Tag Archives: Pre-existing condition

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Repeal Vote Imminent: Women’s Health at Risk … a message from someone who knows

01/18/2011 Nativegrl77

Tell your Representative to vote NO on repealing the health care law.

Call 877-667-6650

Tomorrow, the House will vote on a bill to repeal the new health care law. Repealing the law would risk access to health care and affordable insurance coverage for all women and women like me — a rape survivor.

Please call 877-667-6650 and tell your Member of Congress to vote NO on repealing the health care law.

Eight years ago, I was drugged and raped while on a business trip. I’m lucky to be alive.

At the time, I was a health insurance agent and when I needed new insurance, I knew how hard it would be to get coverage due to the medical treatment I received for my assault. I needed counseling and preventive anti-HIV medications but the insurance companies didn’t care what I needed. To them, being treated for rape qualified as a “pre-existing condition” and they said they wouldn’t cover someone like me.

The only coverage I could find would have cost almost as much as my monthly rent. So for three years, I was uninsured. I paid for my counseling, my medication, and all my day-to-day health needs out of pocket. I was lucky I could afford to do that. It wasn’t easy, though, and being uninsured was a big worry I faced every day.

The new health care law puts an end to insurance companies treating women like a pre-existing condition. But that’s not all — the law is already helping women and their families by providing no-cost preventive health care services, preventing insurance companies from dropping patients when they become sick, and prohibiting insurance companies from limiting the amount of money they will pay for benefits over a woman’s lifetime. All this is at risk.

Please call 877-667-6650 and tell your Member of Congress to vote NO on repealing the health care law.

The new health care law works for all of us. But repeal will put me and millions of other women and their families at the mercy of the insurance industry again. We can’t go back.

Please send a strong message. Call your Member of Congress today.

Sincerely,

Chris Turner

a message from OFA

01/07/2011 Nativegrl77

House Republicans are moving forward to repeal all provisions of health reform, with a final vote scheduled for next week.

If they get their way, insurance companies will once again have the right to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, drop or limit coverage if you become sick, and charge women higher premiums than men. Seniors will lose critical prescription drug savings and free preventive care under Medicare.

It’s sad but not surprising.

The motivations here have little to do with good policy. Repeal is just the first agenda item of a new Republican majority that is much more interested in appeasing their right-wing base and looking out for special interests than working together to create jobs and grow the economy.

Behind the scenes, insurance-industry lobbyists are working overtime with Republicans to take us back to the days when their clients were able to do whatever they wanted.

But this movement is different. We don’t take our cues from special interests or lobbyists, and we never will. We don’t take their money either, relying solely on support from folks like you — and it only makes us stronger.

Right now, Organizing for America is putting together a team of dedicated organizers and volunteers to defend our progress, stop repeal, and expose the Republican plan for what it really is.

Will you donate $5 or more to help protect our progress — and stop the repeal of health insurance reform?

We fought to pass the Affordable Care Act because it was the right thing to do.

Its provisions are fair, reduce the deficit by more than $230 billion over the next 10 years, cut costs, and protect all Americans from the worst insurance industry abuses. The law is already making a difference in people’s lives.

Among other provisions, the Affordable Care Act:

— Prevents insurers from raising premiums by double digits with no recourse or accountability;
— Requires insurers to spend 80 to 85 percent of premium dollars on health care, not CEO bonuses — and if they don’t, they have to provide you a rebate;
— Frees families from the fear of losing their insurance, or having it capped unexpectedly, after an injury or illness; and
— Prohibits insurance companies from discriminating against pregnant women or denying coverage to children born with disabilities.

The Republican alternative at this point consists of a two-page addendum to the two-page repeal bill. It’s a plan to make a plan to have a plan.

Even without a coherent proposal, they won’t have trouble raising money to drum up support for repeal. Republicans’ close relationship with entrenched interests has benefited them in campaigns that did not begin — and will not end — with health reform.

But we’re fighting back with everything we’ve got — building a large-scale, grassroots effort to stop this repeal and protect our progress. Your support will fund the organizing that generates calls to Congress, neighborhood canvasses, and letters in our local papers.

Together, we’ll make sure our message is heard and understood: We stand by health reform and will not tolerate attempts to put insurance companies back in charge.

Donate $5 or more to fight repeal and protect our progress:

https://donate.barackobama.com/NoRepeal

Thanks,

Yohannes

Yohannes Abraham
Political Director
Organizing for America

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Help Us Protect Against New Attacks on HCR – Your Gift Matched

12/14/2010 Nativegrl77

You have to wonder — which part of the landmark health care law do they want to repeal?

Is it the part that ends the practice of charging women higher health insurance premiums than men?

Or perhaps it’s the part that bans the practice of denying coverage to rape victims because insurers consider rape and domestic violence to be “pre-existing conditions?”

This year’s landmark law was an urgent and long-overdue step forward. And we’re not going to let it fall victim to partisan politics.

With your help, we can defend our gains — and make new progress — for women and families in 2011.

Please make an urgent contribution to the Center’s year-end campaign — every dollar you donate will be matched dollar for dollar by our Board of Directors, up to a total of $60,000.

Last year, Congress considered ways to fix our broken health care system, and the Center went to work. We sought to stop insurers from charging women higher premiums than men. We sought to require insurers to provide insurance to 32 million Americans who had none. And we sought to end the trauma of women being denied coverage by insurance companies that consider Cesareans, domestic violence and rape to be “pre-existing conditions.”

We researched and documented the discrimination women face. We put women’s health needs front and center through our attention-grabbing “Being a Woman Is Not a Pre-existing Condition” campaign. We provided expert testimony on Capitol Hill documenting the inequities and discrimination that women faced every day as they sought quality health care for themselves and their families.

