As chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls, I am incredibly proud to highlight an important part of the health care law that gives women more control over their health care. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, 47 million women will have access to the preventive services they need. We all know that women and men face unique health risks and benefit from different preventive services. For too long, too many women have gone without these services due to out-of-pocket costs or lack of coverage.
Under the Affordable Care Act, for the first time ever, women will now have access to life-saving preventive care, such as mammograms and contraception, without paying any more out of their own pockets.
Today, we move yet another step closer to giving women control over their health care. In addition to the benefits for women already included in the Affordable Care Act, beginning the first plan year after August 1, 2012, most private health insurance plans will cover additional women's preventive services without requiring women to pay an extra penny out of their pockets. These services include:
By eliminating barriers like copays, co-insurance, and deductibles, secure, affordable coverage is quickly becoming a reality for millions of American women and families.
President Obama recalled his mother telling him, "You can tell how far a society is going to go by how it treats its women and girls. And if they're doing well, then the society is going to do well; and if they're not, then they won't be." With that principle in mind, these new guidelines for women's preventive health are a crucial step forward for the health of women, and for our society as a whole.
For more on the new guidelines, visit HealthCare.gov. Call your insurer for questions about how these new provisions will affect your plan.
Valerie Jarrett is the Chair of the Council on Women and Girls and Senior Advisor to the President.
John Arensmeyer: Pushing High-Income Tax Cut Under Small Business Guise: Not Good Fiscal Policy
As Chief Executive Officer of the Habitat Company Jarrett also managed a controversial housing project located in Obama’s former state senate district called Grove Parc Plaza. According to the Boston Globe the housing complex was considered "uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage…In 2006, federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale — a score so bad the buildings now face demolition." Ms. Jarrett refused to comment to the Globe on the conditions of the complex.
Finally, over 1/2 of the population of our country can actually have more decision making ability about their own bodies than the other sex does. Finally women may have the ability to effect population growth.
The hubris regarding female contraceptives is ridiculous, there are aspects regarding women's reproductive systems that most of us learned as teenager's. Never knew anyone who was broken by the price of condoms.
If you know anyone who has a child with a "pre-existing" condition, you might ask them what an onerous prospect that is.
If only our elected representatives could focus on improving the HCA instead of using it as a political football. Or maybe there really is no problem, as Mr. Boehner will tell you.