Bill Text: HI HCR7 | 2010 | Regular Session | Introduced

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Bill Title: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; Women's Health Care Protections, Including Women's Reproductive Health Care Services

Spectrum: Moderate Partisan Bill (Democrat 11-2)

Status: (Introduced - Dead) 2010-01-29 - (H) Referred to HLT, JUD, referral sheet 11 [HCR7 Detail]

Download: Hawaii-2010-HCR7-Introduced.html

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HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES	H.C.R. NO.	7
TWENTY-FIFTH LEGISLATURE, 2010
STATE OF HAWAII

HOUSE CONCURRENT

RESOLUTION

 

 

strongly urging the inclusion of protections for women's health care, including women's reproductive health services, in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

 

 

 

     WHEREAS, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is now currently being debated in the United States Congress under the rubric of comprehensive national health care reform; and

 

     WHEREAS, everyone in this country shares the need for affordable, accessible, and comprehensive health care, but women have unique roles as patients, family health care decision makers, and caregivers ‑‑ whether paid or unpaid; and

 

     WHEREAS, yet our current health care system fails to meet the needs of far too many women, especially low-income women and minority populations; and

 

WHEREAS, women need health care reform with premiums and out-of-pocket costs that are affordable and with no annual and lifetime benefit caps; and

 

WHEREAS, women need an end to harmful insurance industry practices such as gender rating or being rejected for coverage based on health status or pre-existing conditions; and

 

     WHEREAS, women are less likely to get health insurance through their jobs and more than twice as likely as men to get employer-sponsored coverage through their spouses.  And as the economy worsens, many employers are reducing health care coverage for dependents, leaving millions of women and children at risk; and

 

WHEREAS, research has found that:

 

(1)  One in four women are unable to pay their medical bills;

 

(2)  Women are more likely than men to delay or go without needed health care because of high medical costs;

 

(3)  Women who have to buy insurance directly from insurers are often charged more than men for the exact same coverage, a practice known as gender rating, which is capricious and unfair;

 

(4)  It is still legal in eight states and the District of Columbia for insurers to reject women for coverage if they are survivors of domestic violence;

 

(5)  Insurers can reject women simply for having had a Cesarean section;

 

(6)  Of the three thousand five hundred insurance plans reviewed by the National Women's Law Center, only twelve per cent offered comprehensive maternity coverage; and

 

(7)  Fully eighteen per cent of all women have no health insurance whatsoever; and

 

     WHEREAS, women need comprehensive benefits, including reproductive health care.  No woman should lose coverage that she has now, including coverage for termination of pregnancy; and

 

     WHEREAS, the version of the health care reform bill in the United States House of Representatives would provide the most sweeping expansion of federal prohibitions on abortion since 1976, when the Hyde Amendment was enacted that has since banned federal funds for abortion in the military, the Foreign Service, the Peace Corps, Medicaid, and other federally connected health care services; and

 

     WHEREAS, an amendment proposed by Representative Bart Stupack (D-Michigan) essentially would expand the Hyde Amendment to the health care reform bill; and

 

WHEREAS, the Stupak amendment would take away the freedom of conscience from American women and prohibits them from abortion coverage even if they pay for it with their own money by blocking abortion coverage from nearly all the health care plans made possible by health care reform; and

 

WHEREAS, if incorporated into the final version of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Stupak Amendment would:

 

(1)  Prevent women receiving tax subsidies from using their own money to purchase private insurance that covers abortion;

 

(2)  Prevent women participating in the public health insurance exchange, administered by private insurance companies, from using one hundred per cent of their own money to purchase private insurance that covers abortion; and

 

(3)  Prevent low-income women from accessing abortion entirely, in many cases; and

 

     WHEREAS, it is crucial that women's health care needs be recognized and that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act include protections for women's health care, including women's reproductive health services; now, therefore,

 

     BE IT RESOLVED by the House of Representatives of the Twenty-fifth Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2010, the Senate concurring, that the United States Congress is strongly urged to include protections for women's health care, including women's reproductive health services in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; and

 

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the members of Hawaii's congressional delegation are urged to support the inclusion of protections for women's health care, including women's reproductive health services in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; and

 

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this Concurrent Resolution be transmitted to the President of the United States, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and the members of Hawaii's congressional delegation.

 

 

 

	OFFERED BY:	_____________________________

Report Title: 

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; Women's Health Care Protections, Including Women's Reproductive Health Care Services