Monthly Archive for May, 2010

Kagan: Supremely Intelligent, Eminently Qualified

Published on May 13, 2010 in Judges & Supreme Court and Judith Lichtman. 0 Comments
Judith L. Lichtman

Judith L. Lichtman

I had the honor and privilege of attending a special announcement ceremony at the White House on Monday, and I couldn’t be more pleased with President Obama’s decision to nominate Solicitor General Elena Kagan as the next United States Supreme Court justice.  I have known her for many decades and have deep respect for her commitment to equal justice.

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Judges are the gatekeepers of our fundamental rights, and Elena Kagan gets it. She knows that the Supreme Court decides cases every year that touch women’s lives. And she has a proud history of public service, a fair and thoughtful approach to legal issues, a record of extraordinary accomplishment, and a history of working effectively with people who hold diverse political and legal views.

She has also had a distinguished career as a law school professor, the first woman Dean of Harvard Law School, and our nation’s first woman Solicitor General.  There is no doubt that Kagan is eminently qualified for this post.

The Senate confirmed Elena Kagan as Solicitor General with strong Republican support in March 2009.  It should once again confirm her, quickly and without controversy.

An Anniversary Worth Noting

Published on May 10, 2010 in Laura Hessburg and Reproductive Health. 1 Comment
Laura Hessburg

Laura Hessburg

The kudos about the 50th anniversary of the FDA’s approval of the birth control pill are well deserved. Timely access to contraceptive services has vastly improved maternal and child health, and has been the driving force in reducing rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion in this country. Women’s ability to control our fertility has helped us achieve personal, educational and professional goals and made us a critical component of the nation’s success.

Bottom line: For most women, whether they choose to be mothers or not, avoiding unintended pregnancy is possible only with consistent use of reliable, effective contraception. And we can credit the birth control pill with making that much easier for women.

But 50 years after the pill was approved, half of all pregnancies in the United States are unintended. You read that right: 50 percent.  So while we celebrate the ways that contraceptive use has liberated women, revolutionized American society and improved women’s health and well-being, let’s also recognize that this work is not nearly done.

It is hard to fathom how a nation as rich as ours can fail so utterly to address such a basic health care need, especially when there are tangible ways to reduce unintended pregnancy. We can promote the use of long acting contraceptives that are easy to use and highly effective. We can eliminate cost as a barrier to access to family planning services. We can recognize that, in a poor economy, the unmet need for subsidized reproductive health services goes up as fewer women can afford prescription contraception.  And we can and should take steps to make it available to all.

Enter health care reform – a double-edged sword.  Its enactment dealt a significant blow to abortion access, which some women facing unintended pregnancy will choose. But it also holds great promise to address the unmet need for contraceptive services.

How?  Here is one way.  By 2014, health reform will expand Medicaid eligibility to all Americans with a family income at or below 133 percent of the federal poverty level. This provision will vastly expand access to comprehensive health care, including no-cost family planning services, for millions of Americans.

Here is another.  For reproductive age women the news is even better – the law allows states to act quickly and more easily to expand access to family planning services for low-income women who would otherwise not be covered through Medicaid. Effective immediately, states have the option to expand Medicaid eligibility for family planning services up to the same eligibility they use for pregnant women without having to go through the cumbersome federal waiver process. Most states typically provide coverage to pregnant women at or near 200 percent of poverty – levels far above eligibility for all other populations.

And one more:  A provision requiring new health plans sold in and outside of the new exchanges to cover, with no cost-sharing, a broad range of preventive health services. The Department of Health and Human Services is tasked with translating this requirement into coverage specifications by September. For women this means coverage and no-cost sharing for a broad range of women’s preventive health services. Authored by Senator Barbara Mikulski, this provision will address women’s unique health care needs by improving access to affordable preventive services such as family planning services and counseling.

50 years after the pill was approved, the next great step in improving women’s health could be health care reform – but realizing its promise will require ensuring adequate funding for family planning health centers, creating a well-trained public health workforce, and reversing its anti-choice provisions.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was right to recognize family planning as one of the “Ten Great Public Health Achievements in the 20th Century.” Now, as we celebrate the little pill that started it all, let’s finish the job by making all reproductive health services available to women and making unplanned pregnancies truly rare.

