Most people don't know that the Affordable Care Act is the strongest women's health law since Medicare. If you look around the country you can see millions of American women getting more freedom in their health care choices.
It's about time.
Despite all the progress women have made in the workplace, when President Obama took office less than half of us had the option of getting health insurance through our employer. That meant that many of us had to look for coverage in the individual market where the insurance companies had most of the power. If you had a breast cancer diagnosis, they could deny your application. Sometimes, they could even deny you coverage if you had been a victim of domestic violence. If your child had diabetes, they could deny him or her coverage, too.
Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, that's changing. As of last fall, insurers can no longer deny coverage to children because of their pre-existing health conditions. And in 2014, this protection will extend to all Americans.
That's not just important for women who are currently locked out of the health insurance market. It also makes an enormous difference for women with insurance who will have the freedom to make important choices, like changing jobs, without worrying about health coverage.
The law is also bringing greater fairness to women and families. Before the law was enacted, a 22-year-old woman could pay 150 percent more than a 22-year-old man for the exact same health insurance. Yet her coverage often failed to meet her needs. Thanks to the law, in 2014 it will be illegal to charge women extra for health insurance.
And starting in 2014, new, competitive health insurance marketplaces will be established where plans will be required to cover newborn and maternity care.
The health law is also protecting women from many of the worst abuses of the insurance industry. The Patient's Bill of Rights has banned harmful policies like lifetime dollar limits, which often meant your benefits disappeared when you needed them most.
And we've removed the obstacles between families and their doctors, so you won't have to ask permission from your insurance company to see a pediatrician or OB-GYN in your network.
The law also ensures that women have access to the care they need to lead healthy lives. In the past too many women went without care or screenings due to expensive co-pays. But under the law, every American who buys a new plan can access free preventive care like Pap smears and mammograms. That means women are no longer going to have to put off breast cancer screenings, taking the risk that their cancer could be caught late - when chances of survival can be as low as 23 percent - instead of early - when the survival rate is 98 percent.
These new rights and benefits are just the beginning. In the coming months and years the Affordable Care Act will continue to improve women's health.
To learn more about how the law is helping women and families, check out this new web resource dedicated to the new rights and benefits available to women.
Darryle Pollack: The Power of a Punchline
While public health policy wonks can debate the merits and disadvantages of any particular health care coverage plan, nobody can deny that "an ounce of cancer prevention is worth a ton of cancer cure."
The widespread adoption of an evidence-based cancer prevention lifestyle, when combined with access to -- and high utilization rates for -- validated cancer screening exams, would have a truly enormous impact on the health of our population, as well as the health of our national budget....
Robert A. Wascher, MD, FACS
Author, "A Cancer Prevention Guide for the Human Race"
I truly understand the "If not now, when? If not me, who?" attitude that right to lifers have. What I fail to understand is that as morally superior beings they want to dictate the morals for everyone else. Is it morally superior to prop up your believes by force or is it more morally superior to allow other beings make their own choices and to be there if they make mistakes?
Right to lifers aren't really about the right to life. If they were, they'd all condemn the death penalty and war and actually support the babies they want to save through young adulthood, and oh and while they were at it, they'd probably want to feed and clothe and house the poor since they could die if you don't. And what about all the kittens and puppies that are destroyed in kill shelters every day? Oh wait, they aren't people and don't have souls, or so they say....
Reproduction is a choice, not a requirement.
I bet you $5 it does.
You know, if the Good Lord had wanted older middle-aged and elderly men to father more children toward the end of their lives (when it's likely they won't be around to help raise those children to adulthood), their plumbing would have been designed to work better during that period of their lives.
The use of Viagra amounts to messing around with what God intended.
It's the exact same logic the Right to Lifers use on women. I say turn it right around, and apply it to men.
Enslaving women (and all others) to the insurance companies isn't "getting more freedom".
"Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, that's changing. "
Requiring that the most expensive patients get treatment makes care more expensive not less.
"Thanks to the law, in 2014 it will be illegal to charge women extra for health insurance. "
Yet it will be legal to charge men more so they pay for the care of women. Is that better? Or more affordable for those paying the bill?
"But under the law, every American who buys a new plan can access free preventive care like Pap smears and mammograms."
There is no such thing as free medical products or services. Since women pay taxes and insurance premiums - how is it "free" even for those who get these products and services?
"These new rights and benefits are just the beginning. "
There are new rights. The government can't create or grant rights. However, it is just the beginning, the beginning of the end. Starting with the government's intervention in health care since WWII the industry has grown to 17% of the GDP and it is still skyrocketing. This massive growth of government intervention will help our economy and nation and empire collapse.
