Health Care

Take Action: Tell Your Representative to Vote NO

Protect millions of women and families from the harsh spending cuts the House is voting on this week.

They just never stop.

Earlier this year, the House of Representatives passed the budget blueprint introduced by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). The Ryan budget calls for drastic cuts in programs that low-income women and their families depend on to meet their basic needs — and trillions of dollars in additional tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans and corporations.

This week, the House will vote on a bill to implement the Ryan budget by slashing Medicaid, Food Stamps (SNAP), child care, and more, and dismantling the Affordable Care Act.

Please contact your Representative TODAY and tell him or her to vote against these devastating cuts!

The bill the House is scheduled to vote on this Thursday, H.R. 4966, would:

• Let states reduce eligibility standards for Medicaid, which women disproportionately rely on for health care coverage, and for the Children's Health Insurance Program.
• Dismantle the Affordable Care Act, by eliminating funding for state health exchanges and community-level preventive and public health initiatives, and by reducing access to affordable health insurance coverage by discouraging the use of premium tax credits.
• Terminate the Social Services Block Grant, which gives billions of dollars to states to support seniors and children, including critical funding for child care assistance.
• Cut Food Stamp (SNAP) benefits, reducing monthly benefits almost immediately for about 44 million people and denying benefits altogether for as many as 2 million more.
• Eliminate eligibility for the refundable Child Tax Credit for many immigrant families.

On Sunday, Speaker Boehner defended the House of Representatives’ recent vote to eliminate the Prevention and Public Health Trust Fund to cover the cost of maintaining today’s low interest rates for student loans. Arguing that the Obama Administration and women’s health advocates have created a controversy out of whole cloth, the Speaker said, “I’ll guarantee you that they’ve not spent a dime of this fund dealing with anything to do with women’s health.”

Perhaps the Speaker is not aware that the top three causes of death among American women are heart disease, cancer and stroke. Or that the Prevention and Public Health Trust Fund – a provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that ensures adequate funding for preventive health initiatives – already helps communities use evidence-based programs that reduce chronic disease and prevent heart attacks, cancer, and stroke, among other conditions. Other Prevention Fund initiatives fund efforts to improve nutrition and increase physical activity to reduce obesity-related conditions, such as diabetes, and expand immunization services, including immunization against influence and pneumonia – numbers seven and eight, respectively among the leading causes of death among women. Finally, Prevention Fund investments include improving detection of and early intervention in Alzheimer’s Disease, which occupies position number five on the top-ten list. Read more »

Do you think our nation’s leaders would allow a hospital to refuse to perform an emergency abortion on a woman – even if it means she would die? Unfortunately, if some leaders have their way, the answer would be yes. The House of Representatives actually passed a bill that would allow hospitals to turn away women needing emergency abortion care. This bill is just one example of the recent onslaught of attacks at both the federal and state level that that aim to deny women’s access to reproductive health care.

Getting the emergency care a woman needs should not depend on the hospital to which she is taken.

Watch our new video and tell your leaders: My Health is NOT Up for Debate™!

Read more »

Welcome to NWLC’s first weekly roundup for April. April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, so I thought I’d kick things off by sharing a few ideas of how you can support victim of sexual assault and help raise awareness during the month. Also this week: our latest infographic, some lady athletes making history, and more.

All throughout April, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center will be providing resources and ways to get involved with Sexual Assault Awareness Month, or SAAM for short. The 2012 SAAM Day of Action passed us already (it was this past Tuesday, April 3), but you can see what other current campaigns are in the works here, including Tweet About It! Tuesdays every Tuesday in April at 2pm ET. SAAM activists from around the country will be using the hashtag #Tweetaboutit for these weekly chats, in addition to #SAAM and #SAAM2012.

You can also check out Take Back The Night’s calendar to see if there will be a TBTN event in your community in the coming weeks.

Yesterday we published a new infographic detailing what tax breaks for millionaires cost. The

 average tax cut per millionaire in 2012 – $143,000 – could help support a number of programs, like Head Start or Pell Grants. Want to learn more? Check out the graphic – it opens in full size if you click on it.

Read more »

Given the strength of the precedent supporting the constitutionality of the individual responsibility provision, most legal observers going into the argument yesterday expected the Supreme Court to uphold it. A poll of prior Supreme Court clerks and attorneys who frequently argue before the Court, for example, showed this group of insiders thought it very unlikely that the law would be struck down.  After all, some of the most high-profile conservative Court of Appeals judges in the country have found it to be constitutional. The argument yesterday therefore surprised many. While the Justices’ questions at argument aren’t necessarily a reliable indicator of their ultimate votes, questions by several of the conservative Justices showed both little concern for precedent and little understanding of the impact of the health care law on individuals’ lives.

