Historic Recommendations on Women's Preventive Health Become Law

Amidst all of the terrifically depressing drivel around the debt ceiling, a ray of sunshine has broken through. Today, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, accepted the Institute of Medicine recommendations that key preventive health services for women, including contraception, be covered by insurance without co-pays or deductibles. As we wrote last week, this is a truly historic moment. Most notably, millions of women will now have greater access to the full range of FDA-approved birth control options. The new provisions could also be especially helpful in reducing health disparities across race and class, and very importantly, health care reform will now include a comprehensive, evidence-based framework for women's preventive health, and reflect the fundamental concept that women's health care is basic health care, and should not be subject to extra costs.

Once again, congratulations to our grantees, including Raising Women's Voices, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum, the National Women's Law Center, Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights, California Latinas for Reproductive Justice and West Virginia Free, who informed the Institute of Medicine's recommendations, advocated for Secretary Sebelius to accept them as law, and before and since the passage of health care reform, have worked tirelessly to bring health and justice to women, families and communities nationwide.

One Step Closer to Reforming Women’s -- and Communities’ -- Health Nationwide

[August 1, 2011 Update: Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, accepted the Institute of Medicine recommendations that key preventive health services for women, including contraception, be covered by insurance without co-pays or deductibles. More.]


After learning that a record number of anti-choice laws were passed in the first half of 2011, we were ready for some good news.

Now, thanks to an independent committee of medical and health experts charged with recommending how health care reform should consider women’s preventive health, we have something to cheer. If the Department of Health and Human Services accepts the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) findings, released last Wednesday, women may soon have far greater access to family planning and a range of services intended to help keep women—and their families and communities—healthy. 

Among the most groundbreaking—and contentious—of the committee’s evidence-based suggestions is that insurance companies eliminate co-pays and deductibles for contraception, paving the way for millions of women to access the complete range of FDA-approved methods. Once law, this would mark an enormous milestone in the women’s reproductive health movement, which has long sought to remove the barrier of cost to family planning.

Read more »

Health Care Reform Turns One!

Last month, in the wake of Congressional attempts to repeal health care reform, and just shy of the law's first anniversary this week, the Kaiser Family Foundation conducted a poll that produced startling results: in total, nearly half the country believed that the Affordable Care Act had either been repealed (22 percent) or didn't know enough to say whether it was still law (26 percent).

Wow. This means that not only is there still great confusion over the content of health care reform -- but that the far-right media machine touted the word "repeal" so much that a huge swath of the country began to think its demise was fait accompli. Which is far from the truth, of course: House Republicans knew their vote was a media stunt from the beginning, as repeal was unlikely to pass in the Senate and President Obama's veto was guaranteed.

To be fair, the Affordable Care Act is a mammoth piece of legislation, and with some of the provisions in effect, but many on hold until 2014, it is difficult for nearly anyone to discern how the law could -- or already does -- benefit them, their neighbors, or the country.

That's why this Wednesday, March 23, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, we must do two things: reeducate ourselves about its benefits, and recommit to doing our own PR for the law.

Our grantees -- national and community-based organizations advocating for women's reproductive rights, health and justice -- will help us teach ourselves and others. On March 23, and into next week, several of them will host webinars and events across the US, share fact sheets [pdf] and other useful materials, and provide a platform for women to tell their stories about how health care reform is already producing meaningful results in their lives.

A year into this historic vote -- thanks to groups like the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum, National Women's Law Center, and Raising Women's Voices, a coalition of which many of our grantees are core members -- we have even more information to make our case: Instead of simply discussing what the legislation could do, as we did before it became law, we can now discuss what it is doing -- the tangible difference it has made for women, families and communities to date.

And the stakes couldn't be higher. Amidst the haze of confusion produced by the Right's "job-killing" or deficit-swelling claims, conservative legislators continue to try to chip away at health care reform -- their most recent effort an attempt to deny federal funding for core components of the law. So while many apparently think "repeal" is a done deal, neither should we accept that "reform" is in the bag. Yes, the law is on the books. That is a tremendous victory. But as we celebrate on Wednesday, let's also work to be sure we'll be celebrating for years to come.

