Women's Health Care, (Part 4)

7. (Ranked 11 out of the top 20 issues in 2000)
8. 6. Higher education*  (greater access to higher education for women)
9. 7. Personal development of young women and girls

*The Women’s Foundation invested resources in several issue areas that were identified as priorities in the 2000 survey. The Economic Development and Justice Fund is a donor circle created to address economic inequities facing women and girls. The Initiatives Forum provided grants, training and capacity building to mobilize women and girls in California to advocate for policy change in the areas of women’s health and the environment and organizing for better pay and benefits for women.

For those who are eligible for health insurance, high cost can make it prohibitive. From 2000 to 2003, premiums for employment-based health insurance grew by 31.3 percent. Today, the average annual cost of health insurance for a family of four is more than $10,800—exceeding the annual income of a minimum wage earner. Health insurance costs can put a financial strain even on women who earn a solid middle-class income. A national report in February 2005 found that half of the people who filed for bankruptcy did so because they lacked the means to pay their medical bills. Most of these people were middle-class workers with health insurance.

Tour participants highlighted the need for more public education about existing programs and their eligibility requirements. For example, Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program, currently provides health insurance coverage to more than 6.6 million low-income Californians. However, in 2003 approximately 204,000 children and 244,000 non-elderly adults who were eligible for Medi-Cal were not enrolled.

Without even the rudimentary coverage of Medi-Cal for eligible Californians, these thousands are likely to go without any options for health services outside of expensive emergency room health care.

Multicultural health care

Tour participants in all areas spoke of the necessity for the health care system to embrace and address the needs of immigrant women and undocumented workers. The need for hospitals and clinics to provide both multilingual and multicultural care is especially important in California, where people of color make up more than half of the state’s population and one in every six residents is not a US citizen.