During an interview last week on NPR’s Tell Me More with Michel Martin, I explained why the new health care law is bad for women.
Women will benefit the most from a health care system that allows for the greatest amount of freedom of choice. Unfortunately, the current law does just the opposite, discouraging policies that would require greater individual involvement and control over health care decisions, drive down costs and improve care.
It’s interesting that thirty years after the Feminist movement, women on the left are the only ones still talking about women’s bodies. Women like Marcia Greenberger, founder and co-president of the National Women’s Law Center, who joined host Michel Martin the day before, were entirely focused on negotiating a bill that addressed a woman’s reproductive tract and nothing else.
Left out of the conversation is what the new health care law means for our economy – and what that means for women. Women have shattered the ceiling in politics, medicine, law, media, and corporate America. Women now earn 57 percent of bachelor’s degrees and 59 percent of master’s degrees. And today, more than a quarter of married women earn more than their spouses.
Despite all this, the conversation about health care revolves around maternity care, abortion, and birth control. As I told Michel Martin, the new bill is estimated at $940 billion — $2.23 trillion over the next 10 years. And as Carrie Lukas has written about plenty, this behemoth of a bill is going to cost us in taxes and jobs.
Perhaps women ought to be asking what’s more important: that the government subsidize birth control or that they passed a law that’s on track to bankrupt the nation.
