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FRIDAY, June 18 (HealthDayNews) -- Soaring health-care costs and trimmed-back health benefits are having a huge impact on American women, according to new statistics from the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation.

Experts said a lot of American women are especially vulnerable to downturns in the economy because many get their health coverage secondhand via their partner -- so when he loses his job, she loses her health coverage.

Women are also more likely than men to require health care, said Alina Salganicoff, director of women's health policy at the Foundation and author of a new Kaiser Fact Sheet on the issue.

"There's a shift towards increasing co-payments, deductibles, co-insurance -- all of those costs hit women very hard," she added.

The statistics, based on the foundation's estimates of the March 2003 U.S. Census Bureau survey, suggest that many U.S. women are having a tough time finding the health care they need. For example:

• Almost 16 million women, 18 percent of those aged 18 to 64, have no health coverage whatsoever. Lack of insurance can translate to poorer health; in a recent survey, 46 percent of uninsured women said they had gone without needed care because they had no coverage.
• Women who do have full-time employment are more likely to work for companies that don't offer health benefits. And while 89 percent of men employed full-time receive benefits from their employers, only 80 percent of women do so.
• Two-thirds of women are covered by employer-based plans, but are much more likely than men to get their insurance via a working partner (39 percent vs. 53 percent, respectively).
• Almost one in every 10 adult women under 65 get health coverage from Medicaid, which in the non-elderly is usually reserved for the disabled or very poor.

"There are just so many women in positions where they are just not in control of their fate in this situation," said Ed Howard, executive vice president of Alliance for Health Reform, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group. "Women have lower rates of employer-based coverage in their own name, which makes them more vulnerable to losing coverage in the case of divorce, or their spouse losing their job."

Working women are also more likely to fill part-time or service industry positions that don't offer benefits, he added.

Another problem is that the specific health needs of women are too often overlooked by insurers, according to Salganicoff.

For instance, only 21 states currently mandate that insurers who cover prescription drugs also cover the cost of oral contraceptives, for example.

"We have to make sure that a woman's insurance has benefits that are adequate, in terms of the scope of benefits that are covered," Salganicoff said. "Making sure that there's a benefit package that's meaningful for women."

Salganicoff's comments come in the wake of another new report finding that health insurers fail to cover newer birth control options for women. The report, done jointly by the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, the Black Women's Health Imperative, and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, found that only 40 to 50 percent of mid- to large-sized companies covered newer contraceptive options such as injections, a vaginal ring, a birth-control patch, or the "morning-after" emergency contraceptive pill.

Both Salganicoff and Howard hope real change is ahead.

"We're in an election year," Howard said, "and I have a hunch we're going to get a lot of focus from both parties on ways to lower the number of folks who are uninsured."

More information

Check out the Kaiser Family Foundation fact sheet.

(SOURCES: Alina Salganicoff, Ph.D., vice-president, director, women's health policy, Kaiser Family Foundation, Washington, D.C.; Ed Howard, J.D., executive vice president, Alliance for Health Reform, Washington, D.C.; June 2004 Women's Health Insurance Coverage Fact Sheet, Kaiser Family Foundation)

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