Congress, President Ready to Legislate More Women's Health Disparity

It's 2009. We've
elected President Barack Obama. We've elected a Democratic majority in
both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. Those bastions of
social policy are now in place to protect basic human rights. Good things
should be in the offing - at least we should make progress in the
direction of more equity for women and their families and perhaps most
especially for women of color. Right?

And we've declared that
healthcare is a basic human right. Women surely fall into the category
deserving of equal access to basic human rights. So far, so good. Surely
we're setting ourselves on a course to expand more healthcare equity to
women. Surely it must be so.

But, alas, it's not to be. If
the 111^th Congress and the 44^th President pass the mess of
a healthcare reform plan they've been batting around of late, women will
lose ground in access to healthcare and in the forced purchase of private
insurance products that discriminate against them. Not exactly what we hoped
for from this lot of potentially progressive leaders.

It's not the Democrats'
fault alone by any means. The Republicans are equally at fault - or
perhaps more egregiously so - in seeing healthcare as a commodity to be
bought by those who can afford it and begged for or died for by those who
cannot. And so long as women earn less than men, the ability to have equal
access to healthcare will be damaged for themselves and for any children they
may be raising.

Let's look at how we're
doing on economic indicators of income in these United States:

As reported in an article on the
Huffington Post last week, "Income inequality in the United States is at
an all-time high, surpassing even levels seen during the Great Depression,
according to a recently updated paper by University of California, Berkeley
Professor Emmanuel Saez. The paper, which covers data
through 2007, points to a staggering, unprecedented disparity in American
incomes. On his blog, Nobel prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist
Paul Krugman called the numbers 'truly amazing.'

"Though income inequality has
been growing for some time, the paper paints a stark, disturbing portrait of
wealth distribution in America. Saez calculates that in 2007 the top .01
percent of American earners took home 6 percent of total U.S. wages, a figure
that has nearly doubled since 2000."

So, the wealthiest folks are getting
wealthier, and their grip on the wealth of our nation is tightening. But what
about women, specifically? Aren't we doing better and don't we
almost have income equity as the 21^st century begins to unfold? Not
so much.

In 2007, women's median annual paychecks reflected only 78
cents for every $1.00 earned by men. Specifically for women of color, the gap
is even wider: In comparison to men's dollar, African American women earn only
69 cents and Latinas just 59 cents. (National
Committee on Pay Equity)

It has taken 44 years to move this measure by 19 cents. At
this rate, our daughters and granddaughters will still be fighting the income
equity battle 50 years from now.

Women's median pay was less than men's in each and every one
of the 20 industries and 25 occupation groups surveyed by the U.S. Census
Bureau in 2007. Each and every industry and occupation... big words. Big
problems.

So, discrimination against women in equal pay for equal work
continues and more seriously for women of color. And now we sit on the verge
of having even more disparity in healthcare as Congress and the President ready
themselves to pass legislation that will force women - who earn less than
men - to purchase private, for-profit health insurance policies that they
can afford on their lower earnings that may or may not provide the care they
need.

The healthcare reform effort - or as the President now
calls it, "the health insurance reform" effort - sets in
place a forced participation in deepening discrimination against women and
women of color as the basic human right of healthcare is encased in the
purchase of a private insurance product that allows varying degrees of access
to care.

This Congress and this President had and have a responsibility
to the women of this nation to see to it that disparities in the delivery of
healthcare are eliminated not expanded. First, they need to decide a single,
high quality standard of care for every person - male, female, young,
old, rich, poor, of color or white - and then they need to find out how
to make that happen in the most cost-efficient way.

Instead, they have blundered through trying so hard not to
ruffle the feathers of the wealthy and the powerful and the more heavily male
interests at the helm of the private insurance, for-profit medical-industrial
complex and their more heavily male dominated elected officials.

Women need to know that simply because the plan Congress is
looking at will require the purchase of private insurance, it will discriminate
against women who earn more than the level designated for subsidies but less
than their male counterparts who can afford top notch coverage. Mid-and lower
income level women will be able to afford less. Disparity written into
healthcare law, circa 2009. Not good at all.

In contrast, a single-payer program - publicly funded
but privately delivered - would eliminate these gender disparities and
the legal entanglements that will result from healthcare reform that allows, on
its face, women to be more heavily the purchasers of lesser quality insurance
products.

As our daughters and granddaughters continue the struggle
for income equity in the future, I am relatively confident that they'll
be able pursue legal relief - maybe even reparations - for the
damage done to them by passage of healthcare reform in 2009 that slighted women
and girls.

I expected more of this President and this Congress. And I
still do. Do not deepen the disparities for women in healthcare for women in
this nation. We deserve better. We wouldn't want the men in our lives
to have inferior healthcare, and we don't want it either.