Vote to Repeal Health Care Law Still Looms

Had not the horrors in Arizona taken place this past weekend, today, the US House of Representatives would have staged a largely ceremonial but still dangerous vote on the repeal of health care reform. Ceremonial because even if the vote had passed the House, it wouldn't have passed the Senate (where Democrats still hold a slim majority); dangerous, because it continues to lay the foundation for a repeal of these laws at the state level and "dismantling the law piece by piece."

That would spell real trouble for millions of low- and middle-income people -- many of them women, children and people of color -- who would once again find themselves shut out of the health care system if the repeal takes place.

For women, the stakes in this debate are incredibly high. As our friends over at Womenstake, the National Women's Law Center blog, noted:

Repealing the law will return us to the days when women were treated like a pre-existing condition. Insurance companies will be allowed to drop coverage when an enrollee gets sick and deny women coverage if they’ve had a C-section, breast or cervical cancer, or received medical treatment for domestic or sexual violence. Repeal will keep 11 million women from receiving subsidies to help them buy affordable health insurance and prevent 4.5 million low-income women from becoming eligible for coverage through Medicaid.

Consider that just the tip of the iceberg. Our recent grantee Raising Women's Voices -- a leading voice on the importance of health care reform to women -- published a useful fact sheet on the benefits women gained from health care reform in 2010, and just highlighted a few more women friendly policies that will go into effect in 2011, if nothing changes. These include:

• Lowering prescription costs for seniors (many of them women);
• Providing free preventive services, such as vaccinations and cancer screenings, for seniors on Medicare; and
• Requiring insurers to give us rebates if they don't spend at least 80 percent of premium dollars on medical care.

But if repeal efforts gain any foothold, these benefits -- along with others like the requirement that new insurance plans provide preventive health care and screenings (such as pap smears and mammograms) for free -- would be gone with the wind.

Read more »

Health Care Reform Countdown - Take Action Today

The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote on health care reform legislation this week. Two Ms. Foundation grantees, the National Women's Law Center and Raising Women's Voices have called for your voice of support. Tell your representatives that "women and their families need you to pass the comprehensive health reform bills."

Tell Congress to Pass Comprehensive Health Care
Take action: National Women's Law Center
Take action: Raising Women's Voices

Health Reform - Raising Women's Voices Calls for Your Voice Now

Raising Women's Voices, a Ms. Foundation movement building and health care grantee asks you to contact your representative (especially if they are on the list below) and to call for health reform that maintains women's reproductive rights. They ask:

Tell them this is their chance to help women and our families get the health care we need. The current system is failing millions of us and they must take action to fix it.

Then make sure to let them know you're paying attention to what happens in Congress and won't accept any side agreements to allow a vote on Rep. Bart Stupak's anti-abortion language. Real reform must not roll back our rights to comprehensive reproductive health care!

The list below includes the representatives Raising Women's Voices wants to target. It includes Democratic representatives who not firmly in support of the bill (8 March 2010).

Firm no
Dan Boren (Okla.) *
Bobby Bright (Ala.) *
Artur Davis (Ala.) *
Larry Kissell (N.C.)
Dennis Kucinich (Ohio)
Frank Kratovil (Md.)
Walt Minnick (Idaho)
Collin Peterson (Minn.) *
Mike Ross (Ark.) *
Ike Skelton (Mo.) *
Gene Taylor (Miss.) *

Leaning No
Michael Arcuri (N.Y.) (Y)

Undecided
Brian Baird (Wash.)
Marion Berry (Ark.) * (Y)
John Boccieri (Ohio) *
Dennis Cardoza (Calif.) * (Y)
Kathleen Dahlkemper (Pa.) * (Y)
Steve Driehaus (Ohio) * (Y)
Bart Gordon (Tenn.) *
Mary Jo Kilroy (Ohio) (Y)
Ron Kind (Wis.) (Y)
Dan Maffei (N.Y.) (Y)
Scott Murphy (N.Y.)
Solomon Ortiz (Texas) * (Y)
Tom Perriello (Va.) * (Y)
Nick Rahall (W.Va.) * (Y)
John Spratt (S.C.) * (Y)
Bart Stupak (Mich.) * (Y)
John Tanner (Tenn.) *

