User:Aminah2640/Race and health in the United States

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Will add the following to Women's reproductive health in the United States#Race and reproductive health

Women’s reproductive rights in the United States has been historically politicized on local, federal, and national levels and is still so today. In 2022, the right to an abortion was reversed by the court case of Dobbs V. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, ending federal protection for abortion rights and giving states the power to dictate and restrict abortion access. As a result of this recent case, women who are of low-income only have a few options: to postpone paying for basic needs such as food, rent, and utilities in order to save money for an abortion or to carry through with an unwanted pregnancy, risking deepening their poverty.

There has been some success through federal policies to improve health care access for women by relieving them of high healthcare costs such as through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) passed in 2010. The ACA expanded eligibility for low-income women to receive Medicaid coverage, covering services such as maternity care, birth control, and other major health care needs except abortions. The ACA eliminated the long-standing practice of refusing to sell insurance to women with preexisting conditions such as past pregnancy and Cesarean-section deliveries, and it eliminated other unfair practices such as charging women more than men for the same coverage. Despite efforts to increase health care access to women via the introduction of the ACA, 1 in 10 women remain uninsured, with higher rates among low-income women and women of color .

Although well-intended federal laws required states to improve access to high quality care at lower costs for Medicaid beneficiaries, states took advantage of the lack of financial oversight and ended up increasing inequitable gaps in BIPOC populations. Due to the court case- National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius- states could dictate whether or not to expand Medicaid coverage; some southern states, like Louisiana did not. In fact, these southern states that chose not to expand Medicaid encompass 60 percent of people of color where Black people are more than twice as likely as White people and Latino people to fall into the coverage gap . Some states that did accept federal money for Medicaid expansion misused these funds: instead of using the funds to support Medicaid patients, instead they used the funds to eliminate employer-paid premiums for employers’ health insurance . In 2017, these low payments in California discriminated against the growing Latino population, leading to a “separate and unequal system of health care” . Structural racism in health insurance coverage and financing has led to racially segregated care where low-income women of color receive poorer quality of care and receive less preventative care such as mammograms and pap smears.