Today is a day for millions of women like me to celebrate!

For the first time, our country is requiring all new health insurance plans to cover contraception – and do it without charging us co-pays and deductibles.It’s all because of the women’s preventive services provision of the new health care law (the Affordable Care Act).

This is a big deal for me as a young woman who uses birth control because it hasn’t been the right time for me to become a mom. As a young professional living in Washington, DC, where the cost of living is high, I have found that the monthly co-pays for my contraceptives take a real bite out of my budget.

I am relieved and thankful that starting today, the health care law is going to begin to change all that for me and for all those women struggling to find co-pay dollars for care we can’t do without!

This new requirement will apply to coverage for a wide range of contraceptive methods – including birth control pills, IUDs and even tubal ligations that are popular with women in their 30s and 40s. It also covers the contraceptive counseling visit with your doctor to figure out which is the best method for you.

When will this great new coverage requirement go into effect for you? It applies to all new health insurance plans beginning today, but will go into effect with the beginning of your new “plan year.” So, student health plans, which generally start with the new school year in late August or early September, are likely to be the first to include this benefit. Other new plans may not incorporate the change until January, which is typically the start of health plan coverage years.

What about existing health insurance plans? They will have to comply with this requirement as soon as they make enough routine policy changes to be considered “new” under the health care law. It’s estimated that could take until 2014 for some existing plans. Call your health insurer or your employer’s human resources office to find out what you will get this great new coverage. 

So this is what’s in it for women: Affordable contraception, well woman visits, important screenings and counseling for intimate partner violence, counseling for sexually transmitted diseases (including HIV),breastfeeding equipment and counseling and diabetes screening when you’re pregnant.

So thanks, health care law, for helping me and millions of women to stay healthy!

This week is National Women’s Health Week, a time devoted to empowering women to make their health a top priority.  One essential way women can do this is by understanding and spreading the word about all the great benefits the health care law provides to their friends and family.  YOU can do this, right now, by going to RWV’s Countdown to Coverage campaign website and reading one of our checklist of benefits and sharing one with your friend or family member. 

Last week, I had the opportunity to share a benefit with a family member when my 22 year old cousin asked me to explain how contraceptive coverage is going to work – I was practically giddy that a member of my family pro-actively sought information from me instead of my usual attempts to slip it in during family gatherings!  It reminded me that people do want to learn more about the law and are curious about how they stand to gain from it. 

The health care law has already done A LOT to help me and my family and will continue to do so.  With an extended family of over 50 people, the list could go on and go, but here are just a few: My grandmother, on Medicare, can now get her annual wellness exam and personalized prevention plan with her primary care provider without co-pays.  My two sister-in-laws, starting August 1^st, will be able to get their annual well-woman preventive care visit without co-pays.  My four nieces and nephews will get their immunizations without co-pays and every woman in my family that uses contraception will no longer have to pay their co-pays either.  See a pattern?  The law helps more people get the services they need by eliminating co-pays, a significant barrier to access, for a whole host of preventive health services for adults and children.  

It also helps us sustain continued coverage and protects us against discriminatory health insurer practices.  My 24 year old cousin, who doesn’t have health care insurance with her job, can stay on my aunt and uncle’s health plan until she turns 26.  My nephew, born without his right forearm, will never be denied health care coverage because of a pre-existing condition or reach a lifetime limit of coverage due to his surgery as an infant and prosthetics.  These are real changes to the health care system that my family can thank the Affordable Care Act for.  

This is OUR incredible true story of the Affordable Care Act.  What’s yours?

But what about other families who don’t have a full-time activist keeping track of every important date when our coverage gets better?  Five years ago, I co-founded Raising Women’s Voices for the Health We Need with MergerWatch and the Avery Institute for Social Change because we wanted to make sure that women’s voices are heard and our concerns are addressed as health care reform is implemented.  We worked hard to make sure that health care reform would meet women’s needs, and now we want to meet women where they’re at – in the middle of their busy lives – with information that’s useful and easy to find.  After all, not every woman can find someone to be her personal Health Reform Clock.  This week, Raising Women’s Voices is launching our brand new Countdown to Coverage campaign.  This campaign focuses on helping women understand what we are getting from the ACA:

• ·        Preventive care we need to stay healthy, like mammograms and contraception, without costly co-pays that can make health coverage too expensive to use
• ·        Protection against discriminatory health insurer practices, like charging women more than men for the same policy or refusing to cover people with pre-existing conditions
• ·        Security in knowing that insurers can’t cancel our coverage when we get sick, refuse to cover our medical care if it’s too expensive or drastically increase our premiums. 

