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Universal Health Care

“Universal Health Care: What’s in it for Women?”

Conclusions from Gainesville Area NOW general meeting:
    

Consciousness-Raising Questions:
	1. How do you have health insurance (if you do)?  
	(ie, through your job, a spouse’s job, Medicare/Medicaid, a parent)
	Does how you get your health insurance affect your life?  How?

	2. What problems in your life as a woman would be fixed or helped 
	with a universal health care system?  

Conclusions:

How we have health insurance affects our lives.

• health insurance was a factor in a range of decisions about our lives:

• we wondered what different paths we might have gone if health insurance was not tied to employment or through marriage

Employment area

• We weigh health insurance coverage in whether or not to stay in school, leave or take a job, move, or start a small business

• Even with the problems we all have with our insurance not meeting our needs and being too costly, we feel “lucky” to have it and for at least 3 of us, we felt like it was harder to push for a raise when our employers were eating the rising hc costs (contrast this to Europe where everyone has health insurance as a resident along with a month’s vacation and better unemployment, are they clinging to OK jobs?)

• At least three women’s unions are fighting very hard to stay even on not having to pay more for health coverage. They put most of the energy on health insurance issues, which distracts from fighting for better pay, more vacation, lessening our workload, etc.

Relationships with men 

• another woman said health insurance through her husband made her feel like a dependent child. Her husband and his father talked about her like she wasn’t there and were making financial decisions on her behalf as if she was a child. Health insurance was just “one more thing” that he contributed that she did not.

• two women were dependent on their husbands for health insurance and said “little comments” affected the relationship

• one woman testified about weighing when to end a relationship she knew needed to be ended because she got domestic partner benefits through his job. He could have used this against her. She did break it off and stay on his insurance for awhile. She had to be selective about what to tell medical professionals because she didn’t want them to tell the insurance company that they weren’t together any more.

• one woman’s husband was dependent on her insurance and he pressured her to keep her job rather than pursue a small business opportunity (he quit his job and started a business, however)

Insurance companies discriminate against women by not covering our reproductive needs. 

• One woman said she could only have her birth control pills covered if she had a medical condition, not just because she wanted to prevent pregnancy. Two women wanted their tubes tied, but it is not covered.

Big health crises (long-term care for a parent or grandparent, MS, cancer) can be devastating.  

• The finances are too much to bear unless there is a millionaire in the family. Even when the insurance company covered it, we got “ghost bills” for years.

• Our relationships suffer because the financial, emotional, and physical burden is too much. We lose what might be an inheritance because of the financial drain of long-term care. One woman stayed out of the job market for 8 months and lost her earning power. Another women rushes to her grandmother’s on the weekends to care for her and be an advocate.

We don’t have a say in what insurance companies do, they are not organized in our interest but instead to make money.

• we have no vote (in countries with universal health care, you can vote in or vote out politicians based on their work with the health system)

• they change what’s covered each year, it’s very inconsistent and confusing

• we pay more and get less each year

• three women fought for long periods of time to be reimbursed for what should have been covered. The insurance company earns interest on that money. When we don’t pay, we get turned into a collection agency.

• the appeal process is a joke

	For More information about National (or Universal) Health care, 
	check out the Women's Liberation Task Force for National Health 
	Care.

By Maria Armental, Daily Record,
11/09/03

RANDOLPH -- The National Organization for Women will be pushing to make universal health insurance a key issue in next year's presidential election and in races around the country.

"It's an important issue and something that we need to educate ourselves on so that we can educate the public," said Veronica Guarraia, one of the attendees to NOW-NJ's Annual State Conference.

About 20 people attended the conference Saturday that was hosted by the Morris County chapter and held at the County College of Morris.

"It's not diamonds but a universal health system that is a girl's best friend," said Jenny Brown, coordinator of the Women's Liberation Task Force on National Health Care.

NOW members said they plan over the next year to debunk the myths that the United States has the best health care system in the world, the highest standard of living, and that American women are the most liberated in the world.

The speakers compared the U.S. health system with those of other countries around the world, ranked higher in terms of health care quality by the World Health Organization.

The U.S. was 37th in that ranking.

"So, France is ranked number one, and the U.S. is 37; but here we are paying the most. It hurts," said Candi Churchill, Universal Health Care chair of the Gainesville Area NOW.

Martha Livingston, associate professor of health and society at the State University of New York at Old Westbury, warned that the ranking did not take into consideration the wide economic differences among those countries. If that were the case, she said, Cuba, ranked 39 on the list of 40, would be much higher than the U.S.

Currently, the U.S. spends approximately 14 percent of the Gross National Product (GNP) on healthcare, compared to 9 percent in Canada and 6 percent in the United Kingdom.

"We spend close to $1.5 trillion (a year) in healthcare. That's one-seventh of our economy," Livingston said.

"One dollar out of $7 that we spend in the United States is related to health care. That's an extraordinary amount of money," she said.

"That's the paradox in the U.S. system," Livingston said. "We pay much more … and we get far less."

And yet, she said, 43 million Americans are uninsured according to official statistics. An additional 10 million Americans are temporarily uninsured and 10 million more are underinsured, she said.

"You know those hospital gowns that cover everything but the most important things? That's what underinsurance does. It covers everything but what you have," Livingston said.

Livingston criticized the American system for spending too much money on administrative costs and too little in patients' care.

"It costs them about $4.98 to bill us for that 2-cent Tylenol. So, we end up spending about 30 percent of our dollars in billing patients," she said.

"We have to demand that the obscene profits in this system actually be used to provide health care," Livingston added.

In other countries, workers enjoy longer maternity leaves, free health care, and even state subsidies to help offset the expense of raising a child.

For instance, in Hungary parents receive a 24-week paid parental leave, four weeks before the baby is born and 20 after the birth; in the Czech Republic, workers enjoy a 28-week leave, or 37 weeks for single mothers and multiple births; and in Canada, workers can take eight weeks off before the birth and 17 more after the birth, collecting their full paycheck.

"We are really missing out in terms of what other people have in terms of economic, social support," Brown said. "And we are told we have it so much better in America."

"The more I hear what they have in other countries, the angrier I get," she added.

Securing universal health insurance, they said, would be the first step toward leveling the playing field between men and women.

Brown said the current health system restricts women as they depend on their employer or husband to provide for their health coverage. In addition, because women typically get paid less than their husbands, they are often the ones who have to leave work to care for children or a sick relative.

"In a way, our health insurance system puts women in a trap," Brown said.

"And the long-term care situation is just a disaster for us," she added.

The Women's Liberation Taskforce on National Health Care led a successful campaign in the 2000 elections in Alachua County, Fla., where 65 percent of the voters approved a referendum backing universal health insurance. NOW is currently focusing on the 2004 presidential elections.

"A victory in one state would … help push the momentum for universal health care," Churchill said, referring to Canada as an example.

The universal health system in Canada started in the Saskatchewan province in 1962. Since then, it has expanded to all the Canadian provinces and territories.

NOW proposes an arrangement similar to U.S. Medicare but wants a program that would cover everyone.

"That doesn't mean the government is providing the health care," Livingston said. "They are not even running it. That means they are paying the bills."

Maria Armental can be reached at marmenta@gannett.com or (973) 428-6610.