What’s a Woman To Do?

MOMocrats welcomes guest author Linda Tarr-Whelan's comments on the health insurance reform bill and the promise it holds for women and children. Please support the MomsRising campaign at the post's end!

Health care for women is in the news these days. But what does it all mean?  Having just researched for my new book what different decisions emerge when 30% women are at the table, I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if Congress were made up of 30% women, instead of 17%.  But more on that in future posts!

For today, I’m riveted by news stories that a “very prestigious independent medical panel” has recommended big changes in our health care routines.  As a colon cancer survivor and former nurse, it leaves me with more questions than answers. They talked about preventing deaths from breast cancer, but then told us to cut out several key steps we have learned to take.

We have walked, done relays, worn pink ribbons and educated ourselves to take practical steps:  do breast self-exams, have the mammograms we need after the age of 40 and regular doctors’ visits. Could these common-sense precautions really be unnecessary?  Really?

Go Read It: US Catholic Conference of Bishops' Hypocrisy on Federal Tax Dollars & the Stupak-Pitts Amendment

Not all Catholics believe the exact same thing. There are Catholics for Choice, Catholics who use contraception, and then...there's the US Conference on Catholic Bishops, which was an active, energetic force lobbying politicians to pass Stu-Pitts prior to the recent House vote on the Affordable Health Care for All Act. Strongly opposed to a woman's right to decide when and if to terminate a pregnancy, the USCCB receives 67% of its budget in federal tax dollars to help fund hospitals and other good works with secular impact operated by the Catholic church, and is itself charged with separating federal funding from religious practices.

Go read this op-ed that calls out hypocrisy in how the USCCB separates taxpayer dollars from church funds in their operations. It spells out why they, if anyone, should realize that the never-voted on Capps Amendment ensuring compliance with 1977's Hyde Amendment already adequately addressed the separation of taxpayer funds from abortion services. A short excerpt:

Catholic Charities, the domestic direct service arm of the bishops, also depends on state and federal dollars. Sixty-seven percent of Catholic Charities’ income comes from government funding. That represents over $2.6 billion in 2008 — an amount that is more than three times as large as the next largest charitable recipient of federal funds, the YMCA. Just as Catholic hospitals do, Catholic Charities receives enormous quantities of government dollars while abiding by existing constitutional and statutory requirements that prevent government sponsorship of religion.

Yet the USCCB wants to potentially sink health care reform--which they've previously supported--with a culture-war grenade. They want to effectively prevent any private insurer from providing a legal medical procedure by pushing falsehoods about the Affordable Health Care for All Act.

Call your senators and congressperson and demand that Stupak-Pitts be prevented from being inserted into the Senate bill and that the final bill reflect the Capps Amendment's compromise.

Cynematic blogs at P i l l o w b o o k.

The Stu-Pitts of Congress, and Women's Health Care From the Waist Up

Forgive me if I sound a little bitter despite being deeply moved by the passage of the Affordable Health Care Act this past weekend in the House. It IS a huge achievement and one-third of what we need to get the bill to President Obama to sign. I'm proud and grateful so many wonderful elected representatives who truly want to help Americans were able to move mountains and pass the bill.

It's just that, well, that was quick. We had a wonderful feminist moment there, didn't we, when we realized that women are treated differently than men by health insurers. We finally exposed the widespread practice of gender-rating--or disparate pricing by gender--for health insurance coverage that unfairly requires women to pay more than men with similar health status. We learned how eight states still allow insurers to consider domestic violence as a "pre-existing condition" to deny women coverage. We saw documentation of how common it is for women to be uninsured and underinsured whether it's employer-based coverage or self-procured, and how this made health insurance reform of particular interest to women. A quick statistic from the Commonwealth Study linked immediately above:

Six in ten women with moderate incomes (between $20,000 and $40,000) report being unable to pay medical bills, being contacted by a collection agency for unpaid medical bills, changing their way of life to pay medical bills or paying off medical debt over time, as did almost half (46%) of middle-income women.