The Countdown to Coverage campaign takes health reform out of the political frame – where it looks like a big, ugly fight between politicians – and helps women understand the value that the law has for each of us as consumers of health care.  As part of the campaign, we’ve developed a wonderful set of materials that you can find on our campaign website: women’s stories of how they’ve already been helped by the law, checklists showing what the ACA does for young women, older women and women of color, and many other useful tools – including a real clock.  Now I can go back to being the women’s health expert in my family.  Thank you health care reform! 

This post is part of the #HERvotes blog carnival on What Health Care Reform Means to Women.

This week, groups across the country are celebrating the two year anniversary of the health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) – signed on March 23^rd. Each day this week will highlight specific benefits and populations that will be positively impacted by this historic legislation. Today’s theme – benefits for women – is held dear to the Raising Wisconsin Women’s Voices blog, as it highlights the incredible victory for women – two years and counting.

In fact, two years marks just the beginning of the Obama Administration’s progress towards ensuring and enhancing coverage for women and their families.  Today we celebrate that, under the ACA, women will no longer be charged more for the same plans as men, will no longer be denied coverage because they have had a C-section or other “preexisting condition.” As the timeline towards full ACA implementation continues, we expect to continue to see women in Wisconsin benefit from health care reform.

We have worked hard to keep all of our followers up-to-date with the benefits that Wisconsin women receive with health care reform. Earlier this month, we shared with you the 791,000 Wisconsin women who no longer have lifetime limits to coverage, thanks to the ACA.  We have shared tools and videos to help raise awareness and support for the ACA. And we have even shared less known provisions of the ACA – such as the right to adequate time and space to express breast milk in the workplace. Major improvements to health care, such as these, are just some of what we have seen in the last two years. And soon, the new health insurance exchanges will provide Wisconsinites with access to affordable, high-quality coverage

Unfortunately, others in Wisconsin have not worked as hard to realize the benefits that Women receive with health care reform. In fact, the Walker Administration refuses to move forth with health care reform implementation at all, and has gone so far as to return federal dollars to implement a Wisconsin-specific insurance exchange.

Two years is a huge landmark for health care reform, but the ACA is at risk from opponents who are fighting to roll back its many benefits. We can’t let them. On behalf of women in Wisconsin we urge our lawmakers and the Supreme Court: Protect our health care. Protect the health care law.

Written by the RWV Regional Coordinator for Wisconsin.

This blog is a part of the #HERVOTES blog carnival.

That is not a time that I want to return to and nor do the women and men who work with the Maryland Women’s Coalition for Health Care Reform.  Thanks to the ACA: almost 52,000 young adults in Maryland now have health coverage under their parents’ policies; in 2011, 52,243 seniors received a check to help them pay for their prescription drugs; 112,547 small businesses provided health insurance to their employees; and 1,153,000 Marylanders with private insurance gained preventive care coverage without additional costs to them.  

Those are just numbers, but let’s think about Alycia whose daughter was diagnosed with leukemia at age two.  Her family now has the security of knowing that, even as they deal with their daughter’s illness, she can never again be denied insurance.  Lil, who knows the importance of preventive care, will be able to get the mammograms she needs without the co-pays and deductibles that put this out of reach when she lost her job and health benefits. And, think of Eddie, who at 51 needs help with all of his most basic needs.  Thanks to the ACA, Lesa can provide him with the in-home care he needs. 

In Maryland, no matter what decision the Supreme Court makes we are sending the message that the time is now for health care reform because we know - Reform. It’s Good For Your Health!

Written by Leni Preston, chair of the Maryland Women's Coalition for Health Care Reform, RWV Regional Coordinator for Maryland

This blog is a part of the #HERVOTES blog carnival.

With the hindsight that I’ve gained, what stands out to me is not just the shocking extent of the restrictions we faced but also our impressive ability to circumvent the rules and forge out on our own to find ways to protect ourselves and our bodies.  As a freshman, I started experiencing irregular periods and being too far away from home to make an appointment with my own gynecologist, looked to what seemed to be the next safest and least intimidating option - the Fordham student health center.  The nurse practitioner told me that it was nothing to worry about, probably stress. If I wanted, she said, I could go on birth control to regulate my periods BUT she couldn’t prescribe it for me. I felt so stuck, but realizing what I needed for my body, reluctantly called my mother, mumbled something about irregular.. you know that time of the month and we managed to get a prescription for me. 

