Invite Tom Daschle to Your House for Cookies - and Health Care Reform

How many of you are inviting Tom Daschle over for egg nog and a nice, friendly discussion about health reform and reproductive health during the holidays?  

What, you're too busy shopping the discount stores for affordable presents, figuring out what to serve at that Chanukah party or Christmas dinner and - oh yes, worrying about your rent, your mortgage, the grocery bills, your 401K and even whether you'll still have a job come January? Don't have time to dust for Daschle? 

Yes, it's inconvenient. Surely, no woman would have suggested trying to host community health care meetings between December 15 and 31, but come on! When's the last time the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services asked to drop by and find out what we think about fixing America's broken health care system?  

We have an incoming administration that says it actually wants to hear what all of us think about the problems with the current system and what would improve it. Moreover, our next President says he thinks we need to get started on health reform right away, in the middle of the economic crisis. 

"It's not something we can put off because we're in an emergency," President-elect Barack Obama said at his news conference Thursday. "It's part of the emergency." He cited increasing joblessness, and the loss of health coverage that accompanies layoffs, skyrocketing health premium costs and the rise in personal bankruptcy filings related to medical debt. "The runaway cost of health care is punishing families and businesses," he said.  

With that, Obama introduced former Senator Daschle as his nominee to head not only the Department of Health and Human Services, but also a special health reform office within the White House. Daschle is no stranger to the women's health community, as Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards quickly pointed out: "Former Sen. Daschle has a strong record of standing up for women's health and women's rights and supporting commonsense policies that improve health outcomes for women." 

So, let's invite our friends, neighbors and family over. Go to http://change.gov/page/s/hcdiscussion to sign up to lead one of these discussions at your house, and let Tom Daschle know where to find you. Perhaps he'll even arrive early enough to help put out the napkins and cookies.  

While he's sipping and munching, what do we want to tell him? Here are some suggestions from "A Woman's Vision of Quality Health Care for All" produced by Raising Women's Voices for the Health Care We Need, based on small-group discussions with women like you all across the country: 

• Health care coverage must be affordable. Women and our families need to be able to afford not only the premiums, but also those co-pays and deductibles. Don't forget that women still earn, on average, only 75 cents for every dollar that men earn, and we use the health system a lot more, in part because of our need for reproductive health care. So, for example, we may have prescription drug coverage for birth control, but the co-pay for filling the prescription can make it unaffordable.
• Health care coverage must be always available. One quarter of American women get our health coverage through a spouse's employer, meaning we are at risk of losing it through divorce. Others of us are unable to get coverage at all because of insurance company policies denying coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, such as breast cancer, ovarian cancer or even having had a c-section delivery! Still more of us work at low-wage jobs that don't offer health insurance.
• Health care systems must provide the acute, preventive, chronic and supportive health care services that women and our families need. Let's start with comprehensive reproductive health care - contraception, sexuality education, sterilizations, abortions and a full range of childbirth choices - but don't stop there. We also need services across women's lifespans, including support for family caregivers, who are overwhelmingly women. Don't forget mental health and dental services.
• Health care systems must actively work to achieve equity and eliminate disparities in health care provision. Women who are low-income, immigrants and women of color are at the highest risk for having no health insurance or being under-insured.
• The health care system must be user-friendly, easy to navigate and transparent. Who can decipher all those insurance company rules and requirements? Who can make sense of the bills we get, or which doctors are in the networks we are supposed to use? Women know these problems intimately, because we are the arrangers of health care for most families.
• We must attain the highest attainable standard of health for women, our families and our communities. Health coverage is an important first step, but it can't be the only one we take. We need to address environmental threats to our health care, lack of healthy food choices for some urban residents and lack of recreational opportunities. Prevention and a health environment can keep us healthy!

Need more ideas of what to say? Visit www.raisingwomensvoices.net.  Let us know if you host a health care conversation in your home. Send us a summary of what was said (to info@raisingwomensvoices.net). If Tom Daschle didn't show up at your house, we'll help make sure he finds out what happened. We'll even send you a thank you!