Analyzing 21st Century Women's Health Act of 2015 - Research Paper Example

Topic: 21st Century Womens Health Act of Introduction to The 21st Century Women’s Health Act The 21st Century Women’s Health Act (S. 674 – 114th Congress 2015-2016) that was sponsored by Senator Patty Murray, Senator Barbara Boxer and Barbara Mikulski seeks to safeguard and continue the improvements to the health care of women that was made a reality through the Affordable Care Act (GovTrack.us, 2015). This act was also referred to as “Obamacare” and it extended coverage for services of a critical nature including family planning and birth control, provision of assistance for survivors of sexual assault and maternity care (Marcovici, 2013). According to Senator Murray, women living in the US are at a precarious situation as far as their reproductive health is concerned. Regardless of the fact that Obamacare has significant increased access to affordable health services that are gender based, conservative politicians from the entire nation have been persistently campaigning at the state and federal level with the aim of overturning the law that safeguards the healthcare rights of women, and they have been successful in some occasions. She further states that there has been significant progress in regards to advancement of the health of women and expansion on access to reproductive care, but there is still a lot of work that has to be done since some of the elected officials are determined to reverse the laws already created. Therefore, it can be considered that the 21st Century Women’s Health Act proposes essential means of moving forward in regards to the health of women. This new law emphasis on a number of key aspects in terms of the health care of women including their maternity services, offering support for victims of rape and sexual assault, contraception, reproductive rights, abortion as well as preventive care. Background of The 21st Century Women’s Health Act Eight months after she unsuccessfully attempted to override the decision of the US Supreme Court on contraceptive coverage, Senator Patty Murray came out with another proposal that sought to safeguard access to reproductive health services by women. This wide-ranging bill will obligate the state Medicaid programs to provide comprehensive coverage for all types of birth control, necessitate hospitals to avail free emergency contraception to sexually assaulted patients while at the same time ordering studies on the manner in which state enact laws to limit access to abortions as well as other family planning methods and services. This bill seeks to reverse the laws that are considered by Senator Murray to be taking the nation backwards and dealing with the officials who are determined to interfere with personal choices that are supposed to be made by a woman, her partner and their doctor. The two co-sponsors of the legislation, Barbara Boxer of California and Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, will be retiring at the end of the present Congress at the beginning of 2017. Through the bill that is sponsored by Senator Murray, senate democrats are seeking to increase Medicaid coverage for breast pumps and contraception among other things. This pro-choice bill is ambitious and aims to allocate additional federal fund to initiatives such as prevention of campus rape while mandating that federal officials make regular reports concerning abortion access on state-by-state basis (GovTrack.us, 2015). According to the Senator Boxer, a co-sponsor, the bill offers a bold agenda towards strengthening of the health of women in this century during a period when the GOP congress is attempting to pull women back to the previous century. Consequently, this appears to be a core subject of debate, as Senator Murray considers it as an effort to fight against those missing the Mad Men era while laying out the essential ways of moving forward towards the health of women. Even though Obamacare obligates the private health insurance plans to cover contraception comprehensively, the manner in which it is covered under Medicaid is regulated by the individual states (Long, 2014). Most of the states cover it; however, twenty-one states continue to ban Medicaid programs form covering aspects of contraception (Corbett, Corbett-Hemeyer & Wilson, 2014). This new bill will obligate Medicaid programs in different states to provide comprehensive birth control costs for all the females enrolled with this being pushed as the basis of the legislation. Additionally, there are numerous other funding promises that are also packaged within the bill including requiring hospitals to provide women who seek health care after they have been sexually assaulted with information concerning emergency contraception as well as the medication if they want it. According to the bill, the federal government will pay for this medication in all circumstances regardless of whether the person had private that can pay for the medication or not (GovTrack.us, 2015). Other promises in the bill include funding for campus-based initiative dealing with the prevention of sexual assault, funding emergency contraception on college campuses and obligating the department of health and human services to carry out studies every twice in a decade on access to abortion all over the Us and state laws that touch on family planning and abortion. The bill will further seek to provide funding to be used to train nursing practitioners concentrating healthcare of women, obligate state programs to cover support services for breastfeeding as well as breast pumps, provide additional funding from the federal government for clinics that deal with family planning services and