Health Care Reform - A Woman's Issue.pdf

Health Care Reform: a Women's Issue
by Anne S. Kasper, Ph.D.

Anne Kasper was director of the Campaign for Women's Health in the early 1990s. In this important article, Anne puts health care reform and women into a historical context and discusses where we are now. Thanks to the Boston Women's Health Book Collective for giving WUHI permission to use this article from their site http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/.

NWLC Report Card
Click NWLC Report card to view the document in pdf format.

NWHAT
Click NWHAT to view the document in pdf format

Diagnosing Disparities in Health Insurance for Women: A Prescription for Change
by Jeanne M. Lambrew

http://www.cmwf.org/publications/publications_show.htm?doc_id=221296

A well researched report from the Commonwealth Fund, discusses many of the barriers specific to women for obtaining health insurance and women's special needs.

Women’s Health in the United States: Health Coverage and Access to Care

http://www.kff.org/womenshealth/20020507a-index.cfm

This Kaiser Family Foundation survey presents the findings from a nationally representative survey of nearly 4,000 women ages 18 to 64. A significant minority of nonelderly women reported delaying or going without care in the past year or not filling a prescription due to costs. Women are more likely than men both to face these problems and express concerns about the quality of health care they received.

Financing Just Health Care

http://www.justhealthcare.org/bp02.pdf

A concise overview of the financing of health care in the United States. Prepared by the Labor Party, the overview also includes financial assessment of health reform proposals.  Also available at http://www.justhealthcare.org/bp.html.

Health Care Access Resolution
House Concurrent Resolution 99 (H. Con Res. 99)

Click here to read the article

A resolution submitted in 2001 directing Congress to enact legislation by October 2004 that provides access to comprehensive health care for all Americans. A major national campaign to pass this legislation is directed by the Universal Health Care Action Network - UHCAN [http://www.uhcan.org/HCAR/]

Raising the Money for Health Care for All
Traditional Single Payor Financing Versus Pooled Financing
by Alan Sager and Deborah Socolar

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This paper discusses a method for funding a universal health program. The authors suggest that one alternative that would be to start health care financing reform by raising federal taxes only to cover today’s out-of-pocket costs.

Issues for States in Planning for Universal Coverage
by Alan Sager and Deborah Socolar

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The evidence is clear: current health spending is high enough to pay for comprehensive health coverage for all Americans-and still save money. The major obstacles are not matters of cost, but of politics. But there are many issues to be resolved in designing and planning for universal coverage, whether nationally or in the states.

Midlife Women: Insurance Coverage and Access
by Karen Scott Collins

http://www.wrei.org/projects/health/brief_ksc.pdf

This report, prepared for the Women’s Research and Education Institute, utilizes data from the Commonweatlh Fund to examine the health insurance-related experiences and concerns of women at midlife.

Care Without Coverage: Too Little, Too Late

http://www.nap.edu/books/0309083435/html/

An online version of a report by the Institute of Medicine, documenting the outcomes to individuals of being uninsured for health care. Shows that the widespread lack of medical insurance in the US is directly contributing to poorer health and higher rates of early death among adults. Studies included in the analysis found that uninsured women with breast cancer have a 30% to 50% higher risk of dying from the disease than women with insurance.

National Health Insurance: Liberal Benefits, Conservative Spending
by Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH and David U. Himmelstein, MD

Click here to read article.

Published in the May, 2002 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, by two long term advocates for health care reform. Presents the argument for the need for fundamental change in health care financing.

Sicker and Poorer: The Consequences of Being Uninsured

http://www.kff.org/uninsured/20020510-index.cfm

A report by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured synthesizes the major findings of the past 25 years of health services research assessing the most important effects of health insurance. The report evaluates thousands of citations and research articles to assess the consequences of being uninsured for health status and economic opportunity and concludes that the weight of this large body of research makes a compelling case that health insurance does lead to improved health and better access to care.