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Which services are covered under health insurance plans? Does Medicaid and Medicare provide the same benefits? How will the law be implemented so that women can access the benefits?
More information about health care reform is available at www.healthcare.gov and www.nwlc.org
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Women’s Health Today is about women for everyone. How does being a woman or a man impact your health? Does health and other policy adequately address systemic problems and root causes of ill health? Women’s Health Today looks at health from an interdisciplinary and woman-centered perspective, examining the many biological, psychological, environmental and social factors effecting health.
THE NEW health care law is already having a positive effect on health care costs in New Mexico. Part of why premium increases are slowing is because of the protections the law affords.
The health law provides states with funding to help us better evaluate huge spikes in insurance premiums. These dollars provide states with the capacity to bring greater transparency to the insurance market by reviewing rate increases, which ultimately helps to drive down premiums and hold insurance companies accountable.
Ever-rising premiums have hampered women’s ability to afford health insurance. Not only does this new law help to reduce insurance premiums, but it protects women from discriminatory health insurance practices, and makes coverage more secure by ensuring that working families cannot be denied care due to a pre-existing condition.
The law also provides basic preventative health care and women’s health services with no-copy, which reduces the amount of out-of-pocket costs women would have had to spend on needed care. The law not only helps women and families in New Mexico, but it makes good economic sense.
According to the nonpartisan congressional budget office, the health care law will reduce the federal deficit by $143 billion in the first 10 years and by more than $1 trillion in the second 10 years.
Gender Impacts Policy, a project of the non-profit Center of Southwest Culture, has submitted a report to the New Mexico Human Services Department under a federal health care reform planning grant on the sex and gender implications of a New Mexico health insurance exchange. The project director was Giovanna Rossi and project adviser was Dr. Justina Trott. Sex-Gender Final Report June 2011
Sex and gender differences in health outcomes are significantly impacted by a person’s environment and cultural practices in diet, geography, education, social practices, and resource availability (especially economic). Consequently, there is need for analyzing the inter-relational impact of diversity and other social determinants of health in implementing sex- and gender-based programs to truly achieve health equity, and that such an analysis must be conducted at multiple levels of intervention (policy, planning, programs, services, and research).
This project utilizes a sex and gender lens to analyze barriers to health coverage, participation in a health insurance exchange, benefits and services, and customer information to assess the differential impact on women to achieve health equity. The benefit package of insurance products sold in a health insurance exchange and other health insurance exchange services will need to be designed to address the needs of and be accessible to populations of both men and women in all of their diversities.
For the purpose of our study and this report, sex and gender stakeholder population is defined as, and this project focuses on, input from diverse populations of women, including ethnicity, socio-economic status, age, abilities, geographic region, and sexual orientation. The stakeholder input methodology is designed to include people in greatest economic and social need, particularly low-income, minority, and rural individuals. The methodology includes four key informant interviews, seven focus groups, a policy forum, and a gender analysis of secondary sex-disaggregated data. A statewide stakeholder participant recruitment plan is developed, which includes input from Native Americans, Hispanic/Latinas, parents of transgendered teens, young women, low-income women, monolingual Spanish speakers, and rural women.
Key Recommendations for Establishing a Health Insurance Exchange
The recommendations presented here are organized around the core areas studied: health coverage, participation in a health insurance exchange, benefits and services, customer service, and gender roles. We then group themes that include cost; family impact; power structures and cultural barriers; information, knowledge and trust; and comprehensive, integrated and colocated services. And given the needs identified in this report, a Basic Health Plan (BHP) in New Mexico would benefit the population studied.
