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Health Care Reform: ObamaCare Benefits Women

WLP is committed to improving access to comprehensive, quality, and affordable health care for women. To that end, WLP is working to ensure that health care reform ensures that women obtain essential health care benefits and that discrimination in benefits and pricing is eliminated.  WLP is advocating on both the federal and state level for comprehensive health care for women, including contraceptive coverage and maternity coverage (prenatal, delivery, and post-partum).

Why the Affordable Care Act is Important for Women

  • Women comprise a disproportionate share of health care consumers, often managing multiple chronic conditions and paying more out-of-pocket costs, causing their health care to be prohibitively expensive and frequently unaffordable.1
  • Women routinely forgo needed services and care. Indeed in 2008, one in four women reported going without necessary health care because they could not afford it.2
  • Women make the vast majority of health care decisions. The Department of Labor estimates that women make approximately 80% of health care decisions for their family.3
  • Traditionally, health insurance plans sold in the individual market have failed to provide comprehensive maternity services; in 2009 only 13% of plans sold in the individual market included comprehensive maternity coverage.4
  • Historically, women in the majority of states have been charged more for health insurance than men - a practice known as gender rating.
  • Women have difficulty finding coverage options that offer the full range of reproductive health services they need, such as family planning, maternity care, and abortion care.

Uninsured Women in Pennsylvania5

  • The most recent data demonstrates that approximately 535,000 women, over 13% of women in Pennsylvania, are uninsured.
  • Of the women who are uninsured in Pennsylvania, 56% are currently employed.
  • There is a significant disparity of insurance rates among communities of color in Pennsylvania; 22% of Hispanic women and 19.1% of Black women are uninsured compared to 12.1% of White women.
  • The majority of uninsured women in Pennsylvania are below 200% of the federal poverty line (FPL), just $21,780 annually for an individual and roughly $37,000 for a family of three.

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1Elizabeth M. Patchias and Judy Waxman, "Women and Health Coverage, the Affordability Gap," National Women's Law Center, April 2007, http://www.commonwealthfund.org/usr_doc/1020
_Patchias_women_hlt_coverage_affordability_gap.pdf

2Ibid

3US Department of Labor, "General Facts on Women and Job Based Health," http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/newsroom/fshlth5.html

4Brigette Courtot and Julia Kaye, "Still Nowhere to Turn," The National Women's Law Center, 2009, http://www.nwlc.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/stillnowheretoturn.pdf

5National Women's Law Center analysis of 2009 and 2010 health insurance data from the U.S. Census Bureau Current Population Survey's (CPS) 2010 and 2011 Annual Social and Economic (ASEC) Supplements, available at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstc/cps_table_creator.html

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