obligate states to create committees to review maternal mortality. If the bill is passed, a database that will allow women to report insurers who charge for birth control will be created as well as a public awareness campaign to give women awareness of access to immunizations, mammograms as well as screenings for domestic violence among other services. Even though it is highly unlikely that the bill will pass the congress that is dominated by GOP, the reasons why it is politically appealing to the Democrats are clear. It is easy to interpret any opposition to the bill as antagonism towards the healthcare of women and victims of rape or as a way if dragging women back to the previous century. This is likely to act as bait for some of the republicans and countering the arguments stating that taxpayers should not be forced to pay more for other people to have sex. Coverage of birth control appears to be the least offensive part in this case. Maybe states should be allowed to make their own decisions concerning the manner in which they run their Medicaid programs even though the decisions obligating the state to cover contraception is the same manner they cover other medications should be upheld. Recent research has revealed that the federal government covers the costs of giving birth for more than sixty percent of unplanned pregnancies and when the children are born, they will require health insurance. Regardless of any other benefits, it is less costly to assist in preventing unplanned pregnancies among the low-income populations, instead of covering them. Nonetheless, the other elements of the 21st Century Women’s Health Act, are where things start going haywire with questions being asked on the reasons why the federal government is supposed to provide coverage for emergency contraception for the victims who have private insurance that does not mind paying. It is also considered that college campuses are already flooded with programs that seek to prevent sexual assault and that numerous reputable groups exist, including nonprofits that deal with the health of women and academic researchers, who prepared annual reports on this issue (Weisz & Black, 2009). Another issue that is questioned is the perception by the Washington bureaucrats that they are in a better position to deal with the issue of healthcare access and the results in various communities yet than the people who work and in live within these communities. It is thought that the bill that is sponsored by Senator Murray appears to force impose the federal government in numerous initiatives that have been previously handled flawlessly by communities, cities, states, nonprofits and through private initiatives. Through adding the federal government to this equation as an overseer, these measures will become more costly and less effective. Proponent and opponent arguments National Partnership for Women and Families The National Partnership for Women and Families considers the bill sponsored by Senator Murray as the appropriate approach at the appropriate time towards the improvement and protection of the health of women as the legislation will encourage prevention while making it a possibility for more women to have control on their reproductive health and making their personal health care decisions. The Partnership further commends the senator who sponsored the bill along with the co-sponsors for championing the bill they consider vitally important while seeing the health of women as being under unprecedented attacks from the congress and well as at the state level. This is because lawmakers in the entire country continue to advance and pass what the partnership perceives as “Bad medicine” legislation, which interferes with the connection between women and providers of health care while at the same time creating obstacles to the access of reproductive health care by women (Riddle, 1997). On the other hand, the 21st Century Women’s Health Act will push health policies in the right direction, and the partnership continues to exhibit its excitement with the manner in which it will study the ways limitations on access to abortion and other reproductive health services can be harmful to women. Appreciating and making changes to this inclination is fundamentally significant if improvement of the health of women is to be achieved in the US. According to the partnership, this law would be critical to improving the health of women as well as enhancing economic security and it urges congress to make it a priority (GovTrack.us, 2015). Republicans There is high likelihood that this bill will be opposed by the republicans who have previously state that it is rare for legitimate rape to lead to pregnancy as the female body has ways shutting this occurrences down. Of course, this statement is completely accurate since if the eggs of a woman become fertilized notwithstanding if the entry was forceful or consensual; the rate of occurrence of pregnancy is the same. Previously, the republicans through Todd Akin have sponsored a bill that sought to redefine rape in the federal law so that it could restrict funding received by the providers of abortion. In the event that the new bill sponsored by Senator Murray passes, women will be able to access emergence contraception irrespective of if they can afford it, while the Secretary of Health and Human Services will be required to ensure that women are aware of emergency contraception through healthcare providers as well as pharmacists. Rape and abortion are matters that have never been taken lightly and even though critics of abortion state that the woman is deciding to abort the pregnancy making it her fault, this cannot be further from the truth (Wilkins, 