What the Health? “Women’s Issues”

“Women’s issues,” is a term dreaded by any woman who knows what it’s designed to do: render our problems insignificant. By labeling anything having to do with the fair and equal treatment of women as “women’s issues,” they no longer sound like everyone’s issues to the undiscerning ear. Just think about it. Have you ever heard someone say “men’s issues?” No, you haven’t, because things that are issues for men are just seen as human issues, because men have markedly more “value” on a societal scale. Even something as simple as the pink tax (the same products that men use colored pink in order to market them to women but charge more) is seen as a “women’s issue.” Despite publicizing the problem, it persists. What has become the ultimate women’s issue though is reproductive healthcare, and under the Trump administration it is more threatened than ever.

Before the Affordable Care Act became a law, being a woman was seen as a preexisting condition, not unlike HIV or diabetes. Essentially, insurance companies were allowed to look at womanhood as a disease, and charge for it the same way. The rationale was that women used the healthcare system more, and therefore should be charged more, but these companies did little to no research to prove that—they simply just weren’t being prevented from discriminating based on gender, a practice the ACA ended in 2010. With men’s high health risks for things like heart disease and prostate cancer, it’s actually highly unlikely that women cost an insurance company more than men, except perhaps when they are pregnant or give birth. But that was of no consequence either, because most pre-ACA policies excluded maternity coverage. So insurance companies were charging women more for no quantifiable reason. In fact, insurance companies often charged non-smoking women more or the same as men who smoked—a huge health risk—costing women up to 48% more in premiums annually, according to a 2008 study by the National Women’s Law Center.

Yes, women do need reproductive health screenings and men don’t, but those can be taken care of in an annual check up, the same one that men should get every year to keep things like their prostate in check. Not to mention the fact that OBGYNs are viewed by insurance companies as specialists, rather than general care providers (even though the care they provide women is 100% necessary), so the increase in co-pay for their services should mitigate the insurance company’s cost regardless. Ultimately the real question in logic is: wouldn’t keeping women healthy and allowing for them to have affordable coverage that provides easy access to screenings mean that women don’t end up costing as much? Than say if they can’t afford uncovered screenings, or insurance at all, and end up developing cervical cancer or have a pregnancy complication. It is in those situations that women become the burden that conservative law makers and insurance companies claim them to be—when they would have to default on debt and turn to welfare, because an insurance company refused them preventative or maternity care.