Women’s Health Issues Considered by Presidential Candidates, Solutions Offered

How the next presidential administration tackles challenges relating to women and health care was the topic of discussion Thursday night (Oct. 23) at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum.

David Blumenthal, senior health advisor to Sen. Barack Obama, and Gail Wilensky, senior health care advisor to Sen. John McCain, outlined their candidates’ positions on the issue and fielded a questions from audience members.

“The next administration will clearly have the moral responsibility to essentially look and take on [women’s] issues and help us navigate what best to do in terms of our healthcare delivery system,” said Sheila Burke, Harvard Kennedy School adjunct lecturer in public policy, who moderated the panel.

The discussion was preceded by a short PowerPoint presentation showing that 40 percent of women postpone needed health care due to cost; almost a third of women do not fill prescriptions due to cost; and women are more likely to lose insurance coverage than are men.

The two panelists each outlined two key health care proposals their candidate would support – giving the audience a sense of how they would affect not only women, but the country as a whole.

Wilensky said McCain’s plans to offer a health care credit and to allow people to purchase insurance from any state would provide citizens with more choice and less financial burden.

“Senator McCain has proposed that everyone receive a sizable credit - $5,000 if you’re a family, $2,500 if you’re an individual,” she said.

Wilensky said that most people would not lose employment-based insurance under the McCain plan and that those worried they would not be able to purchase health insurance due to pre-existing conditions would be aided by McCain’s Guaranteed Access Plan, which would ensure states offer plans for high-cost individuals and subsidies for low-income people.

Blumenthal described two of Obama’s major health care proposals - creating a national insurance exchange in which individuals and small groups would get access to comprehensive healthcare, and lowering cost by reducing administrative expense.

“Senator Obama said ‘healthcare is a right not a responsibility for Americans’,”he said. “I think one of the most distinctive elements for the Obama plan is his commitment to providing adequate funds to create a national health information network - $50 billion over five years – to get us into the 21st century and the information age.”

Blumenthal also said Obama would hope to increase the number of primary care medics, especially for geriatric patients.

“Women are uniquely vulnerable,” Burke said. “We ought to be paying attention to these issues and there are real differences between the candidates’ policies and how they will affect women.”

The Forum was sponsored by the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy, the Institute of Politics, the Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.