Support Rep. Lee's Universal Health Service Act--Why Women NEED Single Payer

As Congress begins to consider what actions it will take to re-structure the ailing U.S. healthcare system, one critical issue that must be addressed is the structural inequity in the  current system and the disproportionate impact that has on women’s lives and well-being.

As Judy Norsigian, Executive Director of Our Bodies Ourselves and Dr. Jennifer Potter, the director of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Director of Women’s Health at Fenway Health point out in an Op Ed  in the Boston Globe, the answer that makes the most sense for women is a single payer plan.

The only national plan for healthcare reform that explicitly includes women’s reproductive health services, including abortion, is one sponsored by Representative Barbara Lee, a California Democrat. Other sponsors of single-payer plans are also amenable to including women’s reproductive health services.

Coverage with a single-payer plan is independent from employment. Because women are more likely to be self-employed, to work part time, and to move in and out of employment outside the home, they are now more likely either to lack coverage through work or to lose insurance when changing jobs.

Medical debt is an enormous concern for many women, and single-payer plans effectively address the cost issues that send women into debt and even bankruptcy. A 2009 Commonwealth Fund study found that 45 percent of women accrued medical debt or reported problems with medical bills in 2007 compared with 36 percent of men.

Our Bodies Our Selves‘ endorsement of the Lee bill offers a number of reasons why this bill is the best  healthcare plan for women:

• Coverage is independent from employment.
• Coverage is independent from marriage.
• Single-payer system would encourage better care for chronic illnesses.
• Single-payer system would eliminate the need for Medicaid.
• Single-payer system would address the cost issues that send women into debt and bankruptcy.

For all these reasons, it is urgently important to support the Lee bill.  Write and call your Congressional Representatives, write to your local newspaper and raise a ruckus.  Our lives depend on it.