Why The Obamacare Decision Is Very Good News For Women

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http://www.forbes.com/sites/brycecovert/2012/06/28/obamacare-decision-why-women-are-the-big-winners-health-care-supreme-court/

Women in particular should pop the champagne and celebrate. Of those millions of uninsured, 19 million are women. Up to 10.3 million of the low-income among them will now be covered by Medicaid by 2014 when the law goes into full effect. Although the uninsured tend to use less medical care, and therefore spend less than the insured, altogether they spend about $2.64 billion out of pocket each year. (Not to mention that being uninsured leads to a greater risk of death.) They can rest assured that the Supreme Court won’t get in the way of their insurance coverage, which should mean more accessible and affordable care.


Women are big financial winners in this decision in other ways. The first is the elimination of gender rating, or charging women more because they’re women, pure and simple. The National Women’s Law Center recently found that in states that haven’t banned the practice, over 90% of the best selling plans charge women more than men, even though only 3% of them cover maternity services. In fact, even when maternity care is excluded, almost a third of plans charge women at least 30% more than men for the same coverage. One plan even charges 25-year-old women 85% more than men. All told, the practice costs women about $1 billion a year.

That will now become illegal in 2014, after the ACA is fully implemented. Insurers will no longer have free reign to charge women whatever they like for no discernable reason. That extra $1 billion in our pockets sounds pretty good.