Our partners at the Wisconsin Council on Children & Families has done a wonderful job analyzing, tracking and organizing the information to better understand the current proposal and has put together these helpful summaries:

• A Summary of the Governor's Proposed Budget for Health Care
  
• A Summary of the Governor's Proposed Budget for Early Care & Education

We hope once you've had a chance to learn what changes are included in the budget, that you'll choose to attend one of these upcoming State Budget Hearings in communities across the state:

• Platteville Hearing - Monday, April 3rd from 10am - 5pm at UW Platteville Ullsvick Hall at 30 South Hickory Street
• West Allis Hearing - Wednesday, April 5th from 10am - 5pm at the State Fair Park Exposition Center at 8200 West Greenfield Ave
  
• Berlin Hearing - Friday, April 7th from 10am - 5pm at Berlin High School at 222 Memorial Drive
  
• Spooner Hearing - Tuesday, April 18th from 10am - 6pm at Spooner High School at 801 County Highway A
  
• Ellsworth Hearing - Wednesday, April 19th from 10am - 5pm at Ellsworth High School at 323 West Hillcrest St
  
• Marinette Hearing - Friday, April 21st from 10am - 5pm at Marinette High School at 2135 Pierce Ave
  

Based on our previous post, you already know that the GOP plan to replace the ACA is a disaster for women and families.  Between preventing women from using Medicaid coverage at Planned Parenthood and prohibiting private marketplaces from covering abortion, women stand to lose the most with the American Health Care Act.

But with a House vote scheduled today and amendments being made by the moment, here are the most important new things for you to be aware of as you advocate again the ACA repeal and the GOP plan:

• Maternity coverage would no longer be guaranteed, nor would coverage for any of the Essential Health Benefits that women and our families need (such as ER visits, doctor visits and prescription drugs)
• As a result, women would once again end up paying more than men, because anyone who needed maternity coverage would have to pay more.
• Although the ban on denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions would not be lifted, those folks would end up having to pay exorbitant prices for health coverage, because insurers would eliminate from their basic plans coverage for things like breast cancer treatment. All of that would become an expensive extra, effectively pricing health coverage beyond the reach of people with pre-existing conditions.
  
• Because the ACA’s ban on annual or liftime caps on coverage applied only to the Essential Health Benefits, when the EHBs are eliminated, insurers are free to once again impose annual and lifetime limits on coverage. This means that once again, we and our families could find ourselves running out of coverage part way through treatment for an illness, such as breast cancer, or accident.

Make a call now to your Congressional Representative and tell them to vote NO on the AHCA!

Following the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) score which predicted it would cause more than 24 million Americans to lose health coverage over the next decade, WAWH and other women’s health advocacy groups from around the country are urging Congressional leaders to reject the proposed American Health Care Act.

Women live in poverty at higher rates than men, earn less in full-time jobs and are less likely to have employer-sponsored insurance in their own names, the groups noted. This is especially true for women of color. For women, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies for purchase of private insurance and the expansion of Medicaid coverage have provided not only health benefits, but also much greater financial independence and stability.

By contrast, the repeal bill would:

• Provide skimpy subsidies, while allowing insurance companies to charge older Americans five times more than younger ones. The CBO predicts that it will “substantially rais[e] premiums for older people.” Women in their 50s and 60s who lose coverage through divorce or widowhood will be hard pressed to find affordable coverage.
• Allow insurance companies to shift more out-of-pocket costs onto women who cannot afford them. The CBO noted that “lower-income people’s share of medical services paid in the form of deductibles and other cost sharing would increase.”
• Prompt employers to drop coverage. The bill would eliminate tax credits that help small businesses provide coverage and repeal the mandate that large employers do so. By 2026, CBO reports, 7 million “fewer people, on net, would enroll in employment-based coverage” and “over time, fewer employers would offer health insurance to their workers.”
• Prevent millions of low-income women from looking to Medicaid for help. The CBO predicts that more than two-thirds of those who gained coverage through Medicaid expansion will lose their eligibility within just two years of implementation of the repeal bill. The bill also radically changes original Medicaid, capping and ratcheting down federal support so that it provides less and less help each year. The bill would tie states’ hands, forcing states to cut benefits or drop children, pregnant women, disabled people and seniors from coverage.
• Prevent women from being able to use their public health insurance, such as Medicaid, at Planned Parenthood, which would be barred from receiving federal funds. Planned Parenthood is often the only women’s health provider in rural and other underserved areas. CBO reported that “The people most likely to experience reduced access to care would probably reside in areas without other health care clinics or medical practitioners who serve low-income populations.”

The bill uses these deep cuts to the health care of vulnerable women and their families in order to fund tax cuts for the very wealthy, the women’s groups said. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill provides an average $7 million tax cut to each of the 400 richest households in America.

We strongly urge the House to reject this and any other bill that would roll back the coverage gains made by women under the ACA.

During WAWH’s 8th Annual Wisconsin Women’s Health Advocacy Summit, state Rep. Sondy Pope and state Sen. Janis Ringhand unveiled the "Wisconsin Paid Family and Medical Leave Act." WAWH was proud to work with the bill authors and many different advocacy organizations during this exciting event that provided a great window into policy advocacy in action for our Summit participants.

WAWH has worked closely with our close ally, 9to5 Wisconsin, on promoting state paid family and medical leave legislation the past two years.  We were honored to be joined by many other great allies to support paid leave, including End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin, the YWCA Madison, Wisconsin Faith Voices for Justice, and the Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice of South Central Wisconsin.  

Paid leave has become a prominent economic justice issue that has received much attention recently because it is widely viewed as an area where the United States is woefully behind the rest of the world -- so much so that both major presidential candidates supported some type of paid leave policies during the 2016 campaign.  Sadly, the U.S. is one of only three countries that does not guarantee workers any form of paid leave.

The Wisconsin Paid Family and Medical Leave Act is modeled on several successful paid family and medical leave programs that have been implemented in other states, including California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New York, and Washington, D.C.  These models include creating a public insurance program that provides workers with paid family or medical leave in case they need to take time off work because of their own serious health condition, to care for a sick family member, or to care for a newborn baby. 

Nationally, only 12 percent of workers have paid family leave through their employers and fewer than 40 percent have personal medical leave through an employer-provided short-term disability program. As a result, workers who take needed time off often face a significant loss of income.  
 
This burden falls disproportionately on women workers, who make up nearly half of the workforce but are still far more likely than men to care for children or other family members who are sick.  Even though both the federal and Wisconsin Family Medical Leave Acts (FMLA's) do provide important protections to some workers, a significant portion of the workforce is not eligible for these protections and both FMLA's only provide for unpaid time off, which is not financially possible for many employees.
 
Because of these shortcomings of the state and federal FMLA's, we need the Wisconsin Paid Family and Medical Leave Act to ensure that employees can take the time off they need to care for themselves and their families. 
 
If you'd like to learn more about paid family and medical leave, visit WAWH's Policy Prescription page on economic security issues (you'll have to scroll down the page a bit to get to paid leave).

If you would like to speak out in favor of the Wisconsin Paid Family and Medical Leave Act, you can click here to contact your state legislators to urge them to sponsor the bill or click here to submit a supportive letter to the editor to your local newspaper.

Once the legislation is introduced, we will create a more detailed page on our website "Policy Watch" page to provide more background information regarding the status of the bill along with other informational materials.