Why health care truly is a women's issue
Via TAPPED:
While men are more likely than women to be uninsured, women’s health coverage is more volatile. Why? Because only 38 percent of women have health coverage through their own job, compared to 50 percent of men. That means women are about twice as likely as men to depend on a spouse or partner’s employer-provided health plan. The negative outcomes here are pretty obvious: For an American woman, the end of a romantic relationship is often not just emotionally tumultuous but medically tumultuous as well, for both herself and her children.
A study in the journal Health Services Research concluded that a husband’s transition from employer-based coverage to Medicare at age 65 can be especially problematic for his younger wife or partner. She must give up her dependent coverage before she herself is eligible for Medicare. Women who experience such disruptions in health care “had a greater probability of experiencing a change in usual clinic/provider (71 percent), delaying filling or taking fewer medications than prescribed because of cost (75 percent), going to the emergency room (52 percent), and had lower average mental health scores than women who did not experience an insurance disruption,” the authors write.
With illness being the leading cause for bankruptcy in this country, health insurance often means not just your physical, but your economic health as well.
Just one of the many reasons health care reform is truly an issue of utmost importance to women.