And with the help of so many people like you, we won.

The health care law was the culmination of years of work by the Center and its allies — documenting the abuses by insurance companies, organizing policy advocates, activating supporters, and building Congressional support Member by Member.

With your help, we will carry on the fight for women and families in America — in the workplace, in the classroom, on the soccer field, and in the doctor’s office.

And until December 31, every dollar you donate will be matched dollar for dollar by our Board of Directors, up to a total of $60,000.

On behalf of women and families everywhere, thank you for your generous help.

Sincerely,

Nancy Duff Campbell
Co-President
National Women’s Law Center

Marcia Greenberger
Co-President
National Women’s Law Center

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Elections and the New Health Care Law

11/03/2010 Nativegrl77

Yesterday was obviously a huge day in politics that will have a big impact on health care and other progressive issues. While it was certainly a dissappointing day, our collective job is to keep fighting to make sure the new law is fully implemented and fulfills its promise. I know people have lots of questions about the election and health care. For starters, below is a Huffington Post blog entry from HCAN‘s Ethan Rome on the federal elections.

In Soldarity,
Melinda Gibson

Boehner and the Republicans Didn’t Win a Majority to Deny Our Care

Here’s a crucial fact that should not be obscured by the ballyhoo surrounding the shift in control of the House: Most of the Republicans who won last night got a lower percentage at the ballot box than the percentage of Americans who support the new health care law‘s requirement that insurance companies cover people regardless of pre-existing medical conditions.

That’s why yesterday was hardly a repudiation of the health care law.

Furthermore, this election was clearly dominated by voter worries about the economy and jobs. Only 19 percent of voters named health care as their top concern, a distant second to the 61 percent most focused on the economy, according to CNN. There were winners and losers among both supporters and opponents of health reform. For example, more than half of the 34 Democrats who voted against the health care legislation still lost their races.

After a wildly toxic political debate over the issue, people are split over the larger question of “reform” and key components of the law enjoy overwhelming public support. Specifically, over the last several months, even as the public has been divided on reform, two-thirds of Americans have supported the outlawing of pre-existing condition exclusions (Anzalone Liszt Research poll conducted for the Herndon Alliance of 1,000 2010 likely voters, conducted April 19-25, 2010. Margin of error +/-3%). For example, while a recent New York Times/CBS poll showed the public split over on the new law, only one-quarter of repeal supporters stuck with their position when told repeal would mean that insurance companies would no longer be required to cover people with medical conditions or prior illnesses.

This is the reality even after a contentious political season marked by an unprecedented deluge of attack ads that spread one lie after another about health reform. In fact, opponents of the new law spent $108 million since March to advertise against it – six times more than supporters.

That’s something members of the new Republican majority will have to navigate as they square real-world legislative proposals on health care (if they have any) with their campaign rhetoric about repeal. They may try on Day One to repeal the health care law’s individual mandate, but they can’t do that without also throwing out the many new consumer protections, including the prohibition on insurers denying people care simply because they’re sick or ending lifetime limits on coverage. Both of those provisions are more popular with the American public than the Republicans are.

The Republicans also talk about de-funding the law, interfering with its implementation and holding endless oversight hearings to gratuitously harass Obama administration officials. That’s not progress, that’s pointless, cynical politics.

We all know that the law is not going to be repealed, so the debateisn’t going to be about what gets done–it will be about defining whose side members of Congress are on. For Republican repeal-mongers, that will be clear. They’re for the insurance companies and against consumers.

The Republicans want to protect the excessive profits of the insurance companies and the bloated salaries of company CEOs, no matter how badly that hurts America’s consumers. That’s what repeal means. It means rolling back the clock and letting the insurance companies deny people coverage due to pre-existing conditions and drop people’s coverage when they get sick. It means that small businesses will continue paying higher rates for health insurance than big corporations. It means repealing measures to cut down waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare. It means opposing much-needed relief in prescription drug costs for seniors. That’s the Republican repeal agenda – the insurance companies get the profits and we get the shaft.

The American people don’t want to give our health care back to the insurance companies. Repeal would cause real harm to real people. That may not matter to the Republican majority, but it matters a great deal to the people they now represent.

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Sharing is Health Caring

09/24/2010 Nativegrl77

Sharing is Health Caring

LIKE your family and friends? Help spread the word about how the new health care improvements works for women.

Do you hate pap smears, but LIKE the idea that they are now free?

Join the club.

Today is the six-month anniversary of the new health care law and the day when a number of important consumer protections go into effect. Insurance companies can no longer drop you when you become sick or deny health coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. Also, when you enroll in a new health plan, you no longer have co-pays for preventative health care services. And the law provides even more relief to women, like making it illegal to charge them more than men for insurance. These are some of the improvements that women and their families can enjoy because of the new health care law.

In honor of these new provisions coming into effect, the National Women’s Law Center is launching a campaign to help spread the word about how the new health care law works for women. Digital public education ads will appear on websites such as Huffington Post, Facebook and Politico, and based on Facebook’s “LIKE” function, the campaign allows you to “LIKE” the improvements the health care law makes in your life and the lives of those you love.

Join the campaign! Take the Sharing is Health Caring pledge to get informed about the new health care improvements, share the campaign with your friends and family, and make sure that you know where your candidates stand when you vote in the November 2nd election.

You’ve fought hard with us to pass this law and today we can celebrate — perhaps with a free mammogram or pap smear? Or how about just LIKING that it’s free and taking our pledge today?

You can also find out exactly what goes into effect today by checking out our new fact sheet.