Leaning Yes
Russ Carnahan (Mo.) (Y)
Jim Oberstar (Minn.) * (Y)

No comment
Mike Doyle (Pa.) * (Y)

* — Voted for Stupak amendment in Nov.
(Y) — Voted yes in November

Note: Spokesmen for Berry, Driehaus and Stupak on Monday said their bosses will vote against the bill unless the Stupak language is adopted. Stupak has said a dozen lawmakers who voted for the House measure could change their votes based on the abortion provisions.

Source: Dems on Healthcare, The Hill.

You can use the following form to contact your representative. Read the full message from Raising Women's Voices.

Ms. Foundation Health Care Grantees On the Move

Ms. Foundation grantees Raising Women's Voices and the Women of Color United for Health Reform continue to work collectively to mobilize women nationwide on behalf of health care reform and lift up women's support and solutions for change in Washington, D.C. and at rallies, town halls and on airwaves across the U.S. These two groups received support from the Ms. Foundation in August for a last-minute push to ensure the voices of women--especially low-income women and women of color--are amplified in the health care debate.

Today, in an unprecedented call organized by Women of Color United (a coalition headed up by the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, and the Black Women's Health Imperative), over 400 women of color activists discussed the need for just and inclusive reform in a conversation with Tina Tchen, Director of the White House Office of Public Liaison and Executive Director for the White House Council on Women and Girls and Caya Lewis, Outreach Director for the Health and Human Services Office of Health Reform and Former Health Staffer for Senator Edward Kennedy.

Recently, RWV co-founder Lois Uttley did a series of interviews with radio stations around the country on stations like WBAI in New York City; WHON in Richmond, Indiana; WIZM in La Crosse, Wisconsin; WGCV in Columbia, South Carolina; KXCI in Tucson, Arizona; KSFR in Santa Fe, NM; and on the Bev Smith show which airs in major cities nationwide. Last week, Women of Color United organized 28 activists in eight key states (AK, AR, FL, IN, ME, NC, ND, SD) to help place op-eds in their local papers.

Both groups have just released valuable new resources. Women of Color United issued "Health Reform Imperatives for Women and Communities of Color" and a fact sheet about women of color and the need for reform. RWV issued "What Women Want vs. What Women Get," a quick and easy analysis of the health care bills on the table and eight straightforward talking points for key improvements. The talking points are below and online [pdf]; there's also a longer version [pdf] with more detail -- check them out, pass them along, and RAISE YOUR VOICE for just and inclusive health care reform!

Raising Women's Voices
From Our Kitchen Table
What Women Want: The Health Reform Edition

1. Health coverage should start at birth and end at death, with no interruptions. We shouldn’t lose it when we change jobs, get divorced or move from one state to another.

2. Make it affordable. Use a sliding scale. Everybody should pay something, but some of us can pay more than others. Offer subsidies for those who can’t pay very much.

3. Make it fair. Don’t charge women more than men. Don’t let insurance companies refuse to cover people because they have diabetes, cancer, asthma or any other “pre-existing condition.”

4. Make it simple. Tell insurance companies to stop tricking us into buying policies that don’t cover the care we need. There should be no hidden clauses or surprises.

5. Make it better. Give us the high quality care that this country is capable of delivering, instead of extra tests and unneeded services that feed the bottom-line for drug companies or for-profit hospitals and medical systems at our expense. And fix the system so that poor people, people of color, people with disabilities and LGBT people get high quality care too.

6. Keep politics, politicians and ideology out of the decisions about which benefits should be included. This is health care, people!

7. Cover everybody! Stop arguing about whether we should cover undocumented immigrants or force legal immigrants to wait five years to be eligible. If they are living here as our neighbors, we want them to be healthy. Fixing the immigration system is a separate issue.

