What The US Health Care Reform Bill Means For Women
First off, we need to talk about the Hyde Amendment:
Basically, after Roe v. Wade was ruled on by the Supreme Court, abortions were covered by Medicaid until Henry Hyde (a senator) proposed an amendment to restrict public funding for abortions in the United States. This amendment is voted on every single year and restrictions are added, altered, or taken off depending on how the opinions of the politicians fluctuate through the years. The amendment allows for abortions to be covered by public funding if a woman was raped, a victim of incest, or the life of the mother is threatened.
The reason the Hyde Amendment is important to the bill that President Obama signed this morning is because he gave out an executive order barring any public funds to be used for abortion services, which is pretty much the same thing the Hyde amendment states.
What that means for women is that if your insurance covers abortions and continues to cover abortions you will have to pay for those services to a separate fund that is not connected to public funding. It’s not exactly barring a woman from having an abortion, but what I’ve been reading is that insurance companies that continue to cover abortions might choose not to once they have to compete for lower prices and use the separate way of funding. According to one source:
“[…] private health insurance companies could choose to, in states that allow it, offer abortion services. But through a funny little wrinkle in the law, the money to cover those services would have to be collected separately. And there’s been a lot of discussion about whether insurance companies would go to the trouble of collecting that, or whether it would be easier simply not to include that service as part of the coverage package.”
I think it’s important to note that the reason President Obama issued the executive order barring public funds to be used for abortion services is because the bill would not have passed if he didn’t. Pro-Life democrats make up a large enough margin that if they had voted “no” the bill would not have passed, so abortion progress was sacrificed because of it. I’m not really sure how to feel about that, I live in the US and currently preparing to graduate from college so being able to stay on my parents’ insurance is going to help me more than I can imagine as well as the people around me. At the same time I think any woman who is in need of abortion services should be able to afford it, so should women with cancer who can’t afford chemotherapy, so should women who are denied coverage because of irregular pap smears, and the list goes on. I’m really torn. I feel like this bill is definitely a good thing for women because so many of us will have affordable health care. That means more women will be able to get preventative care from doctors, they’ll be able to have reproductive care from regularly scheduled pap smears and STI screenings, there will be access to cancer screenings, and prenatal care for pregnant women; but women still won’t have access to abortions the way they should.
Love,
Rable
Sources:
Quote from: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125021825&ft=1&f=1014
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/03/white-house-announces-executiv.html
http://womensissues.about.com/b/2010/03/22/health-care-reform-bill-passes-but-what-does-it-mean-for-abortion.htm
http://womensissues.about.com/od/reproductiverights/f/HydeAmendment.htm
