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Health Care Fight Puts Women’s Health and Women’s Rights in Jeopardy
Health Care Fight Puts Women’s Health and Women’s Rights in Jeopardy
by National Womens Law Center
The constitutional fight over the health care law is a fight with high stakes for women’s health and women’s rights. Today, the National Women’s Law Center filed a brief on behalf of 61 women’s organizations and civil rights groups urging the Supreme Court to reject the constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s individual responsibility provision.
As Speaker Pelosi stated on the night the House approved the legislation, “It’s personal for women. After we pass this bill, being a woman will no longer be a preexisting medical condition.” A primary purpose behind the ACA was improving women’s health and women’s access to insurance, by ending the insurer practice of denying coverage to women who previously had Caesarean section or survived domestic violence; banning insurers from charging women higher premiums than men; prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded health programs; expanding Medicaid to cover more than 8 million additional low-income women, guaranteeing maternity coverage; providing Pap smears, mammograms, lactation counseling, and family planning without copayments; and more. Those challenging the ACA before the Supreme Court are arguing that the entire law, including all of these provisions so essential to women, should be struck down. The ACA litigation is in many important ways a women’s rights case.
This is true not only because of what women have at stake in the ACA, but also because the precedent on which many of the most important legal advances for women rest is the same precedent that demonstrates the ACA is constitutional. The Supreme Court has long affirmed that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution gives Congress authority to address discrimination, because discrimination against women and other disadvantaged groups has a direct impact on how interstate commercial markets operate—for example, as the Supreme Court has recognized, when hotels, restaurants, and other businesses refuse to serve customers on the basis of race, this discrimination limits the amount of goods and services that businesses sell, limits the ability of people of color to travel and to spend money related to traveling, and otherwise distorts markets.
As Congress recognized in passing the ACA, women in particular face obstacles to access to insurance and health care that result in an acute economic impact. For example, women experience greater difficulties than men in obtaining health care, are more likely to forego preventive care due to cost, are more likely to be underinsured, and are more likely to report problems paying medical bills. The insurance market’s failure to meet women’s needs has significant consequences for the larger economy. That Congress was seeking to remove discriminatory barriers to women’s participation in the health insurance market and address the economic impact of discrimination enhances its constitutional authority to pass the ACA.
- more -
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/13/1054363/-Health-Care-Fight-Puts-Women’s-Health-and-Women’s-Rights-in-Jeopardy
by National Womens Law Center
The constitutional fight over the health care law is a fight with high stakes for women’s health and women’s rights. Today, the National Women’s Law Center filed a brief on behalf of 61 women’s organizations and civil rights groups urging the Supreme Court to reject the constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s individual responsibility provision.
As Speaker Pelosi stated on the night the House approved the legislation, “It’s personal for women. After we pass this bill, being a woman will no longer be a preexisting medical condition.” A primary purpose behind the ACA was improving women’s health and women’s access to insurance, by ending the insurer practice of denying coverage to women who previously had Caesarean section or survived domestic violence; banning insurers from charging women higher premiums than men; prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded health programs; expanding Medicaid to cover more than 8 million additional low-income women, guaranteeing maternity coverage; providing Pap smears, mammograms, lactation counseling, and family planning without copayments; and more. Those challenging the ACA before the Supreme Court are arguing that the entire law, including all of these provisions so essential to women, should be struck down. The ACA litigation is in many important ways a women’s rights case.
This is true not only because of what women have at stake in the ACA, but also because the precedent on which many of the most important legal advances for women rest is the same precedent that demonstrates the ACA is constitutional. The Supreme Court has long affirmed that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution gives Congress authority to address discrimination, because discrimination against women and other disadvantaged groups has a direct impact on how interstate commercial markets operate—for example, as the Supreme Court has recognized, when hotels, restaurants, and other businesses refuse to serve customers on the basis of race, this discrimination limits the amount of goods and services that businesses sell, limits the ability of people of color to travel and to spend money related to traveling, and otherwise distorts markets.
As Congress recognized in passing the ACA, women in particular face obstacles to access to insurance and health care that result in an acute economic impact. For example, women experience greater difficulties than men in obtaining health care, are more likely to forego preventive care due to cost, are more likely to be underinsured, and are more likely to report problems paying medical bills. The insurance market’s failure to meet women’s needs has significant consequences for the larger economy. That Congress was seeking to remove discriminatory barriers to women’s participation in the health insurance market and address the economic impact of discrimination enhances its constitutional authority to pass the ACA.
- more -
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/13/1054363/-Health-Care-Fight-Puts-Women’s-Health-and-Women’s-Rights-in-Jeopardy
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