Women rallying support around health insurance reform, I maintain, helped lift poll numbers for the public option and lift some of the curse extremist Teabaggers had tried to cast on the bill.

Hear My Story: Breast Cancer Twice, and My Only Choice Was Health Care in France

HOW BLUE CROSS/BLUE SHIELD OF NEW YORK TRIED TO KILL ME

by Suzanne White  

America is no place to be old or sick.

I am an American health insurance exile. While living in New York in 1978, I got breast cancer and had a mastectomy. Blue Cross/Blue Shield summarily refused me coverage for my care and indeed cancelled my excellent paid-up policy without explanation.

I fought them. And I lost. Hospital bills, surgeons, anesthesiologists, endless tests and chemo absorbed all my savings. I had to sell my house and all my belongings. Then, bald, broke and severely weakened by a year of heavy chemotherapy, I gathered up my kids and took them to live in France where there is a national health insurance plan. I was lucky. My books were selling well in French so my publisher has been paying his share of my policy all along. I paid up my share; so I and my two daughters once again had full coverage health insurance.

Strategies to Pass a National Public Option/State Single Payer Health Care Plans: Will They Work?

Lately there's been a lot of angst from liberals and moderates who favor health insurance reform regarding the fate of a public option* in Congress. What's missing is a sense of how national policy debates intersect with state efforts to reform the provision of health care.

Listen up if you live in the states of California, Illinois, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, or Ohio (pdf).

Listen up if you're belong to or agree with over 572 union organizations nationwide who support single-payer health care at a national level, also known as H.R. 676.

Listen up if you've gotten increasingly concerned over the mainstream media reporting on reputed White House wavering on the public option.*

MOMocrat CityMama gave an excellent overview of the situation which I encourage you to revisit and plunder for talking points WHEN YOU CALL OR FAX your representative. You are making those calls, right?

I wanted to give a little space here to review what's happening on the state level, and encourage you to mobilize there as well.

Re-Fired Up: A Health Reform Vigil in St. Louis

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a town hall meeting held by my Senator, Claire McCaskill, in a rural Missouri town on the outskirts of St. Louis.

It depressed me.

Health care reform opponents screamed and heckled and interrupted the Senator, again and again. Some health care reform supporters got frustrated and started yelling back. At one point, a white man in the audience snatched a poster of Rosa Parks from a black woman in attendance and crumpled it and ripped it and stomped on it and shoved the woman when she tried to take it back from him. The man cited the "no sign or banners" rule imposed by the university hosting the event as his defense as security escorted both him and the woman he had taken the sign from out of the building; meanwhile, several anti-health reform protesters blatantly displaying "Don't Tread on Me" Gadsen flag banners were allowed to stay without incident. That depressed me.

A fellow blogger was called a "babykiller" for wearing a pink Planned Parenthood t-shirt and had a racial slur tossed at her to boot for being black while wearing said t-shirt. That depressed me.

A man standing outside with the St. Louis Tea Party protesters held a sign equating President Obama to Hitler:

(Photo courtesy of Michael Bersin from Show Me Progress.)

That made me want to weep for education, America, manufacturers of cheap men's hair dye, and all humanity.

Health care is a human right, and to quote a nice, elderly man from my hippie church "We all need to get off our asses and make sure this thing passes!"

It's been a long time since I've posted on MOMocrats, the blog I started along with Glennia and Beth because, after 8 years of Bush "leading" our country, there was no way we were going to allow a Republican to become president.

After the election of Barack Obama, I was completely burned out. So much of my time, effort, brain space, and blogging was devoted to getting a Democrat elected that I needed a break. I just didn't expect that it would last 9 months.

I can't remember the last time I watched Olbermann. I don't hit refresh on Huffington Post or Politico or factcheck.org multiple times a day like I used to. My papers stacked up so I finally canceled my subscriptions. I have been content to focus on other aspects of my life feeling as if now, our country is finally in good hands. And it mostly is.