My friends and I learned through trial and error and word of mouth how to get the contraceptives we needed to keep ourselves healthy.  We banded together, and friends helped friends and friends of friends.  A few months into our freshman year, I went with my scared roommate, by cab, to an unfamiliar part of the Bronx in search of the emergency contraception (EC) she needed, having already learned the lesson that it wouldn’t be available on campus. After waiting for over an hour, we were told she wouldn’t be getting EC at that hospital either “due to their policy.”  I cannot be certain what policy it was, we didn’t have the courage to ask, but my guess is that it was also a Catholic hospital.  She gave up and just waited anxiously through the following weeks to see what would happen, but we put the experience to good use, telling others not to go THERE for help.  Like me, after that she turned to her mother for a more long-term solution. Too uncomfortable to say she was sexually active, she mumbled about cramps and was able to get her mom to send her birth control every month.  I also vividly remember a girlfriend warning me that if I were ever sexually assaulted, I should tell the ambulance to bring me to the hospital farther away from campus and not the closer Catholic one.

It was also during my freshman year that I earned the nickname “the condom girl,” after becoming known for having an unending supply of condoms that I picked up from the HIV/AIDS outreach organization I volunteered for.  I knew my friends, thwarted by the university policy banning contraception, were having unprotected sex, so I kept the condoms in my room and word definitely got around.  My friends and class mates would knock on my door, approach me after class or at a bar to ask for condoms, and I always made sure to have some.  But I soon learned that the university would not tolerate even a slightly more public effort to give students access to this contraband contraception.  During a notorious binge-drinking weekend I put a manila envelope filled with condoms on my door, with the simple message: “Stay Safe.”  Within hours, my R.A. had removed the envelope, telling me that distribution of condoms was against school policy. 

During my time at Fordham, I became a trusted and sought-after source of sexual health education and advice.  I urged my friends and classmates to get tested for HIV, to use condoms and told them how to find EC.  At the time, I just saw the need and did what it took.  But now I can see how shocking our experiences were and I am angry about it!  Why should students who are struggling to adjust to life away from home for the first time and a challenging academic curriculum have to jump through all those hoops simply to get what they need to stay healthy and prevent pregnancies that they are in no way prepared to handle? How did I, an 18 year old freshman, become the trusted source?  Why weren’t our R.A.s or the student health center providing this information and the contraceptive access we needed?

When the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it would not expand the religious employer exemption for contraceptive coverage, but would require religiously affiliated hospitals, social service agencies and schools to comply with this new rule, it was a great victory for women and for women’s health.  But Catholic universities are still fighting it, arguing that the decision violates their religious values.

Really? The Jesuit values that Fordham University claims to be guided by were one of the reasons I chose it as my college.  It proffers itself as a university that is about nurturing the individual, and as the current President of Fordham says, about challenging students “to be bothered by the realization that [we] don’t know everything and bothered by injustice.”  How can you teach me to honor those values and fight social injustice when you deny women the reproductive freedom to realize their full potential?  When you establish policies that impose reproductive oppression?  Fordham students still experience the same struggles for contraception that I faced over a decade ago, and recently created a contraception fund for students.  Restricting women’s access to contraception does not honor the Jesuit values and traditions that I still deeply respect. 

Catholic universities claim that requiring them to provide students with access to contraception violates their religious conscience, but as my colleague wrote in the Raising Women’s Voices for the Health Care We Need newsletter last month, whose conscience matters anyway in birth control decisions?  The majority of my friends from Fordham were, and still are, practicing Catholics and I know we all agree that a woman’s own conscience matters the most in matters relating to her health and life.

Fordham may not value our opinions enough to change its policy, but our enthusiastic support – and the support of millions of women like us -- for the HHS contraceptive coverage decision will help shore up this policy.  Women speaking out about their support can make sure that right-wing politicians and Catholic bishops aren’t able to take away the historic gains in health care access that we’re making because of the new health reform law.  Please thank HHS for making the right call for women!   

This blog is a part of the #HERVOTES blog carnival.

