Raising Women's Voices for the Health Care We Need
The NWHN is making sure women’s voices are heard and women’s concerns are addressed in health reform efforts through our work in the Raising Women’s Voices for the Health Care We Need (RWV) campaign. RWV created a woman’s vision for quality, affordable health care that focuses in particular on how health care reform can advance the health needs of those who are low income, women of color, immigrant women, lesbians, young women and women with disabilities. The NWHN launched the RWV campaign in 2007 with our partners at the MergerWatch Project of Community Catalyst and the Avery Institute for Social Change and it is a collaborative project, bringing together national state and local health advocates who are committed to making the promise of health reform real for women.
RWV celebrated the real and significant difference that the 2010 enactment of the health reform law – the Affordable Care Act (ACA) – would make in the lives of millions of our families, neighbors and communities. We cheered the important gains it offered women by expanding access to affordable health care, including guaranteed contraceptive coverage without copays, and by establishing unprecedented protections from insurance industry abuses, like denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions like breast cancer survivors and women who had been in abusive relationships. At the same time, we recognized that these advances came at a cost – new and continued restrictions on access to abortion coverage.
Now, as state and federal policymakers work to implement the health reform law, RWV is educating women about what health reform means in their lives and engaging them in shaping implementation of the law. The campaign draws on the grassroots expertise women have gained from serving as the health care – and health insurance -- managers for their families and supports women in sharing their experiences navigating the health care system with policymakers to advocate for policies that will make it easier to get the health care that women and their families need.
Current NWHN advocacy priorities for protecting the promise of health reform and improving women’s access to quality, affordable health care include:
- securing contraceptive coverage, at no additional cost, for all women – without restrictions that allow some employers to deny this advance to the women who work for them
- establishing woman-friendly rules for the state health insurance exchanges where millions of people will begin buying their health insurance starting in 2014
- pressing for robust coverage, evidence-based coverage decisions and protection against sex discrimination in the essential health benefits package that states will require insurance plans offered through the exchanges to cover.
To stay informed about the RWV campaign and opportunities to support these priorities, sign up to receive the campaign’s weekly e-newsletter.
