Communications Manager
National Women’s Law Center

This post is part of a series on Women and Health Reform.

Imagine, for a moment, that you are sick with ovarian cancer. Thankfully, you have good health insurance, are receiving excellent treatment, and expect to pay no more than a $3,000 deductible for the care you receive out-of-network. But then, in the midst of your recovery, you start receiving bills from your doctors— to the tune of more than $80,000.

This, as reported by the NY Times this past Tuesday, is what happened to Mary Jerome – a professor at Columbia University. Her subsequent complaints to New York Attorney General Cuomo’s office helped spur an investigation of “the puzzling gap between a doctor’s bill and what the insurer says it will cover.”

The culprit, as it turns out, is the database system the health insurance industry uses to determine how much of a medical bill is paid by the insurance company when a patient uses an out-of-network doctor. What the investigation uncovered, although unsurprising to those who place little trust in the insurance industry, is truly disturbing:

…The databases consistently understated the local “reasonable and customary” rates, which Ingenix [UnitedHealth’s business unit] collects from insurers. The report of the investigation’s findings described the industry calculations as “created in a well of conflicts” that produced information that was “unreliable, inadequate and wrong.”

The Proof is in the Pudding

by Adrienne Ammerman, Communications Manager
National Women's Law Center

According to a new report released by the American Psychological Association (APA), a woman who has an abortion in the first trimester is no more likely to have mental health issues than the general population in the United States, and there is no evidence to show that abortion causes mental health problems.

The report noted that women have abortions for many different reasons and within different personal, social, economic, and cultural circumstances –- all of which could affect a woman’s mental state following abortion. “Consequently,” the task force wrote, “global statements about the psychological impact of abortion can be misleading.”

As we’ve seen in states such as South Dakota, some politicians are more than happy to make inaccurate claims about the impact of abortion on a woman’s life. We here at NWLC hope that the report findings will put an end to prioritizing politics over women’s health. It’s only with accurate, trusted information that a woman can make the best decisions for her family and her future.

NWLC co-president Marcia Greenberger will take part in a live discussion around the new APA report on The Diane Rehm Show this Thursday, August 14, from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.

Other guests will include Wanda Franz of the National Right to Life Committee, Stephanie Simon of the Wall Street Journal, and Brenda Major, chairwoman of the APA’s Task Force on Mental Health and Abortion.

Check back here for more information and details!