Except that over the last month or so, as I have watched the people who are working so hard to reform our failing healthcare system and to pass HR676 having to do battle against a well-funded, lie-spreading machine, I have gotten angrier and angrier. How people like Sarah Palin are STILL being so careless with their words. Death panels and socialized medicine? And people believe it.

How members of congress who have accepted hundreds or millions of dollars in donations from insurance and pharmaceutical companies are allowed time on the floor.

How Democratic members of congress (I'm looking at you, Feinstein) can say, "I am not for a public option."

And the guns.  Don't even get me started on the guns.

As I sat in my beloved hippie church today, listening to our speaker, Lynn Huidekoper, one of the founders of the Single Payer Coalition, share information on this landmark healthcare decision—a reform that could finally bring the United States in line with the other 27 highly developed nations of the world—I knew that it was time. Healthcare reform was my path back to MOMocrats. I know that my sisters here have been carrying on the healthcare fight for months now, but now is the time that I need to step up and do my part.

We MOMocrats did so much good before sharing our thoughts and combating lies and getting the right person elected president, that it's time to do it again. Healthcare needs to be our change we can believe in. If you believe that our current system is broken and that healthcare is a basic human right—that access to good healthcare is something that all people should have—then you, too, regardless of your political or religious affiliation, must take up this fight. It is only through the efforts of a very passionate and vocal grassroots effort that we are going to get HR676 passed.

So what can you do? 

First, let's counteract the lies and untruths with what Huidekoper calls, "no-brainers." These are the simple facts that you can copy and paste and include in an email to all your family and friends, and they are:

1. Healthcare is a human right.
2. We are not starting from scratch--we are taking an existing program, Medicare, and expanding it.
3. Medicare is a single payer program for those 65 and older. (We know what it is.)
4. Single payer means expanding Medicare to cover all. (Take something we are already doing and make it cover all Americans, not just those 65 and older.)
5. 5% overhead instead of 30% (Think about how much insurance and pharamaceutical companies spend on advertising. I never saw ads for erectile dysfuction, eyelash lengtheners, overactive bladder, or hyperactive leg syndrome on TV 10 or 15 years ago.)
6. It will cost less.
7. Everyone is covered, no denials, no preexisting conditions.
8. It is NOT free.
9. Employees and Employers pay into the system. Look at your pay stub, we already know how to do it.
10. Business will be paying 4.75% payroll instead of 16%.
11. A rich benefit package will be available to all.
12. All will have long term care, vision and dental covered (individual state plans right now may not, but federal will).
13. No more bankruptcies due to health care bills.
14. It is NOT socialized medicine. Socialized medicine is where government owns the hospitals, doctors, and everything in it. There are only a handful of truly socialist medicine systems in the world and guess what?  One of them is in the United States: it's called the VA.
15. Health care delivery remains private. Under HR676 patients continue to see private doctors in private hospitals. Government claims will be processed by private insurance companies not government agencies. See #14: It is NOT socialized medicine.
16. Total choice of health care provider. Under single payer you can go to any doctor, not just the ones in your plan. HMOs are more restrictive NOW.
17. More money will go to health care.
18. No more middle man between doctor and patient, contrary to what opponents say. The middle men are the insurance companies who currently tell doctors what tests and medications they will and will not allow.
19. Doctors will regain control of healthcare--which is why 60% of doctors support single payer.
20. No more deaths due to uninsurance or denial of care. Twenty thousand people a year die yearly because they are not insured, are under insured, or have been denied care.  That is an outrage.
21. No more obscene salaries for insurance CEOs.
22. No more inhumane waits in ERs for primary care.
23 We will join all the other industrialized nations in covering EVERYONE.

Hear My Story: I Survived Cancer, Only to Be Denied Insurance

 Health care reform is a women's issue. Why? Because well-being and caregiving are so closely linked.

Like it or not, much of the burden of caregiving falls on the shoulders of women. We might have legal responsibility for an aged parent or a mentally or physically disabled sibling. We might be parents ourselves. Whether a single woman or partnered, we are there for our women friends and community members to support, encourage, comfort, celebrate, and rabble rouse together...keeping each other sane.

