Race, Sex and Health Care: The Math Adds up to ACA

National Women’s Law Center is proudly taking part in the Health Equity Can’t Wait! blog carnival celebrating National Minority Health Month. Participating bloggers are health, consumer, civil rights, and provider advocates committed to promoting health equity. You can find all the posts for the carnival here.

Women pay about $1 billion more for health care on the individual market just because they are women. Yet women are only paid 77 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts. We are charged more and we are paid less.

And that’s only part of the problem. The wage gap is even greater for African American women and Hispanic women. But the cost of health care is still high. So what does that add up to?

Well, if you try to add up it all up, you find out that African American and Hispanic women are more likely to be uninsured than white women. You learn that African American women ages 45 to 64 are almost twice as likely to have a disability, handicap or chronic disease that limits activity compared to white women in the same age range. You discover that Latina women have higher rates of diabetes and hypertension. You read that older women of color are undertreated for their cancer pain. You realize that there is a problem.

So you work towards a solution — you discover the health care law. Passed in 2010, the health care law is already expanding access to care for women of color. Because of the health care law, 410,000 African American young adults and 736,000 Latino young adults have coverage on their parents' health insurance plan. There are 20.4 million women enrolled in private insurance and 24.7 million women enrolled in Medicare who now receive preventive services with no cost sharing.   

The health care law may not add up to eliminate all health care disparities, but it is making a difference.