WASHINGTON - It's been two years since the enactment of the Affordable Care Act. As implementation continues, private insurers will be banned from charging women more or denying them access based on gender. Statements from Ways and Means Ranking Member Sander Levin (D-MI) and Health Subcommittee Ranking Member Pete Stark (D-CA) are below:
Health Reform is Ensuring Gender Equity in Health Care:
Problem: Private insurers have routinely charged women more than men -- up to 81%, more -- though women earn, on average, only 78.6% of what men earn.
Solution: The ACA bans such "gender rating" in 2014.
Problem: Many private insurers don't cover a number of women's preventive services, though they cover men's erectile dysfunction medications like Viagra.
Solution: The ACA ensures providers will cover comprehensive women's preventive services, including contraception, in new plans starting this summer.
Problem: Women are denied coverage or charged more by private insurers for "pre-existing conditions" including breast or cervical cancer, pregnancy, having had a C-section, and having been a victim of domestic violence.
Solution: The ACA ensures being a woman will no longer be treated as a "pre-existing condition" beginning in 2014.
Problem: More than half of American women cannot obtain affordable insurance through an employer.
Solution: The ACA offers affordable insurance options through Health Insurance Exchanges starting in 2014.
Today, Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Sander M. Levin (D-MI) and Health Subcommittee Ranking Member Pete Stark (D-CA), criticized the Republican agenda for women:
Ranking Member Levin: “The latest Republican attacks on women’s health are a vital reminder of the importance of the greater protections and increased access to health care for women under health reform. Because of health reform’s protections, insurance companies can no longer treat being a woman as a pre-existing condition and they can no longer drop women when they become sick or pregnant - reforms that enable more women to have access to affordable health coverage. Repealing those benefits will hurt women across the country."
Ranking Member Stark: "While the ACA is implementing much needed gender equity in health care, Republicans are trying to wedge the government into private medical decisions between a woman and her doctor. Their approach is wrong-headed: Americans expect progress, not prejudice."
