Greetings policy watchers,
As we get closer to a vote on many of these issues that we’ve been discussing, we wanted to provide you with a quick summary of what we’ve discussed, and why it’s relevant.
Here’s a quick summary of what we’ve discussed in our previous posts:
- Health care is an increasingly prominent issue for debate, especially in relation to the preventative health care of women. Minority women have a life expectancy that is 5 years less than white women, black and Hispanic women have less access to family planning resources resulting in more abortions, and over 1/10th of all women receive either late or no prenatal care. Add on top of that the $27 billion shortfall in the
- Medicaid alone has a $7.6 billion shortfall, and in response to threats of cutting Medicaid services, Team TK attended the Cover Texas Now advocacy day.
- In an effort to further understand the bills proposed about women’s preventative health care, Team TK chose 4 bills that we wanted to cover in more depth:
o Senate Bill No. 834 – Supplemental Breast Cancer Screening
o Senate Bill No. 1138 – Women’s Health Program
o House Bill No. 1133 – Maternal Mortality
o House Bill No. 1255 – Women’s Health, Family Planning, and Human Sexuality
- We provided the reader with a cheat sheet about each of the bills for quick reference, and then we analyzed the bills in more depth in our 4 part series. Here are some take away points from our in depth analysis:
o Among single mothers, more than 70% of pregnancies are unplanned. The Women’s Health Program (which S.B. 575 is seeking to expand) helped save Texas
§ In an effort to understand this better, we attended the Women’s Health Program testimony to the Health and Human Services Committee.
§ We also found that the New America Foundation, a public policy think tank, firmly supports measures that expand preventative health care to women.
o Dense breast tissue is a condition that affects over half of women and makes mammograms virtually ineffective at detecting the early stages of breast cancer. In response, Henda’s Law makes it mandatory for physicians to notify their patients of dense breast tissue. It’s a great place to start, but we hope that more proactive steps will follow, such as having insurance companies cover supplemental cancer screenings and making those options more affordable.
o The Women’s Health, Family Planning, and Human Sexuality program is much needed. It reconfirms the need for expanded access to preventive health and family planning services. Also, the statewide mandates on sex education programs in public schools need to be severely modified to de-emphasis the preference for abstinence and be more comprehensive, for example to include other forms of contraception. If this bill were to pass, it could potentially save the state millions in preventive care.
o After analyzing H.B. No. 1133, the need for more research on health care problems, in particular maternal mortality, became very apparent. There is a problem of a lack of access to perinatal and intrapartum care services; also, some vulnerable populations are more likely to experience pregnancy-related deaths and severe maternal morbidity. Ideally, the creation of a multidisciplinary committee will help decrease the rates of maternal mortality and morbidity.
§ We found that the Urban Institute, another public policy think tank, that they support further research and strategies focused on health care.
§ We also attended another legislative hearing with the Health and Human Services Committee regarding the bill, but they, unfortunately, did not have time to address the bill.
We hope you’ve learned as much as we have! We’ll keep you up to date as new events unfold!
Until next time…
<3, Team TK
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