week 6 readings

I thought this article really helped put women's health issues into perspective by giving some more informational background about health care access for women.

I think a few of the trends, including the fact that women are more likely to be dependent, are more of social issues that cause healthcare disparities.

The amount of women on Medicaid is extremely alarming, especially because these women will not have access to the same quality of treatment and will often be denied basic treatment by many doctors and medical centers who do not accept Medicaid.

This was such an informative article! I really appreciated how it briefly explained what’s going on with health reform right now, and I really liked how it looked at how this issue specifically affects women. I am still confused about exactly what’s happening with health reform, and I hope we can talk about it a bit in class.

I think what concerned me the most were the statistics showing how women more likely than men to be dependents and more likely to lose their healthcare if their spouse loses their job. I think the idea of being financially dependent on someone and not having something like healthcare in your control just personally scares me a lot. And I wonder how the new health reform might address this.

I agree, one of the scariest facts was that uninsured women are more likely to postpone care, forgo filling prescriptions and delay measures such as mammograms and pap tests. Insurance is one of the biggest gatekeepers to so many of the other problems we have discussed. After reading this article, I feel like less frequent mammograms that are covered by insurance might be a better strategy than more frequent mammograms. Especially if this means the difference between a woman getting tested a few times and not getting tested at all.

Week 6 Reading

This is very scary that young, colored women are at the highest risk of not having insurance. From what we read last week, it is that exact group who needs the most health care resources because they are at a high risk of obtaining diseases. Additionally, these women are classified as young, this means that they are the ones having children. How can we expect our society to function properly when at risk child-bearing women do not have health care? Something needs to be changed and higher quality resources need to become available in at risk communities.

I found the statistics a bit disconcerting as well, as the consequences of not getting preventative care can snowball into other (even larger) costs down the road. With provisions to "prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, and prevent insurers from varying premium rates based on gender or health status", and also to require coverage of preventive services and vaccines recommended by federally sponsored committees without co-payments or other cost-sharing, I think the health care act is really focusing on what needs to be examined first. However, because the problems with health care that need to be tackled seem so diverse and all-encompassing, I'm not sure how effective the bill will be, in terms of the many issues that it addresses (including how specific its goals are and how it will try to achieve them, i.e. at what scale will the provisions go into effect).

The statistics in this reading are staggering, I was so surprised to learn how many women are uninsured, 19.1 million women?! I'm at least happy to hear that changes are starting to take place and measures are being taken to change some of these numbers. It kind of made me think of when we were discussing how when women go to the hospital they tell all their symptoms (sometimes seemingly unnecessarily) but it made me wonder if some women did so because they try not to go to the doctor often, and when they do they better make sure they've covered everything. Men on the other hand seem to have a better sense of security when it comes to coverage and therefore can perhaps be a little less paranoid and get to the main point.

Reading

It seems that to cover all the uninsured women is really a huge task because in the reading, it says that "Medicaid covers 12% of nonelderly women, rising from 10% of women in 2008. Only 2% more percent during the past two years. How can the government ensure in the future four years the health insurance will nearly cover all the uninsured women? The medicare is only for low-income women who are either: pregnant, mothers of children who are 18 years or under, disabled, or over 65 . There are lots of limitations. Also for those women who are dependent on
their spouses, they are actually potential uninsured women because once their spouse loses his job, they do not have any insurance any more. As is said in the reading,between 2009 and 2010, the actual number of women (and men) with employer sponsored coverage actually fell for the first time, a reflection of the high unemployment rate. It is clear to see how those women are vulnerable to the change of the economic environment.
According to the new health law, it seems that it can reach an ideal situation in 2014 since most of the problems are dealt in the new health law. The question is how efficient this law can be? How each state is going to cover all the uninsured women since some of the states do not really have enough money for that? The tax might be even higher. What if there will be higher unemployment rates in the future? As a result, there might be lots of problems.

Feb 10 Reading

I am glad that the Obama administration is determined to reevaluate health care coverage. However, I find that the big picture is being missed. Shouldn't we focus on health care prevention, and then treatment? Statistics state that low income households had the worst health, and also provided the heaviest burden on the medicaid system. However, as we established last week, only 10% of health issues are related to health care. It is far more likely that these households suffer from their socio-economic status or environment, and it seems like we should be addressing those. A new health care system just seems like a quick fix to a much more complicated problem. However, the fact that we recognize that there is a problem is a start.
As to women's health, is there a great difference in coverage between poor women and poor men? I couldn't really deduce that from the article. The issue of dependency is covered, and I am surprised that that number is so large. However, I feel like it is a little misleading. For instance, my parents work at the same institution, and my mother is listed as a dependent. But if my father were fired or lost coverage, she would still be able to get coverage. Maybe she is listed as the dependent because of societal norms (sexist) but that doesn't mean that she is at risk.
I am relieved that insurance companies will be required to charge the same premiums for men and women. I wasn't aware that this was an issue, and I would love to explore this more.

The article really shows how insurance (or lack thereof) and money can make such a difference in achieving health. Reading the fact that uninsured women will often ignore or not take preventative measures to health issues, just to avoid to deal the costs and complications of being uninsured.

Another issue I found interesting was the fact that women make up 3/4 of the Medicaid population, which leads into another issue that women are more likely to be dependents for health care. I think that the fact that women are more likely to being dependents of healthcare reflects the fact that the workforce is still dominated by men, which makes it more difficult for women to attain insurance from work. Overall, the article really revealed the social implications of the disparities of women's access to health insurance.

I agree with kayo in that economics obviously plays a large part in health care insurance. I was pleased to see that the majority (a slim one) of women are covered by their employers and aren't as dependent on their spouses as seen in the past - but of course there are way too many people that are uninsured and the article rightly points out that this has a lot to do with the high unemployment rate. So yes, health coverage will improve as the economy picks up.

On another note, I knew before reading this that private insurance is expensive, but I didn't realize how little it accounts for the coverage of all women. Also I think medicaid is a good thing, but I don't think it should be the go to - it should only be the fall back. Maybe private insurance needs to become more affordable and less exclusive or medicaid should be expanded to include more of the people at and below poverty level. But alas there is probably a huge cost associated with all of this and there are already economic tensions. Either way there needs to be a way to cover all the uninsured people.

On a completely unrelated note I didn't appreciate how the fact-sheet said women covered under Tricare are either "the spouses or dependents of those in the military", because of course women can be in the military themselves and therefore be covered under Tricare for their service (in fact women make up 20% of the military).

Reading this week's article (the fact sheet) I was reminded of how large a role economics play in health care. In some ways, it is really unfortunate that money matters so much. I was also surprised at how far below poverty level some people seem to be falling. Reading that part, I felt like major economic improvements need to be made before anything else.

As I said in last week's response, I also was slightly worried in how the new health policies will be funded for. It is, however, definitely a nice change and would probably prove to be very important in helping raise the health standards.