With Hear My Story, MOMocrats launches a series that highlights the personal stories of women who support health insurance reform because they know the existing system is broken. And they've fallen through the cracks--or come close--and survived to tell about it. It's direct, concrete experience, painful and difficult--filled with the kind of worries that make your nights sleepless and long. Maybe you can relate.

Here's the story of Jennic Law, a small business owner at KangaRooBoo.com who started a children's toy company specializing in non-toxic, educational toys and games.

I voted for President Obama. I am hopeful that he WILL provide those of us with “pre-existing conditions” an affordable way to obtain health care coverage. Yes, he will. His mother was discriminated against due to her own medical conditions – he would be one to understand even if no one else does.

    I am a cancer survivor. I am currently living in a health care nightmare and have been for almost 2 years. I have no health coverage. I am a married 32 years old small business owner with 2 children under 6 years old living in the midwest.

The Apathetic Middle: How Virginia Dems Will Lose the Governor's Mansion

The word on the street is that Democrats are being encouraged not to challenge other Dems in primaries.  While I'm not in favor of strong arming good candidates into "waiting their turn," I understand why the Dems are doing this. It seems that they've finally figured out that nasty Democratic primaries just help the Republicans in the general election. 

Take for example what's happened here in Virginia.  A Democrat, albeit a conservative Dem, has held the Governor's mansion for the last two election.  This year, there was no clear cut Democratic successor, even though the Republicans managed to narrow it down to Bob McDonnell and only Bob McDonnell.  We had three contenders in the Democratic primary: Creigh Deeds, Terry McAuliffe and Brian Moran. 

From the beginning, the consensus was that Creigh Deeds didn't have much of a chance.  Terry McAuliffe would get the out-of-state big money, Brian Moran would get the more liberal backing of Northern Virginia and the grass roots activists.  Creigh Deeds?  He's a nice guy, but conventional wisdom said he was too conservative and couldn't be aggressive enough to win the primary. 

A Women of Color Trifecta This Week? Sotomayor, Chu, and Benjamin

    
In judge's robes: 2d Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor, nominee for Supreme Court Justice; center: Congresswoman Judy Chu; in a doctor's coat: Dr. Regina Benjamin, nominee for U.S. Surgeon General

During the recent hearings to confirm Obama's appointment of Sonia Sotomayor as the newest member of SCOTUS, Senator Lindsay Graham sourly admitted to Sotomayor, "Unless you have a meltdown, you're going to get confirmed."

The surly, condescending impotence of Graham's statement aside, what he was acknowledging was the 60-seat majority of Democratic senators in the Senate, making Republicans' filibuster shenanigans to block Sotomayor's confirmation highly unlikely.

If all goes well, then, this week we'll have seen a women of color trifecta: Sonia Sotomayor's appointment to the Supreme Court, Judy Chu's landslide election to the Congressional seat vacated by Hilda Solis upon becoming Labor Secretary in Obama's cabinet, and Dr. Regina Benjamin's appointment as the Surgeon General of the United States.

Can't appoint or elect eminently qualified women of color to serve America at the highest levels of public office because "they don't exist"? President Obama's appointments and the voters of CD32 beg to differ.

Accomplished women of all colors and walks of life are ready to repay the benefits from uniquely American opportunities available to them. This is cause for celebration, and the wider the net we throw to find talent, the more every one of us reaps the reward.

Cynematic blogs at P i l l o w b o o k. She'd like to see various LGBT military men and women (like Lt Dan Choi, for example) be reinstated to service, and DADT repealed, for the same reason that race, age, or gender discrimination is no longer a barrier to employment anywhere or to public service: DISCRIMINATION BASED ON SEXUAL ORIENTATION UNJUSTLY NARROWS THE POOL OF TALENT AND HAS NO BEARING ON MERITORIOUS ACHIEVEMENT.