Womenstake

Your New Healthcare: A Closer Look at Some Major Improvements

by Brigette Courtot, Policy Analyst,
and Zoe Bartholomay, Intern,
National Women's Law Center

Until now, access to basic, necessary care has been limited for too many women. However, the new health reform law provides a remedy with provisions that ensure that insurance plans cover the health services women need, without cost barriers.

Our new law provides a national standard for health benefits called the "essential health benefits package". All new individual and small group health plans must meet the standard, meaning they must cover several benefits that have often been been difficult or impossible for women to acquire (especially in individual health plans). These include maternity, mental health, and prescription drug coverage.

Fewer Co-Pays on Preventive Care: Another Victory for Women's Health

by Brigette Courtot, Policy Analyst,
and Zoe Bartholomay, Intern,
National Women's Law Center

Another good thing coming from our new health reform law is much-needed support for women's preventive care! For too long, co-pays have kept low-income women from seeking preventive care for themselves and their children. 

Although women are more likely than men to seek preventive care, they are also more likely to forego this care due to cost. Co-pays have been shown to deter women from obtaining everything from dental work to vital cancer screenings.

Fortunately, a provision taking effect as early as September will provide free preventive services and screenings for women and free immunizations and screenings for children!

Improvements in Medicaid's (the insurance program for low-income people) preventive coverage are also on the way, and are especially important for women, since women account for about three-quarters of all adults in that program. 

For instance, this October, more pregnant women on Medicaid will gain access to comprehensive tobacco addiction cessation services for free, including counseling and both prescription and over-the-counter treatments.

For more details on health reform and preventive care for women, as well as many other issues, check out our Reform Matters Factsheets.

Health Reform: Benefiting Women in Small Businesses Right NOW

by Brigette Courtot, Policy Analyst, 
National Women's Law Center

So many good things are coming out of our new health reform law that it's tough to keep track of it all! In fact, the earliest benefits are now several months old, like the small business tax credit. The tax credit, which works as an incentive for small businesses to offer (or continue offering) health insurance to their workers, took effect immediately since the credit is available to small businesses for the current (2010) tax year.

It's a health reform benefit that is especially important for women, given that: a) the smallest businesses have the most trouble affording health insurance, and women-owned businesses are generally small in relation to male-owned businesses; and b) small businesses that don’t offer employee health coverage tend to have larger proportions of female workers. To learn more about this immediate health reform benefit and what it means for women, check out our fact sheet on the subject.

Health Reform Status Check: Our New Patient’s Bill of Rights

by Brigette Courtot, Policy Analyst, 
National Women's Law Center

The health reform law is three months old today. Its benefits are already apparent, from the health insurance tax credit for small businesses that is available this (2010) tax year to the $250 rebate checks for Medicare enrollees experiencing a coverage gap due to the prescription drug “donut hole.” And yesterday, three federal agencies issued regulations to implement several more provisions of the law which together comprise a new “Patient’s Bill of Rights” that will protect women across the country from some of the nastiest insurance company practices:

• All health plans issued or renewed after September of this year will be prohibited from using lifetime limits (i.e. no more maximum caps on what they’ll spend on your health benefits over the course of your lifetime). This is especially important for women with high health care expenses, such as those with disabilities, chronic conditions, or serious illnesses. Annual limits on coverage will also be restricted (i.e. maximum annual caps cannot be lower than $750,000 per year) for most plans starting in September, and then ultimately prohibited by 2014.
• All plans issued or renewed after September will also be banned from rescinding or taking away health insurance because of an unintentional mistake made on an application.
• New plans issued after September must guarantee that women can access obstetric and gynecologic care directly, without any prior approval or a referral, and that enrollees can choose their own primary care doctor or pediatrician from the plan’s network. This protection ensures that women get the care they need, when they need it, and from a provider of their choice.
• Most health plans issued or renewed after September are barred from rejecting applications or excluding coverage for children based on their pre-existing conditions, providing relief and peace-of-mind to mothers and other caregivers of children with disabilities, chronic conditions, or serious illnesses.

Maternity Care and Health Reform: What’s the Story?

by Brigette Courtot, Policy Analyst, 
National Women's Law Center

Two recent news pieces in the New York Times and Washington Post have zeroed in on how the new federal health reform law affects women’s access to maternity care. NWLC has been monitoring this issue as part of our Reform Matters project for years, starting with our groundbreaking 2008 report on the challenges women face in the individual health insurance market, when we found that the vast majority of available plans did not cover maternity care. 

Now that health reform is a reality, we’re continuing our work to raise awareness about the many provisions in the health reform law that help women and families get the high-quality maternity care they need. Our new fact sheet “What Women Need to Know about Health Reform: Maternity Care” is just one of a series of topical fact sheets intended for anyone who cares about women’s health and wants to learn more about a specific aspect of the health reform law (other topics include the small business tax credit, making health care affordable, preventive care, and long-term services and supports). 

And if you’re wondering how women in a particular state will fare, check out our set of fact sheets on what health reform means for women in each state, from Alabama to Wyoming. Keep checking back, because we’ll continue to add new materials to these collections throughout the summer!

Emergency Assistance for State Medicaid Programs: Women are Depending On It!

by Brigette Courtot, Policy Analyst, 
National Women's Law Center

The need for Medicaid—the federal-state health insurance program for low-income people—is greater than ever right now as families continue to struggle with unemployment, income loss, and the consequent loss of their health insurance.  

