Health Care Reform's Untold Wins for Women

It's not difficult to see why many women (and men who care about women) are having a hard time grappling with the excitement of health care reform actually passing and the reality of its many failures to women. Women surely suffered the brunt of all the compromises required to get the thing passed: it chips away at low-income women's reproductive rights, and forbids federal funding for a procedure that gives women agency over their own bodies and that the Supreme Court has deemed to be legal under the Constitution.

Dana Goldstein at the Daily Beast does a characteristically good job of putting these frustrations in perspective: "The final health-care reform bill represents a huge loss for the pro-choice movement, and one largely dealt by Democrats. Just a year ago, feminist organizations were ecstatic about the election of a pro-choice president, one who had promised on the campaign trail to end the Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal Medicaid dollars from contributing to the cost of poor women's abortions."

As hard as all of that is to brush aside, there is plenty to celebrate when it comes to health care reform and what it means to women -- even if it requires some looking past the bill itself and focusing instead on the process, and the people, that got it across the finish line.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi's role in getting health care passed simply can't be understated. Yes, it took a president with the force to make it his No. 1 legislative priority, but it also took Pelosi being on the ground to get it done. As an unapologetic American history nerd, I nearly cried when I read Harold Meyerson's take on Pelosi's historic role: "No speaker since Henry Clay, who wielded the gavel in the 1810s and '20s, has had so great an effect on American life." Bam!

Besides the fact that someone with two X chromosomes wielded such enormous influence, the good news is that tackling health reform means concepts like wellness, caregiving and birth are no longer doomed to be relegated simply as "women's issues." Is it any wonder preventative care measures, like calorie labeling, often come with the decidedly condescending label "nanny laws"? Pelosi herself emphasized what this will mean for women: "In a recent roundtable discussion, Pelosi explained that insurance companies charge women higher premiums than men by 'gender rating' conditions such as giving birth, having a C-section or being a victim of domestic violence. These 'preexisting conditions' also allowed the companies to refuse coverage; they can't do that anymore."

When I read that, I thought immediately of my dad, who I would venture has a relatively common male outlook on procuring health services -- which is, essentially, don't. Unless you're dying. Though he's eligible for three different types of health care benefits (Medicare, health insurance through my mother's employer, and a supplemental plan from the Air Force), he scoffs at everything from putting on sunscreen to visiting a doctor even when he's legitimately ill. His take on health care certainly reminds me of the way Sen. John Kyl flippantly dismissed the idea of paying for women's health care by saying, "I don't need maternity care." In that instance, it took a woman, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, to bring Kyl back down to earth, which she did beautifully simply by reminding him, "I bet your mother did."

Photo credit: Speaker.gov