British healthcare system 9.4% of GDP
Japanese healthcare system 7.9% of GDP
Spain healthcare system 7.6% of GDP
These countries have single-payer systems. If we want our healthcare costs to go down, perhaps the government should be more involved in healthcare not less.
You get the prize for the best right answer, strawberryjulius.
Yours Truly,
Fan #11.
What choice do we have if we don't want to pay sky rocketing health insurance, not health care, costs to health insurance monopolies? After electing you into the White House and both houses of Congress all you, the President and the Democratic Party could pass was a mandate to make us buy insurance from insurance conglomerates that keep jacking up their prices. That is pathetic. And that is why your party lost control of the house. When the people vote for the Democratic Party, they're not looking for a watered down version of the Republican Party.
You're just as corporate controlled as the Republicans, at least on the Federal level.
Your company isn't your parents. It's not supposed to take care of you. It's supposed to pay you in time as specified in your contract, and that's it. You then go and buy all that you want on the market -- from food to health insurance.
Grow up, companies that profit in the US and are protected with our tax dollars need to start giving some of it back.
In many states people cannot just go out and purchase health insurance. The market regulations vary and there is no guarantee. Insurance has always been a highly regulated marketplace, but was without standard consumer protections.
Kudos that minimum benefits are being defined and the regulations will finally protect individuals who will be served. Of course this does not solve the funding part, and hopefully that does not take another 90 years.
At a time when so many women and families cannot afford health care because of increasing costs and struggling economies, the House leadership wants to cut the programs that provide preventative care that includes family planning, birth control, life-saving cancer screenings and HIV testing.
We need to send a message to the House leadership and tell them to stop the assault on women's health and get back to what they promised to do. In their ideological zeal to attack women's health they seem to have forgotten jobs and the economy.
Mike
Makes you kind of wish that the focus of the HC bill was to lower costs rather than just to expand coverage.
Why have Americans become so CHEAP? Unwilling to pay for health insurance? Why would anyone not want something that is vital to their most important self interest...their health! Americans are among the sickest people on earth with among the highest rates of overweight, obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, hypertension etc, etc yet they many apparently still believe they will be better off by saving $400 a month on health insurance and spending the money instead on an IPAD or cell phone service!!
And those people trying to put health insurance in place for all, with no exclusions (exclusions and "risk rated" limits are a form of subsidy for health insurers!!) for preconditions are demonised by the selfish right.
This short term thinking will be destroyed in a decade when the huge health care time bomb explodes. Hundreds and hundreds of unhealthy .....and uninsured.... working Americans under the age of eligibility for medicare will start showing up looking for health care on an emergency basis at hospitals all over the country.
There are basically 6 "white" countries in the world: Australia, New Zealand, the E.U., the UK, Canada, and the United States. The US is the poorest of these countries when quality of living is the criteria. Poor health care provision for the US population is the main reason! When will the American people wake up?
We simply must stop being taken advantage of by PhRMA and stop them from profiting while poisoning. These expensive treatments and tests do us no good and less in this case is better. Let us not forget that PhRMA wants to suck us into the poor house with treatments that are great for their profits but bad for our health. We need to stop blaming the victims and start pointing the finger towards the rightful culprits, the medical manufactures and pharmaceutical companies.
You are a smart observant participant in this debate and I hope you see my point.
Excellent points. Not only will there be a time bomb-explosion for services, the productivity rate will decrease. Unhealthy,unproductive workforce does not promote prosperity. Shortsighted thinking by a few does not promote the general welfare for all.
So in other words, the cost of our health insurance will continue to rise because that extra money has to come from somewhere.
Yep, now people who aren't sick will go into bankruptcy and lose everything they have, and actually the sick people will to because they also pay taxes.
If someone else is paying the bill demand for medical care will be unlimited. The costs will rise until our empire collapses.
Because they are inflated to cover not only their doctors' million dollar mansions, but their new Mercedes, Big Pharma Executives' multiple vacation mansions around the world, the Medicare cost gap, AND the 40 million plus Americans with no insurance who don't pay anything and leave the hospital/doctors to absorb the bills. Oh...and lest I forget...to show dividends to stockholders in Big Medicine's many corporate entities. Because too many people around the world need to get rich off our misery. That's why.
Solution?
Single payer.
Yeah, it has an element of socialism in that federal caps are set on costs, and the feds distribute all payments. So the H what? Look around at the rest of the civilized free world, my fellow Americans. It's what every other one of our peers does. Turn off Rush and Sarah, and turn on your brains.
SINGLE PAYER WORKS!
But in the liberal world, people should not pay for the services they receive.
My wife was denied an individual Kaiser policy because she reported that she had quit drinking.