• Contraceptive coverage is a critically important preventive health service for women because it enables us to plan and space pregnancies. The Institute of Medicine provided convincing evidence of the health benefit from contraceptive coverage, and the Department of Health and Human Services was right to require it of all new insurance plans.
• The vast majority of Catholic women use contraception and disagree with the Catholic Bishops. The Bishops should not be able to use government rules to impose their views on employees and students at Catholic hospitals, social services agencies and colleges.
• Making contraception affordable gives women and families the chance to make their own decisions about family planning -- a woman's employer shouldn't make that decision for her.

This blog is part of the #HERvotes blog carnival

What difference does a co-pay make?  Plenty!

I’m 57.  It’s been a long time since I’ve used contraception.   When I did use it, back in the last century, pills and other kinds of contraceptives were all very affordable.  If you picked up your pills at the drugs store and paid out-of-pocket – which is what you had to do back then since no insurance plans covered contraceptives – you might pay $5/month for a cycle of pills.  And if you were young or poor or both, it wasn’t hard to find a clinic that offered pills for $1/month.  Even though the minimum wage was only $3.35, pretty much everyone could afford to use contraception when they wanted. 

What’s it like now?  In a word – bad.  Most contraceptives are so expensive that I honestly don’t know a single person who tries to pay the full cost of a prescription contraceptive out-of-pocket.  It’s true that women with insurance are now much more likely to have coverage for contraceptives than back in the old days.  But sadly, as coverage has expanded, co-payments have gone up.  Way up.

My 21-year old daughter and her friends are facing co-payments that are so high, there’s almost no way these young adults can earn enough to pay for contraception … assuming that they’re also paying for rent, food, transportation and all the other costs faced by young adults.  Yes, it’s true that the minimum wage has more than doubled since the last time I was a regular contraceptive user.  But what’s happened to costs?  Have they doubled, too?  Hardly!  My daughter’s friends are being charged $40/month co-payments when they buy their pills at the drugstore.   Even student health centers, traditionally a go-to place for low-cost prescriptions, are charging $20/month co-payments.   And don’t even get me started about the cost of IUDs!  Would you believe $800 for the device itself, not including the practitioner’s fee?

I’m angry at pharmaceutical companies for charging such outrageous prices.  And as a leader of a consumer advocacy group, I can promise you that we’ll keep putting pressure on these companies.  But in the meantime, we need to rally round the administration’s new rules that require insurance companies to cover contraception without any additional fees like co-payments or deductibles.   It’s the best chance we have, right now, to make sure that costly co-pays don’t stand between a woman and the contraception she needs. 

Part of the #HERvotes blog carnival.

But I’m hearing rumors lately that the president may be about to announce a decision that fundamentally disrespects women.  Instead of standing strong in defense of contraceptive coverage – a provision of health reform that will help to make the promise of affordable access to the health care we need real for millions of women – the White House may be about to strip that promise away from some women.

It’s not just women’s health advocates, like me, who think that contraceptive coverage is good policy.  Medical experts from the Institute of Medicine reviewed the evidence and concluded that contraception is a proven and essential preventive health service for women.  Public opinion research shows that most people agree that insurance companies and employers should cover contraception without co-pays. 

But there’s a narrow minority of religious leaders who don’t agree, and they’re pulling out all the stops to put pressure on the White House to let some employers play by different rules, denying women who work for those employers the coverage they need to lead healthy reproductive lives.  The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is calling for a broad exemption from the contraceptive coverage policy that would give employers the right to make health care decisions for the women who work for them.  That’s not respecting women – and it’s not what we expect from President Obama!

The consequences of allowing religiously affiliated employers to deny contraceptive coverage have become painfully apparent in some states in recent years. The president should listen to the voices of the women who have had to live with the results.

In Muskegon, MI, employees of secular Hackley Hospital lost their contraceptive coverage when the hospital became part of a Catholic healthcare system.  One nurse described the burden and anxiety that the coverage exclusion imposed on her family, and the desperate need they feel for help:

“We are just praying I don’t get pregnant until we can figure out how to get something. … My third pregnancy I lost twins. … I can’t go through more. It’s taken a toll on my marriage.”

Another woman noted that although the policy respects the religious view of her employer, it fails to respect her own views:

 “If I have health insurance,” she said, “I should get birth control . . . why should I have to follow what they believe?” 

The broader religious employer exemption being proposed would replicate these women’s experiences, nationwide.  President Obama, we’re calling on you to show your respect for ALL women – please, stand up for the contraceptive coverage policy that respects our right to make our own decisions about contraception.