The Gavel: Women and Health Insurance Reform

August 6th, 2009 by Karina

In our current health care system, women often face higher health costs than men and multiple other barriers to health insurance. Fewer women are eligible for employer-based coverage, and comprehensive coverage in the individual health care market is often unavailable or prohibitively expensive. As a result, many women are under- or uninsured, and simply can’t afford the services they need.

This afternoon, Chair of the Joint Economic Committee Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) released a new report examining what’s at stake for women in the health insurance reform debate. The report, Comprehensive Health Insurance Reform: An Essential Prescription for Women, details how our current health insurance system isn’t working for women and how women are more vulnerable to high health care costs than men. The JEC also found that since the recession began in December 2007, American women have lost 1.6 million jobs — many seeing their health insurance disappear with their jobs — and over a million women have lost insurance because their husband lost his job:

Other key findings in the report:

As a consequence of single mothers’ job loss, at least 121,000 children have lost health insurance coverage since December 2007.

75% of women between age 55 and 64 report delaying health care because their own coverage was jeopardized by a spouse’s transition onto Medicare.

28% of all young women (ages 19-24) do not have health insurance coverage. The weak job market has hit young workers particularly hard, with the unemployment rate amongst young women at 15.7% in June 2009, the highest in a quarter century and substantially higher than the national unemployment rate of 9.5%.

An estimated 64 million women lack adequate health insurance.

Over half of all medical bankruptcies are filed by female-headed households.

While many Americans are taking desperate measures to cope with the medical bills that pile up following an illness, women are more likely than men to deplete their savings accounts in order to pay medical bills. One-third (33%) of under-insured women deplete their savings to pay medical bills, as compared to 25% of under-insured men.

The health consequences of inadequate coverage are more severe for women than for men and women are more likely than men to run into problems receiving adequate medical care. Over a quarter (27%) of women had health problems requiring medical attention but were not able to see a doctor, compared to 21% of men. Similarly, nearly a quarter (22%) of women reported that they were unable to fill a needed prescription, as compared to 15% of men.

18% of all women report that they delayed or did not receive needed medical care because they were unable to take time off work. Over a quarter (27%) of all low-income women report that an inability to take time off work prohibited them from obtaining needed medical care.

Because women are less likely than men to be employed full-time, they are less likely to be eligible for employer-provided health benefits. 26% of employed women work part-time, and are therefore excluded from their employers’ health insurance benefit plans. In contrast, just 13% of working men are part-time employees.

At the press conference, Sarah Wildman of Washington, DC shared her experience with discriminatory health insurance practices. As a self-employed woman, Sarah had an insurance policy she bought through the individual market (her only option for coverage) and when she and her husband had a baby, they were shocked to receive bills for well over $20,000 in hospital expenses. The policy Sarah had been paying for capped her birth-related expenses at $3,000–covering only 15% of her maternity costs:

America’s Affordable Health Choices Act is critical to women’s physical and fiscal health — addressing not only the current lack of access to quality affordable health care, but also skyrocketing health care costs. Key provisions in the bill for women:

Eliminates co-pays on recommended preventive services such as breast cancer screenings delivered by Medicare, Medicaid, the new public health insurance option and private plan options in the Health Insurance Exchange. Over a number of years, all private health plans would be required to cover preventive benefits without cost-sharing.

Prohibits new plans from charging women more than men by banning gender rating. This protection will extend to health plans offered by employers over time as well.

Includes coverage of maternity services as a benefit category in the new basic benefit package. All plans in the Exchange would be required to cover maternity services and over time, plans outside the Exchange would be required to do so as well.

Bans the insurance industry practice of rejecting applicants with pre-existing conditions, which has kept women with histories of health problems — even survivors of domestic violence — from accessing individual coverage.

Requires employers to offer adequate insurance coverage to their employees or pay into the system to help their workers afford coverage through the Health Insurance Exchange.

Offers affordability credits to ensure that insurance available in the Exchange is affordable for women and everyone with an income below 400% of poverty.

All plans within the Exchange, and outside the Exchange over time, will be required to contain a standardized annual out-of-pocket spending limit (yearly caps on what you pay) to prevent women and their families from facing bankruptcy due to medical expenses.

Quality, affordable health care is vital for all Americans, but as the JEC report documents, American women face unique challenges and burdens in our current health care system. America’s Affordable Health Choices Act ensures that if you like your plan, you keep it — but provides long overdue insurance reforms for everyone and new solutions for the 64 million uninsured, and millions more who are under-insured, American women.

source: http://speaker.house.gov/blog/

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Is the US ready to go big time with soccer?