2011). The victim of rape did not have a voice in the rape itself as well as the pregnancy and women should not be forced to carry pregnancies that were as a consequence of rape. Nursing perspective on the 21st Century Women’s Health Act Nurses and nursing bodies are in support of this bill, as it would establish a program for training for nurse practitioners who are already providing care for millions of US citizens while at the same time encouraging states to come up with committees that will assess deaths that are related to pregnancies. Another aspect that the nurses consider beneficial is the fact that it would launch an awareness campaign to the public that will encourage women to go for mammograms as well as immunizations while requiring that all the states come up with a committee that will look at inequalities in maternal mortality in the entire nation. These committees will ensure that the elements that contribute to deaths associated and related to pregnancies can be assessed in a better way and that medical policies and solutions are implemented in order to make pregnancies safe for all the women. Additionally, the bill will launch a practitioner training program that will expand accessibility to primary health care since almost sixty five percent of all Americans visit nurse practitioners as far as primary health care needs are concerned. the nurse practitioners are fundamental to making sure there is access while at the same time place an important part in meeting the demands associated with primary health care. The nurse practitioners who have specialized in health care of women will get grants for training in order to increase access to the providers of primary care. These grants will be for a period of three years and may be made permanent or duplicated at the national level as a model that is able to make the quality better while lowering the costs of care for women as well as their families. Bill recommendations The proposed law will require that all the states come up with committees that will review maternal mortality in order to address any inequalities as far as maternal mortality is concerned in the entire country. The committees should therefore be able to assess comprehensively the elements that contribute to deaths connected to and from pregnancies in order to develop and implement policy solutions that will make sure women and safe during pregnancies. The public awareness campaign to be launched by the new law aiming at educating women on their rights and benefits in terms of healthcare should be monitored closely to make sure that the database for women to make sure the government aware when they are charge inappropriately for birth controls is kept up to date and the cases followed up (Morgan & Siddighi, 2005). It should further spell out the punishment or ramifications of charging patients for birth control. Since this bill will not address the issues that ensued from the decision of the Supreme Court, Senator Murray should come up with another bill that will deal with these issues. The act should make sure that all the women who survive rape or sexual assault are given accurate information concerning emergency contraception when they seek treatment in hospital settings and be given emergency contraception when they request for it without being charges. It should find ways of making sure that the women are aware that it is their right to get the contraception without having to pay for it. Currently, only thirteen states as well as DC obligate hospital emergency rooms to give contraception when requested by a patient who has survived sexual assault. Furthermore, nine other states have legislated laws that restrict emergency contraception including six that permit pharmacists to decline to dispense any emergency contraception. These means that the bill proposed by Murray should make sure that it address these disparities as far as contraception is concerned so that all the health care providers can be provide harmonized services to sexual assault victims. Between twenty five thousand and thirty two thousand women become pregnant each year from either incest or rape, and if used appropriately, emergency contraception along with immediate medical treatment can assist numerous victims of rape to avoid more trauma of dealing with unplanned pregnancies (Ehrenreich, 2008). A provision related to this will also be able to support educational sexual assault prevention programs in campuses in order to make sure there is access to emergency contraception in institutions of higher learning. In addition, the act should make sure that there are prevention partnerships in various organizations in the community so that sexual violence can be prevented. Reference Corbett, M., Corbett-Hemeyer, J., & Wilson, J. (2014). Politics and Religion in the United States. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. Ehrenreich, N. (2008). The reproductive rights reader. New York: New York University Press. GovTrack.us,. (2015). Text of S. 674: 21st Century Women’s Health Act of 2015 (Introduced version) - GovTrack.us. Retrieved 6 May 2015, from https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/s674/text Long, J. (2014). Repeal Obamacare. [United States]: BrightOwl. Marcovici, M. (2013). The Obamacare Case. Norderstedt: Books on Demand. Morgan, M., & Siddighi, S. (2005). Obstetrics and gynecology. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Riddle, J. (1997). Eves herbs. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Weisz, A., & Black, B. (2009). Programs to reduce teen dating violence and sexual assault. New York: Columbia University Press. Wilkins, J. (2011). Date rape. New York, NY: Crabtree Pub. Co. Read More