There’s no question the Commerce Clause of the Constitution gives Congress the power to pass laws regulating commercial markets, including the insurance industry. The Constitution and Supreme Court precedent are also clear that Congress has the authority to craft national solutions to national economic problems. The individual responsibility provision, which requires non-exempt people to maintain insurance (and provides subsidies to low- and moderate-income individuals) or pay a fine, is an integral piece of just such a national solution. Congress designed the individual responsibility provision to work in tandem with the ban on preexisting condition exclusions and the requirement that all insurers must sell health insurance to anyone who wants to purchase it, recognizing that near-universal participation—which the individual responsibility provision and the associated subsidies for purchasing health insurance are meant to achieve—is required for these insurance reforms to succeed. Otherwise, some people would likely forego insurance coverage until they get sick, sharply driving up the costs of insurance for all when they eventually seek care. Because (in constitutional terms) the provision is a “necessary and proper” means for carrying out these reforms of the insurance industry, it should be constitutional under long-established Supreme Court precedent. Read more »

Transitioning from school to the workforce can be a very difficult time. I remember when finished graduate school and made the decision to move to Washington, DC and sign a lease on an apartment even though I didn’t have a job. Access to health care is one more thing to worry about. But today, as the Supreme Court hears arguments on the health care law, I think about all the young women who will have one less thing to worry about when they graduate.

I recently met Rebekah Horowitz, a very smart and talented woman who has been volunteering with the Law Center while she looks for a job. She shared with me her thoughts on being a recent graduate and the impact the health care law will have on women in her position:

“In 2011, I finished my JD/MPH program in Philadelphia. In spite of my education, I am currently unemployed. My hope is that fact will soon change and it is likely that when I do get a job, I will receive health insurance through my employer. In the meantime, I have been keeping a close watch on the health care law and its impact on unemployed women.

Today, the Supreme Court will hear argument on two issues, both critically important to women. First, if the individual responsibility provision is struck down as unconstitutional, do other parts of the Affordable Care Act go with it? And second, is the Medicaid expansion in the ACA unconstitutional?

The first issue is a question of what is called “severability.” Some laws have a provision called a severability clause, which says that if any part of the law is deemed unconstitutional, the rest of the law will remain in force. The ACA doesn’t have a severability clause, and so if any part of it is held unconstitutional, it is up to the Court to decide whether Congress would have intended other parts of the law or all of the law to remain in force in its absence. The government has argued that the individual responsibility provision is constitutional, but that if it is struck down, then the provisions prohibiting insurance companies to make insurance available to anyone who wants it, regardless of preexisting conditions, should be struck down as well. Read more »

Today is the headline day at the Supreme Court in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) cases as the Court considers the constitutionality of the personal responsibility provision. Yesterday, by all accounts, the Justices seemed inclined to hold that they need not wait until 2015 to decide whether this provision is constitutional, which means that the argument today is likely to lead to a decision on the fate of the provision in June.

Women should be watching. The individual responsibility provision, which requires nonexempt individuals to maintain health insurance or pay a fine, and provides subsidies to low- and moderate-income people for this purpose, is closely bound up with the provisions in the ACA banning pre-existing condition exclusions and requiring insurance companies to make coverage available for all. As Speaker Pelosi declared the night the House voted for the legislation, echoing the words of a National Women’s Law Center campaign, “After we pass this bill, being a woman will no longer be a preexisting medical condition.”

Insurers in the individual market have routinely denied coverage for so-called “pre-existing conditions,” such as having given birth by Caesarean section. For example, in 2009, Peggy Robertson of Colorado testified in Congress that because of her previous C-section, an insurer told her that she could only obtain coverage if she were sterilized. Other women have been deemed to have a preexisting condition because they are pregnant or because they are survivors of domestic violence or sexual assault. Read more »

Today, the Supreme Court will begin arguments about the constitutionality of provisions within the Affordable Care Act.

Watch our short video explaining the legal challenges, why we think the law is constitutional, and what women could lose if the law is struck down.

Read more »

We’ve been celebrating and talking about the Affordable Care Act second anniversary all week long, so today I’m going to bring you some non-health-care-related stories. Here’s what you can look forward to: dunks in the NCAA women’s basketball tournament, speaking out against street harassment, a new interview that follows up on last week’s bullying documentary on the Cartoon Network, and Amelia Earhart – found at last?

Who says the girls can’t play like the guys? Check out the video of 1-seed Baylor’s Brittney Griner dunking during the Bears’ March 20 NCAAW tournament win vs. 9-seed Florida. Baylor is now headed to the Sweet 16. Brittney’s the second woman to dunk during the NCAAW tournament, and this is the sixth dunk of her college career.

Cool as her moves may be, dunking isn’t Brittney’s favorite. Instead? “My big thing is blocked shots; that's my favorite thing to do.” And you know how the saying goes – offense wins games, but defense wins championships.

Speaking of the NCAAW tourney, in case you need it, here’s the latest bracket.