Health care law aims to protect women

By Kathleen Sebelius

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After celebrating Mother's Day and National Women's Health Week this month, you can show your appreciation for the women in your life by making sure they know about the important new protections in the Affordable Care Act, leading to better health and lower costs.

Here are four things about the law all women should know:

First, pre-existing conditions will no longer keep you from getting affordable private insurance. Because of the work we do, women are less likely to have jobs with health coverage than men. That meant we often had to look for a plan on the individual market where insurers were free to deny us coverage because of a breast cancer diagnosis or even because you had been a victim of domestic violence. If your daughter had diabetes, they could deny her coverage, too.

But today, insurers are prohibited from denying coverage to children because of their pre-existing health conditions. And in 2014, this protection will extend to all Americans.

We all know women have different health needs than men. Before the health care law, insurers could charge women up to 50 percent more for exactly the same health insurance, even if it didn't cover women's basic health needs.

But that's changing too. Starting in 2014, if you buy your own insurance, there will be a new, competitive marketplace where you can see all the available plans in one place and pick the coverage that best suits your needs. And these plans will be forbidden from charging women more than men and required to cover newborn and maternity care.

A third key change is that it's easier to get preventive care. Over the years, too many women have gone without potentially lifesaving cancer screenings like mammograms due to expensive co-pays. Now, anyone who joins a new health plan will be able to get key preventive care from Pap smears to mammograms without paying a co-pay or deductible. And that also applies to preventive care like vaccinations for your children.

Finally, Medicare is getting stronger. The health care law addresses gaps in coverage by gradually closing the Medicare prescription drug doughnut hole.

At the same time, the law provides new tools and resources to crack down on fraud, which drains billions of dollars from the Medicare trust fund each year. And it includes new support and incentives to help doctors and nurses across the country adopt best practices that can improve care and lower costs.

The health care law won't fix all the problems for women in our health care system. But it's a big step in the right direction.

Kathleen Sebelius is secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Comments: www.hhs.gov/feedback.html