Mother’s Day

Published on May 7, 2010 in Sharyn Tejani and Workplace Fairness. 0 Comments
Sharyn Tejani, Senior Policy Counsel

Sharyn Tejani, Senior Policy Counsel

My mother has worked full-time in New York for most of her life. New data from the Center for American Progress shows that because of the wage gap between men and women, my mom lost out on $312,000 over her working life.

But my mom’s loss is on the low end. Nationwide, the lifetime wage gap costs women $431,000. For my cousins in Washington State, the number is $524,000; for my sister in Boston, it is $475,000.

Check the data and your state here.

In six out of ten families, a mother is the primary or co-breadwinner, so the wage gap can make a huge difference in a family’s economic security. To see how many families in your state rely on a mother’s income and how much more women in your state could afford without the wage gap, look here.

One important step we can take in solving this problem is to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. The Act will modernize our equal pay laws so that it will be harder for employers to get away with pay discrimination, and it will protect workers from employer retaliation if they talk about their own salaries at work.

And here is another great thing the Paycheck Fairness Act will do: It will authorize the federal government to collect wage data from employers. That requirement and data will make a huge difference for women. Last week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided that the women suing Wal-Mart could go ahead with their sex discrimination lawsuit that alleges that Wal-Mart failed to promote or pay women fairly. If the claims these women have made are correct, the largest private employer in the country has been shortchanging its women employees for years.

Imagine how much sooner wage discrimination would be solved if employers had to report their salary scales to the government. Right-thinking employers would see differences in the reports, analyze the problem, and fix their wages if the differences were due to discrimination. And wrong-thinking employers could be targeted by the civil rights enforcement agencies.

The Paycheck Fairness Act has passed the House and has 39 cosponsors in the Senate. We need a vote on this critical legislation now.

Contact your Senators and tell them you support the Paycheck Fairness Act—because I really can’t afford a $312,000 Mother’s Day gift.

It’s Older Americans Month and My Family Needs Better Care! Does Yours?

Published on May 4, 2010 in Campaign for Better Care, Health Care and Lynn Feinberg. 6 Comments
Lynn Feinberg

Lynn Feinberg

My two sisters and I are a team.  For several years, as we each juggled our own work and family responsibilities, we willingly took on the role of “advocate” and “coordinator” of health care across settings (home, hospital, nursing home) for my father, who died last year at the age of 94.  It wasn’t easy.  At times it sapped our energy and our spirits.  But we took on the role out of love and a deep respect for our father.

Now we are teaming up again for my mom.  We have to – because none of our parents’ health care providers have taken on the critical role of coordinating care, communicating with each other, or linking us to the community supports that older adults need to maintain their independence, functional status, and quality of life. Older adults with multiple health problems, in particular, need doctors, nurses and other health providers who talk to each other and work together – along with the patient and their family caregivers – as a team. That’s the better way, but it’s out of reach for too many patients and families.

That’s why I hope you will get involved in our major new initiative, the Campaign for Better Care. The Campaign’s policy agenda aims to ensure that the reformed health care system provides the comprehensive and coordinated care that older adults with multiple health problems need and deserve.  It will advocate at the federal and state levels to ensure that new models of delivering care are patient- and family-centered, team-based, and include important services like geriatric assessment, care planning, comprehensive care coordination, transition management between care settings, medication management, and community support for older adults and their family caregivers.  It will promote payment strategies that support primary care practice and reward better quality, coordination and communication among health providers, patients and family caregivers.

May is Older Americans Month – a tradition dating back to 1963 that honors the legacies and ongoing contributions of older Americans. When Older Americans Month was established 47 years ago, only 17 million living Americans had reached their 65th birthdays.  Today, there are nearly 40 million adults age 65 and older.  And with the aging of the baby boom generation – the largest in our history – the U.S. older population is expected to grow to 71.5 million by 2030.  In fact, the first baby boomers turn age 65 in 2011 and they will become eligible for Medicare. Will the health care policies of the future meet our needs more adequately than the policies affecting older Americans today?

If the Campaign for Better Care is successful, the answer will be yes!  So during this Older Americans Month, let us all honor elders – our fathers, our mothers, our grandparents, great-grandparents, and other older relatives and friends. And let’s celebrate and support the launch of the Campaign for Better Care and work together to improve health care for older Americans and their families.