Sepp Blatter, the President of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA),  discusses soccer with the  Wall Street Journal.

If the US wants to be an international player and  enhance international diplomacy, soccer is an excellent way to do it. Soccer is a true international sport unlike baseball and American football.



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NEW YORK — FIFA president Sepp Blatter wants to popularize soccer in the United States. He hopes he can make a fan of President Barack Obama.

Blatter plans to extend a personal invitation to Obama to attend the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa when the two meet at the White House on Monday.

Soccer is a wonderful family sport for both boys and girls. Leagues can be established with a minimum of fuss and expense.

Soccer is probably the greatest international sport in the world and the FIFA World Cup is attended by most of the world's leaders. It provides an opportunity for President Obama to make more diplomatic inroads in the international arena.

Rightardia hopes that Mr. Blatter is successful.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/26/top-soccer-official-to-pe_n_245074.html

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Why European Football is better than American Football

This week there is a Title IX meeting in Washington that is being attended by top female athletes (see the companion piece. ) I have been involved with recreational soccer since my children were six or seven. There were always bot a boy's and girl's league unlike American football which has almost always been exclusively a male sport. 
 
Florida has been a huge budget problem like California. Some of the budget problems relate to eight years of ill-advised tax cuts by Jeb Bush and the Florida GOP. The Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) cut high school sports by 20 per cent with the exception of--you guessed it—football and cheerleading. The FHSAA is being sued under Title IX. 

By the way, the US men's soccer team made an improbable comeback in the Confederation's Cup which is a dry run for the FIFA World Cup . it is in the semis-finals and will play Spain next. 
 
When I was a kid if you didn't have above average athletic ability, your chances of playing sports past elementary or middle school was limited. Football was one of the more expensive sports because parents had to buy an assortment of expensive protective gear. Hockey is the US is even worse and many parent shell out more than US$1000 dollars for skates, shoulder pads and other protective gear.

European football or what we call soccer was uncommon even 20 years ago in the US. The only continuous action sport that kids played back then was basketball. I never particularly liked baseball because a lot of the players would just sat around waiting for something to happen. It was a hurry and wait type of sport with the innings and field changes. I always wondered about cricket, but this sport is rarely played at all in the US. What sort of sport could have a score like 257-0? The losing team must feel terrible after such a drubbing.

American football is also a hurry up and wait sport because each side gets a series of four downs to move the ball ten years. It is not continuous action like rugby. With all the time outs and field injuries, American football games creep along. With all of the strategizing on the field, a game with 5 minutes left on the clock can take 20 minutes to finish. In professional football, once the instant replays stated to mollify fans and coaches, the entire game crept nearly came to a standstill. The National Football League finally made some reforms with time outs to speed up the game. But American football will never be a continuous action sport like international football.

A football play starts when the center hikes the football backwards between to his legs to the quarterback. The quarterback may stand directly behind the center, giving the sport a homo-erotic look to the uninitiated. In the early days of the sport they experimented with different ways of starting plays, but none work as well as the homo-like-hike. Once the quarterback received the ball from the center, he could runs pass, hand off or lateral the ball to to other offensive backs or ends.

I always thought American professional sports were pretentious. We have the World Series in baseball, but no teams outside of the US and Canada play it. Another US sport, softball, was dropped from the Olympics.

When my children were very young we started them in soccer. It doesn't take much to put a soccer team together just soccer shoes, knee pads, some uniforms and soccer balls. The sport is continuous action and only stopped after a goal, a ball going out of bounds or an injury. One of my children played recreational soccer until he was 18. My second child played club soccer until he was 14. He traveled all over the state playing other club teams in tournaments. Club soccer was an essential step for kids who wanted to play high school soccer. A one hour game usually took an hour and half unlike football that could take 2-1/2 hours.

America needs to move away from insular sports like baseball and American football and into international sports. I have watched the last two FIFA World Cups for both men and women and it is exciting to see a real international tournament with national teams competing against each other. Of course, I have to watch the live games on Spanish TV because the US stations don't pick up the international games live. Soccer is much bigger sport in Mexico than it is in the US.

I was also elated when I read yesterday that President Obama will attend the opening of the Men's 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. This event will be attended by all sorts of world leaders.

Of course, he will also have to attend 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup in Germany. His wife and two daughters would be unhappy if he he missed the women's competition. Traditionally the US woman's team has been stronger than the men's team.

We now how a more cosmopolitan president than our last leader. He has been giving sports a big push including intentional soccer. International sports is another means of diplomacy. The US needs to start being a better international player. President Obama is up to the task. The FIFA World Cups are a good place for the president to visit.

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