Women and Healthcare

Now that the presidential election, with all its advertisements, rhetoric, and debates is finally over, it’s time for us to put away our election signs, party hats, and hopefully our differences. It’s time for our elected officials to get to the business at hand. Affordable and accessible healthcare was definitely on the "short-list" of priorities this election and figures to be one of the hardest (some say, impossible) tasks to accomplish. There is hope that this time, unlike any other time in history, that anything can be accomplished. This election itself would have been unthinkable within most people’s memory. It was historic in so many ways, most notably with the election of our first African-American president. It’s also historic in that a woman was a front-runner for the Democratic nomination and the Republican party had its first woman vice-presidential candidate. That’s a far cry from the presidential election of 1872, when Susan B. Anthony was thrown in jail for voting. Indeed, the scales of equality are going in the right direction.

One area where there is still some disparity is in the area of health insurance.  According to the Kaiser Institute, around 16.7 million women below the age of 65 have no health insurance. Of those numbers, 67% have forgone care that they needed because they couldn’t afford it. The absence of health insurance hits women especially hard. Women typically have more care that is needed, including preventive care. Without insurance, 42% of the uninsured women don’t fill their prescriptions because they are too expensive and 40% do without PAP tests. It’s not just about ‘suffering’ through a bad cold, either. According to one study, the number of excess deaths attributed to being uninsured among adults age 25–64 in 2006 has been estimated to be between 22,000 and 27,000.  Preventive care is especially important to women, as mammograms and PAP smears are important tests that allow cancers, sexually-transmitted diseases as well as myriad other health problems affecting women to be caught early. Breast cancer is the leading cause of death in American women ages 34 to 44. More American women have died of breast cancer in the last 20 years than the number of Americans killed in World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined. Mammograms (and self-exams) are in the forefront of detecting these cancers when they are small and hopefully treatable.

The costs for all types of healthcare have been steadily increasing as well. Since 1999, healthcare costs have more than doubled. This affects women disproportionately, as women still tend to be underpaid compared to men. Wages have increased by only 34% in the same time period. According to the Kaiser report, among all workers, women are less likely than men to be eligible for and to participate in their employer’s health plan. The overall take-up rate for employer-sponsored coverage is 80% for women workers compared to 89% for men. This is in part because women are more likely to work part-time, have lower incomes, and rely more on spousal coverage. Widowed or divorced women lose coverage more often than men because they tend to be covered as dependents on their spouses’ policies.

So what does this all mean? It means that women should take advantage of every health program available to them, from state plans to free, mobile mammography units that travel neighborhoods. Lobby your employer to provide voluntary programs at work, which cost the employer nothing, but are affordable to workers. They typically have wellness tests covered as well. Lastly, make sure we keep healthcare on the forefront of our elected official’s minds and not let them be distracted by other issues. It may take some work, but the numbers speak for themselves. Your health is too important not to.

Until next time, stay healthy!