NWLC Joins Women Senators to Highlight Women & Health Reform
On September 30, 2009, NWLC Co-President, Marcia Greenberger, joined Senators Barbara Mikulski, Amy Klobuchar, Jeanne Shaheen, and Kay Hagan at a press conference with women’s advocates to discuss how health insurance reform will improve women’s access to quality health care. She gave a statement highlighting the importance of what women have at stake in health care reform.
STATEMENT OF MARCIA GREENBERGER
CO-PRESIDENT, NATIONAL WOMEN’S LAW CENTER
September 30, 2009
When Senator Jon Kyl said last week that insurance companies shouldn’t be required to provide maternity coverage because, as a man, he doesn’t need it, we saw what women are up against in this health care fight. We saw how some elected officials still don’t get it.
They don’t get that one in four women says that she is unable to pay her medical bills.
They don’t get that women are more likely than men to delay or go without needed health care because of high medical costs.
They don’t get that, as research by the National Women’s Law Center found, women who have to buy insurance directly from insurers are often charged more than men for the exact same coverage, a practice known as gender rating. That practice is as capricious as it is unfair. Our research found that one insurer in Missouri charged 40-year-old women a whopping 140 percent more than men while another charged women 15 percent more.
They don’t get that, as our research showed, it is still legal in 8 states and the District of Columbia for insurers to reject women for coverage if they are survivors of domestic violence.
They don’t get that insurers can reject women simply for having had a Cesarean section.
They don’t get that in the capitals of Hawaii, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota, we couldn’t find a single insurer through the leading online company offering health insurance to individuals that included maternity coverage at all.
They don’t get that of the 3,500 insurance plans the Center reviewed, only 12 percent offered comprehensive maternity coverage.
They don’t get what it means to be one of the millions of women--18 percent in all –who have no health insurance whatsoever. Or what it means to be an uninsured woman facing financial and personal ruin when she learns that she has cancer or heart disease and no way to pay for surgery.
And it is not only the individual insurance market that discriminates against women. Employers whose workers are predominantly female also face unfair practices. When Care & Comfort, a woman-owned Maine business that provides home health services, was told a year ago that its health premiums would rise by 38 percent, the insurer cited the gender of the employees.
Everyone in this country shares the need for affordable, accessible, and comprehensive health care, but women have unique roles as patients, as family health care decision makers, and as caregivers—whether paid or unpaid.
Yet our current health care system fails to meet the needs of far too many women—especially low-income women and women of color. Women need health care reform with premiums and out-of-pocket costs that are affordable and with no annual and lifetime benefit caps. Women need an end to harmful insurance industry practices such as gender rating or being rejected for coverage based on health status or pre-existing conditions.
Women need comprehensive benefits, including reproductive health care. No woman should lose coverage that she has now, including coverage for abortion care. And low- and moderate-income women need health care reform that doesn’t bankrupt their families or lead them to go without care.
Senator Kyl and other opponents of reform need to finally get the message: Women and their families need meaningful health care reform now. Women will be watching what they do. Thank you.