8. This should be a wellness system, not a sickness system. Sure, we want to have medical care when we get sick, but better preventive care and stronger public health measures in our own communities can help us stay healthy.

Learn more and find out how to add your voice to the debate on the Raising Women's Voices and Women of Color United websites.

Ms. Foundation Grants Support Women's Health Care Reform Justice

The Ms. Foundation is pleased to announce two rapid response grants to bolster women's organizing for equitable health care in the final stretches of the reform debate. Raising Women's Voices (RWV), a Ms. Foundation grantee since early 2008, will work to strengthen the capacity of its vast grassroots network to advocate before legislators in key states and mobilize more women in the fight for reform. The Women of Color United for Health Reform (led by National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, and Black Women's Health Imperative), will use this new support to amplify the priorities of women and communities of color among key members of Congress. RWV and Women of Color United will work hand in hand to coordinate their advocacy efforts inside the Beltway and beyond.

Visit the Raising Women's Voices website for analysis and to find out what you can do to support just and equitable health care reform.

Also, check out the terrific new site, Women and Health Care Reform, for extensive information about the health care debate and what's at stake for women.

Grassroots Women's Voices Rally for Health Care Reform in NYC

Congratulations to Ms. Foundation grantee Raising Women's Voices on a successful rally in New York City for just and inclusive health care reform! RWV organized the Women's Walk for Health Reform, which drew attention from the New York Times and brought together 14 NYC-based organizations, including another Ms. grantee, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, to advocate for women's access to quality, affordable health care. RWV's Women's Walk was part of a joint rally, attended by anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 people including representatives of over 75 groups. The entire event was organized by NYC for Change, Health Care for America Now and Organizing for America.

According to Raising Women's Voices, the rally represented "a wide array of health reform supporters -- from unions to physicians to low-income people and even Upper West Side baby boomers -- [who] walked to Times Square from hospitals all across the city."

Read the Raising Women's Voices blog for more on the rally and watch a New York Times slide show of the event.

Raising Women's Voices is hosting or participating in a number of other events, rallies and town halls across the U.S. Join in and add your voice if you can!

Photographs: Diane Greene Lent

Health Care Reform Updates from Raising Women's Voices

We wanted to share some helpful updates--some of which deserve applause, or at least a sigh of relief, and some a frightening "gulp"--from the blog of Raising Women's Voices, a Ms. Foundation grantee that's closely involved in and following developments of the heated health care debate:

Kucinich proposes single-payer amendment
Dennis Kucinich proposed an amendment in the House of Representatives committee on Education and Labor last Friday that would make states able to set up single-payer systems independent of the federal government. His amendment passed in committee, so it may end up in the conglomerate health care bill at the end of the line.

Successes for comprehensive sex education in the House Energy and Commerce Committee
Last night there were amendments to the Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 proposed and subsequently shot down by the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House of Representatives. These amendments would have expanded abstinence only education programs among other things.

The issue of abortion in health reform
This article from the New York Times gives an updated look into what the White House is saying about abortion coverage in health care plans in reform. Even though federal funds are explicitly excluded from funding non-rape, non-incest abortions for recipients of Medicaid, Republicans are worried about federal funds going toward abortions. This could potentially be the case, if subsidies given by the government to women of low income are used for abortion care.

Some of the quotes from the article are painfully out of date, with quotes from Kathleen Sebelius from April that are actually just wrong. She is quoted in the article as saying that most health insurance plans don’t cover abortion services. This isn’t true, and the Guttmacher Institute has found that about 89% of private insurance plans cover abortion care.

In other news...
RH Reality Check outlines the amendments put forward by Steve Buyer (R-IN) proposing higher premiums for those who engage in unprotected sex. Wow. Check out this other article ["Women's Concerns Often Missing in Health Care Debate"] from the AFL-CIO website that cites our own Amy Allina from the National Women’s Health Network, and this article that makes the case for including immigrants in health care reform.

Read more updates and continue to follow the health care reform debate on the Raising Women's Voices blog!

