Brigette Courtot, Senior Health Policy Analyst

Brigette Courtot is the Senior Policy Analyst for Health and Reproductive Rights at the National Women's Law Center, where she focuses on women's access to health coverage, implementation of the federal health reform law, and how various public policies affect women's health outcomes. Prior to joining NWLC, she worked as a Research Associate in the Health Policy Center at the Urban Institute, where she conducted maternal and child health services research with an emphasis on access to care for underserved populations. She holds a Master of Public Health degree from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and a bachelor's degree from Northwestern University.

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My Take

Health Care Affordability Problems Persist for Women

Posted by Brigette Courtot, Senior Health Policy Analyst | Posted on: May 29, 2009 at 06:56 pm

by Brigette Courtot, Policy Analyst, 
National Women's Law Center 

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It's Our Time: Let's Spend Less of It Worrying about Health Insurance

Posted by Brigette Courtot, Senior Health Policy Analyst | Posted on: May 14, 2009 at 08:33 pm

by Brigette Courtot, Policy Analyst, 
National Women's Law Center

This post is part of a series on Women and Health Reform.

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The "Dear Health Plan Enrollee" Letter

Posted by Brigette Courtot, Senior Health Policy Analyst | Posted on: April 27, 2009 at 04:18 pm

by Brigette Courtot, Policy Analyst, 
National Women's Law Center 

This post is part of a series on Women and Health Reform.

It came via certified mail, which was enough to make her nervous, but a quick glance at the return address actually made her stomach drop.  A certified letter from a health insurance company—could that ever mean good news?  For my close friend Margaret it most definitely did not.  Her health insurance company—one of the largest in her state and in the country—had begun digging into her medical history to scrutinize her original health insurance application.  Nine months had passed since she was approved and enrolled in the health plan, but now the company had some concerns. Enter the “Dear Health Plan Enrollee” letter.

When Margaret called me two weeks ago, letter in hand, she was confused and a little angry, but she was mostly just terrified.  Was the company allowed to do this? Why were they doing it now? Would she lose the health insurance that she so desperately needed? 

Margaret’s predicament is upsetting, but it’s hardly surprising.  Here at NWLC, we’re no strangers to the often questionable practices of private insurers, especially among companies in the individual health insurance market where Margaret bought her coverage.  Individual market insurers are allowed to do a lot of things to keep sick people off their rolls (it’s all about their bottom line, after all).  And Margaret is sick.  This past winter, she was diagnosed with leukemia.  She began treatment immediately with a relatively new and expensive cancer drug.  The treatment has been very effective, but it seems that once her insurer realized they’d need to pay for it, they began looking for a way to avoid it.

In policy-speak, Margaret has become the target of a common industry practice called post-claims underwriting.  A Families USA report defines the practice this way:

Unfortunately, most states allow (tacitly—if not explicitly) insurance companies to perform medical underwriting, or to conduct more stringent underwriting, long after a policy has been issued to a consumer…When individuals need costly medical treatment long after purchasing their policies, insurance companies dig further into their medical histories and retroactively limit or revoke coverage.

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Women and Health Reform, Then and Now

Posted by Brigette Courtot, Senior Health Policy Analyst | Posted on: March 27, 2009 at 04:28 pm

by Brigette Courtot, Policy Analyst 
National Women’s Law Center  

This post is part of a series on Women and Health Reform.

Just a few months ago, I had never heard of Pauline Newman. But when I came across her name in an article on the history of social movements and health reform, I was intrigued. A bit of research followed, and now I’m thinking about establishing a fan club in honor of this early advocate for health reform. Here’s why:

  1. She was tenacious. Born to a poor Lithuanian Jewish family around 1890, during childhood she fought (and won) the right to an education in a society where poor Jewish children were excluded from public schools and girls were excluded from religious schools.
  2. She was ambitious. Newman began working in factories just after immigrating to the United States, when she was all of nine years old. Over the next decade she became a bona fide social activist, first organizing a rent strike, then campaigning for women’s suffrage, and finally being named the first woman organizer of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (the ILGWU, one of the first American unions to have a primarily female membership).
  3. She recognized that access to comprehensive health care is essential for women’s well-being. For sixty years Newman headed the ILGWU’s Union Health Center, which provided comprehensive medical care to union members, who were at high risk for tuberculosis and other health problems. She worked tirelessly to improve labor conditions for women workers, and in particular, was a steadfast advocate for universal health coverage. Workers at that time had no health coverage or sick leave—when ill or injured, they could experience huge income reductions. The ILGWU played a leading role in the (ultimately unsuccessful) campaign for universal job-based health insurance that would have been administered on a compulsory basis by state governments.
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A Shameful Sixteen Percent

Posted by Brigette Courtot, Senior Health Policy Analyst | Posted on: February 20, 2009 at 06:04 pm

by Brigette Courtot, Policy Analyst
National Women’s Law Center

This post is part of a series on Women and Health Reform.

African American women aren’t any more likely to get a cancer diagnosis than white women (in fact, incidence rates for some cancer types—like breast cancer—are considerably lower among African Americans) but they are more likely to die from it. According to a new report from the American Cancer Society, the cancer death rate for African American women is 16 percent higher than the rate for their white peers. This racial disparity reflects poorer survival due to later stage at diagnosis and less access to appropriate and timely treatment, with the authors concluding that this type of health inequity is the result of “social and economic disparities more than biological differences associated with race.”
 
The disparity in death rates among the two groups is even greater when you examine rates for specific cancers. Compared to white women, African American women are more than twice as likely to die from cancers of the stomach and cervix. They’re nearly 40 percent more likely to die from breast cancer—the most common cancer diagnosis for women of both races. These statistics might be a little less distressing if the disparity gaps were shrinking over time, but they are not. Over the past three decades, the gap in overall cancer death rates between African American and white women has barely budged; for colorectal and breast cancers it has actually grown.

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