Health Care Reform

Floor Speech

Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. Speaker, what this health debate boils down to is this question: Whose side are you on? Are you listening to and fighting for the American people or are you listening to insurance executives and fighting to line their pockets? I am listening to and fighting for the American people, and especially the Wisconsinites who will benefit so significantly from health care reform.

This evening, I rise to speak about how health care reform will help women. Women shoulder a disproportionate burden in today's broken health care system. Perhaps most shocking is the discrimination women face in health insurance simply because we are women. To some insurers, being a woman is a preexisting condition. In Wisconsin, as in many other States, if a woman and a man purchase identical insurance coverage in the individual market, the woman will be charged more even though the medical services covered are exactly the same.

In small businesses in Wisconsin and across the country, insurance companies are allowed to count how many male and female employees work at that small business. If the workforce is disproportionately female, the insurance company charges more. So, what sort of small businesses pay the most for health care? Child care centers, home health agencies, and other small businesses with female-dominated workforces.

Adding insult to injury is that we all know that women's pay still lags behind men. Nationally, women earn 78 cents to every dollar earned by a man. And in Wisconsin, that figure is even worse--73 cents to the dollar. So women who make less have the added burden of paying more for their health coverage.

Our health care reform measure will end this practice of gender rating, and that is just one reason why women have so much to gain in health reform.

So I ask again, whose side are you on? The hundreds of thousands of women that you represent or the insurance companies that get away with these practices?

We have talked during the debate a lot about people who can't get any insurance at all because of preexisting conditions, something in their medical history or health status that the insurance company points to and says, We are not going to cover you. Women also bear the brunt of these practices. Can you believe that women who have been the victims of domestic abuse have been denied health insurance because their victimization was considered a preexisting condition? Women who have given birth by C-section are also routinely either refused insurance or provided insurance that specifically denies coverage in the event they have a future C-section.

Our health reform efforts will prevent the insurance companies from denying coverage to women who have been the victims of domestic violence and women who have had C-sections. In fact, our measure will stop the practice of denying needed insurance based on preexisting conditions altogether.

So I ask, whose side are you on? I'm on the side of all Wisconsinites who have ever faced such denials, not on the side of the companies who refused to cover them.

Women also have trouble finding insurance policies that cover what they need when they shop for insurance in the individual market. In that market, it can be next to impossible to find insurance that covers maternity care. In a survey by the National Women's Law Center of plans offered in the individual market in my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, they could not find a single plan that offered maternity care. I find this shocking. And health care reform will require all new plans to cover a wide set of benefits, including maternity care.

Mr. Speaker, Wisconsinites sent me to Congress to fight for them. I ran for Congress in order to fight for the people of Wisconsin who have been denied insurance based on preexisting conditions or had their coverage dropped in their very time of need. In order to prevent Wisconsinites from having to declare personal bankruptcy because of mounting medical bills from a serious illness, and in order to help families be able to afford their premiums and their deductibles and their copays, this health care reform effort addresses all those problems and then some. It's not perfect and it's not all I wanted it to be, but it is a darn good start.

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