In March, the United States Supreme Court will hear a challenge to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) – the health reform law enacted in 2010. Attorneys general of 26 states and the National Federation of Independent Businesses are challenging the new law.
The National Partnership for Women & Families has joined the National Women’s Law Center and other women’s groups in filing an amicus brief supporting the ACA.
For decades women in the U.S. have been struggling to find and keep affordable health coverage as insurance companies raised premiums based on gender, age or health status, denied coverage for essential health services or dropped coverage altogether when enrollees got sick.
The ACA is progressively putting a stop to those outrageous practices between 2010 and 2014 — and it’s already beginning to deliver for women and their families. We no longer face deductibles or co-pays to get essential preventive services like mammograms and cervical cancer screenings. We are now able to keep our children on our health insurance policies until age 26. Plus, health plans can no longer rescind our coverage or hit us with lifetime caps or low annual limits on coverage just when we need coverage the most.
And more improvements are right around the corner – like, at long last, the elimination of ratings based on gender and health status, and exclusions for pre-existing conditions in insurance policies.
These are changes worth fighting for and the National Partnership for Women & Families will be there every step of the way. We simply cannot let opponents convince the Court to undo the progress that we have made. We owe it to our families. We owe it to ourselves.