Families who have never had to rely on public health insurance before are depending on Medicaid for access to the health care they need—this critical program could mean the difference between getting a cancer screening or skipping it; between filling a prescription for heart disease medication or going without; or between heading to the doctor when flu symptoms arise or trying to make do with home remedies.

But with states struggling to balance their budgets in the face of severe revenue shortfalls, Medicaid programs are on the chopping block. While the new health reform law stipulates that states cannot reduce their eligibility levels for Medicaid, there are other harmful cuts that cash-strapped states can make—they can reduce benefits, pay Medicaid providers less, or increase cost-sharing for the families enrolled in the program.

New Moms, Older Moms, and Health Reform

by Brigette Courtot, Policy Analyst, 
National Women's Law Center

To kick off NWLC's recognition of National Women’s Health Week, and in light of yesterday’s Mother’s Day holiday, I’ve been considering how health reform will improve mothers' health across the lifespan. Whether you’re pregnant, a new mother, or have had the role for decades, there's plenty in the health reform law worth noting. For moms-to-be, the law requires all new health insurance plans sold to individuals and small businesses to cover maternity and newborn care (larger group health plans are already required to cover maternity care, thanks to the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978). It also advances the important goal of increased choice in maternity care providers, by requiring equal reimbursement for nurse-midwives under Medicare and ensuring reimbursement for birth centers under Medicaid. For new moms, the health reform law stipulates that employers must provide reasonable time and a suitable location for nursing mothers to express breast milk. It includes mandatory federal funding for the creation of maternal, infant, and early childhood visitation programs that offer in-home services to pregnant women and new families, and it also devotes new resources to education, treatment, and support programs for women with postpartum depression. And for elderly moms ― and the daughters who most often care for them (FYI, the typical family caregiver is a 46-year-old woman who provides more than 20 hours per week of care and support to her mother) ― the health reform law includes several provisions to strengthen our long-term care system. For instance, it creates a new voluntary insurance program to help women pay for the long-term care services they need (including care provided by family caregivers) to continue living independently in the community.

National Women’s Health Week is about encouraging women to take simple steps for a healthier, happier, and longer life, but the reality is that women often can’t access the services and supports they need to take these steps. Fortunately, it's a brand new day for our health system. The new health reform law expands access to affordable health insurance for women of all ages ― regardless of whether they choose to become mothers ― and does so much more to make it easier for women to get the care and support they need, when they need it. If you spent yesterday celebrating mothers, take some time today to celebrate all that health reform does for them.

$10,622 Could Close the Health Care Affordability Gap

by Brigette Courtot, Policy Analyst, 
National Women's Law Center 

Women are currently more likely than men to skip or delay necessary health care because of cost and to struggle with medical bills or debt. Being female also significantly increases the odds of filing for “medical bankruptcy”. These are just a few indicators of the health care “affordability gap” that has long existed between the sexes.

Notably, the new health reform law does a lot to narrow the affordability gap. It puts affordable health care within reach for millions of low- and middle-income women with federal health insurance subsidies. And it requires all health plans to cap annual out-of-pocket spending and prohibits annual and lifetime benefit limits, so that a single illness or injury can no longer spell financial devastation for a woman or her family.

Health Reform Will Help My Hair Stylist (and Millions of Other Women Who Can’t Afford Health Insurance)

by Brigette Courtot, Policy Analyst, 
National Women's Law Center 

When my hair stylist Mila gently scolded me last week for going too long without a trim, my excuse was the passage of federal health reform—work has been really busy, after all, and hair just hasn’t been a priority. She wondered whether I could answer her questions about the new health reform law; in particular, would it help her get health insurance?

The hair salon where she works has never offered health insurance to stylists. She’s also a single mom on a budget (her 8-year-old son has dependent coverage through his father’s employer) so buying health insurance on her own in the incredibly-flawed individual market has always proven too expensive. For most of her adult life, Mila has been uninsured, paying for the occasional doctor’s visit out-of-pocket and hoping to avoid serious illness or injury.

The new health reform law will help Mila and millions of other women who currently can’t afford health insurance. Beginning in 2014, women like Mila who don’t have access to affordable employer-sponsored insurance (and who earn too much to qualify for the public Medicaid program) will be able to buy coverage through a new easy-to-use “insurance shopping place” called a Health Insurance Exchange. 

Rising Maternal Mortality Rates Deserve Attention, and Health Reform Will Help

by Grace Lesser, Program Assistant,
and Brigette Courtot, Policy Analyst,
National Women's Law Center

“Deadly Delivery” sounds like the name of a horror film. All the more disturbing, however, is that it is actually the title of a recent Amnesty International report on maternal mortality in the United States. The report highlights the fact that that the rate of maternal deaths in our country has more than doubled in the past ten years, rising from 6.6 deaths per 100,000 births in 1996 to 13.3 deaths per 100,000 births in 2006. Many of these deaths could have been prevented with improved access to high-quality health care. And as with most health outcomes, there are significant health disparities for maternal mortality rates—for instance, black women are nearly four times more likely to die of pregnancy-related complications than white women. 

Many factors are related to the troubling state of maternal health in the U.S. For instance, the current national C-section rate of 31.8 percent (more than double the rate recommended by the WHO) exposes women to unnecessary surgical risks, while increasing the risk of potential pregnancies, and contributing to future C-sections. Prenatal and postpartum care are important components of a healthy pregnancy; for instance, maternal mortality is three to four times higher in women who do not receive prenatal care.