Ms. Foundation Grantees in the News - Congressional Edition

Two Ms. Foundation grantees are in the news with testimony and advocacy to Congress on Veterans' Affairs and Health Care.

Anuradha Bhagwati, Executive Director of Ms. Foundation grantee Service Women's Action Network, testified before the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs on the challenges faced by women in accessing health care and benefits, and in the processing of Military Sexual Trauma (MST) claims.

The Veterans' Administration routinely rejects claims for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Military Sexual Trauma (MST), regardless of the evidence a veteran submits.

Bhagwati's prepared testimony concluded with the following call for change:

Recommendations to Bridge the Gaps in Care for Women Veterans:

1. Require that the VA remedy the shortage of female physicians, female mental health providers and MST counselors at VA hospitals nationwide. Also require that the VA provide the option of female-only counseling groups for female combat veterans, and female- as well as male-only counseling groups for female and male survivors of MST.


2. Require the VA to implement a program to train, educate, and certify all staff, including administrative and medical, in federal Equal Opportunity regulations and MST, to reduce a discriminatory and hostile atmosphere toward women veterans.


3. Require the VA to increase accessibility of fee-based care for veterans (both male and female) who have been diagnosed with Military Sexual Trauma.


4. Require day-care facilities for veterans who are parents, as well as more flexible evening or weekend hours for working veterans and parents, at every VA hospital.


5. Require the VA to conduct a study into what percentage of claims are denied with a breakdown by gender as well as type of injury/condition, including both combat-related PTSD, and PTSD or other conditions resulting from MST.


6. Require that VBA claims officers undergo intensive training and education in MST and MST-related medical conditions.


7. Require that the VBA’s submission requirements for MST claims reflect a reasonable standard, such as proof of MST counseling during or after service, and diagnosis of MST-related medical conditions.


8. Require the DOD to conduct a retention study to determine the total impact of MST on re-enlistment rates of servicemembers.

Ms. Foundation grantee Raising Women's Voices is working to engage a broad array of women's health advocates in local, state and national health reform discussions to ensure that women's concerns will be addressed and the health care we get will be health care for all. They are cited for their mobilization in a Newsweek article about the negotiations on the subject of abortion and health care reform between Senators Grassley and Baucus. (See Raising Women's Voices and others in our earlier post Reproductive Health: Once Again, Ripe for Conservative Compromise.)

Reproductive Health: Once Again, Ripe for Conservative Compromise

With the health care reform debate in full swing, it's become frighteningly clear that key elements of reproductive health care are in danger of being barred from whatever package emerges from Congress. The National Women's Law Center, a Ms. Foundation grantee, today wrote, "Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee are demanding the introduction of health care reform language that will strip women's access to abortion." And it's not just Republicans. As Time Magazine reports, a group of conservative House Democrats sent a letter at the end of June to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stating that they "cannot support any health-care-reform proposal unless it explicitly excludes abortion from the scope of any government-defined or subsidized health-insurance plan."

Anti-choice demands from both sides of the aisle would have dangerous implications for women--and their families, and their communities. They would further cement the deeply discriminatory Hyde Amendment, which since 1976, has prohibited the use of federal funds to cover abortion, with an overwhelming impact on low-income women and women of color. They could also prohibit coverage of abortion for millions of women who are now guaranteed it by their private health insurance.

So, once again, women's health and human rights are framed as a "wedge issue" and as such, considered ripe for compromise. And it isn't just women, of course. As Raising Women's Voices, another Ms. Foundation grantee at the forefront of the health care debate, writes, "If conservatives get their way on health reform, we will soon have quality, affordable health care for all --- except for women, terminally ill patients, gays and lesbians, people with HIV and anybody else conservatives don't like!" And let's not forget that women's health is intimately connected to the health and economic well-being of children, families and communities. Nobody can afford to let this pass.

The Senate Finance Committee is meeting this week. Take action by contacting your senator at help_comments@help.senate.gov if s/he is on the Committee (find out here) and urge her/him to refuse such politically-motivated exclusions and ensure access to comprehensive reproductive health services for all women.