Report

Thirty million women will benefit from the new health care reform law over the next 10 years, either through new or improved health insurance coverage, according to report from The Commonwealth Fund scheduled to be released July 30.

The report found that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Pub. L. No. 111-148) will reverse the growing exposure to health costs that women currently experience by subsidizing health insurance for up to 15 million currently uninsured women, while strengthening existing coverage for 14.5 million underinsured women.

Provisions important to women will expand eligibility for Medicaid; provide subsidies to purchase insurance; limit out-of-pocket spending; prevent insurers from charging higher premiums or denying coverage based on health status or gender; and require new plans to cover maternity and newborn care, said the report, Realizing Health Reform's Potential: Women and the Affordable Care Act of 2010.
“Historically, women have been more vulnerable to high health care costs and have had greater difficulty paying medical bills because of their lower incomes,” Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis said in a press release.

“This report provides good news to all women, who will be more likely to get the care they need, with reduced risk of incurring the unaffordable medical bills that have affected so many Americans.”
High Health Care Costs.

While women are just as likely to be uninsured as men, their health care needs leave them more vulnerable to high health care costs and problems related to loss of health insurance. “Because insurance carriers consider women, particularly those of reproductive age, higher risk than men, women report greater difficulties gaining coverage in the individual insurance market and are charged much higher premiums for the same benefits than men of the same age. Further, most individual policies do not cover pregnancy,” the report said.

Women in states with higher than average uninsured rates stand to gain the most from the new law, according to the report. Those states include New Mexico and Texas (29 percent uninsured in 2008); Florida and Louisiana (24 percent uninsured); and Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Mississippi, West Virginia, Idaho, Kentucky, Nevada, and Oklahoma (at least 20 percent uninsured), the report said.

While women will have to wait until 2014 to see the biggest benefits from the law in terms of expanded coverage, they also will benefit from numerous provisions that begin in 2010, according to the report.

These provisions include bans on pre-existing medical condition exclusions, bans on rescissions of policies, bans on lifetime benefit limits, and coverage of recommended preventive services without cost sharing including mammograms, it said.